Brokered Subjects: Sex, Trafficking, and the Politics of Freedom

Elizabeth Bernstein is an Associate Professor of Women's Studies and Sociology at Barnard College. She is the author of "Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex" (University of Chicago Press, 2007), an ethnographic study of the postindustrial economic and cultural transformations fuelling contemporary shifts in the meaning, forms, and spatial organization of commercialized sexual labor. The book won the prestigious Norbert Elias Prize, as well as Distinguished Book Awards from the ASA's Sexualities sections, and the Sex and Gender section. Elizabeth teaches and writes in the fields of sexuality and the state; the sociology of the body; and gender and power in transnational contexts.

Elizabeth's talk will draw on her current book project critically examining the convergence of feminist, neoliberal, and evangelical Christian efforts to shape contemporary U.S. policies around the traffic in women. Recent publications from this research include "Carceral Politics as Gender Justice? The 'Traffic in Women' and Neoliberal Circuits of Crime, Sex, and Rights" (Theory & Society, 2012).