Prospectus Presentation: Lara Sabra

Prospectus Presentation:

Lara Sabra
May 7, 2025
2:00-4:00pm in Machmer E17

Title: Building Futures Beyond Carceral Warscapes: A Creative Ethnography with Lebanon’s Formerly Incarcerated Women

Abstract: The current global condition is one increasingly shaped by formations and formulations of carceral power. Indeed, from Bukele’s mega-prisons in El Salvador to Israel’s legal “black holes,” from the US prison industrial complex to Assad’s prison state in Syria, incarceration has become a site of state, domestic, and/or military warfare. Lebanon, where prisons are molded by decades of colonial intervention, military occupations, and brutalizing state neglect, is emerging as an exemplar in this field. My research project thus turns to Lebanon’s formerly incarcerated women for insight into relational modalities of survival amidst carceral landscapes of war. Drawing on life history interviews and creative ethnographic methods, I examine the urgent question of how diverse trajectories of war are instilled in modes of incarceration while also excavating relational survival strategies for a future beyond carceral war-scapes. 

All are welcome to attend.