At the Intersections of North and South?: Reconceptualizing Transnational Frameworks of Critical Childhood and Adoption Studies
Through the lens of migration, the interdisciplinary fields of critical childhood and adoption studies attend to the various ways imperialism, humanitarianism, militarism, kinship, and immigration shape the lives of mobile children. This exploratory talk interrogates the analytic framings of the Global North and the Global South, to engage with the potential trappings of these theoretical underpinnings when trying to understand the complicated subjectivities of child migrants. In particular, this presentation attends to the historic and contemporary disjuncture between white American adoptive parents’ desire to adopt Black African children and resistance to adopt Black American children; the positioning of transnational Asian adoptees within a framework of the “Global East,” and the current crisis surrounding Ukraine’s “forcibly deported” children.
About the Speaker
Kelly Condit-Shrestha is a transnational U.S. historian of migration, childhood, adoption, race, and Asian American studies whose research explores children who are placed out, whether for economic or humanitarian rationales, as child migrants operating within transnational social, cultural, and political systems. Her teaching pedagogy empowers students to critically interpret and see themselves in local, regional, national, transnational, and global histories.
Condit-Shrestha's past and current professional affiliations are with the Adoption Museum Project (AMP), Immigration History Research Center (IHRC), Social Science History Association (SSHA), Subjects, Objects, Agents: Young People’s Lives and Livelihoods in the Global South (YaSOA), and U.S. History Scene (USHS).