CANCELLED: "Panics Without Borders: Global Sporting Events and Myths about Sex Trafficking” Talk by Gregory Mitchell

Due to circumstances beyond control this lecture has been cancelled.

The Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies program presents a talk by Gregory Mitchell: "Panics Without Borders: Global Sporting Events and Myths about Sex Trafficking.”

Sporting mega events, like the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games, are sites for panics about sex trafficking, where (statistically) sex trafficking rarely increases, but police violence against sex workers always does. This talk follows the discourse across host countries to ask why this panic so easily embeds during these mega-events. What fears animate it? Who profits? Mitchell charts the move of sex trafficking into the realm of the spectacular—street protests, awareness raising campaigns, telenovelas, social media, and celebrity spokespeople—where it spreads across borders.

Dr. Mitchell studies sex work, race, and discourses of sex trafficking as well as the effects of public policy approaches.  At present, he is conducting research funded by the National Science Foundation to examine how states incentivize particular narratives and performances of nationalism in their attempts to police female sex workers, especially during global sporting events. https://williams.academia.edu/GregoryMitchell

This is the second talk in the GSWS Fall '23 Lecture Series "When Sex Work is Work: Rethinking Labor, Engaging the State." The first is "Porn Work" with author Heather Berg on Thursday September 28 (see CampusGroups listing). Sponsored by GSWS, Lectures and Concerts-The Breckenridge Fund, Anthropology, and Latin American Caribbean and Latinx Studies, and Sociology. Open to the Bowdoin College campus community.

FMI: Contact Professor Jay Sosa, GSWS.

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