CANCELED: Postcolonial Spatialities with Patrick Bixby

Please note this event has been canceled. We apologize for the inconvenience. 

Dr. Patrick Bixby’s scholarly interests span a variety of related fields, including mobility studies, modernist studies, Irish studies, and postcolonial theory and criticism. His recent published monographs and edited volumes include Nietzsche and Irish Modernism (Manchester UP, 2022) and Unaccompanied Traveler: The Writings of Kathleen M. Murphy (Syracuse UP, 2022). For more on Dr. Bixby’s research and pedagogy, please see here.

Dr. Bixby's latest book (winner of the 2023 Institute for Humanities Research Book Award), License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport (U of California P, 2022), examines the passports of artists and intellectuals, ancient messengers and modern migrants, to reveal how these seemingly humble documents implicate us in larger narratives about identity, mobility, citizenship, and state authority. This concise cultural history takes the reader on a captivating journey from pharaonic Egypt and Han dynasty China to the passport controls and crowded refugee camps of today. Along the way, the book connects intimate stories of vulnerability and desire with vivid examples drawn from world cinema, literature, art, philosophy, and politics, highlighting the control that travel documents have over our bodies as we move around the globe. Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, and Russian translations of the book are forthcoming.