Rebecca M. Schreiber – författare

The onset of the Cold War in the 1940s and 1950s precipitated the exile of many U.S. writers, artists, and filmmakers to Mexico. Rebecca M. Schreiber illuminates the work of these cultural exiles in Mexico City and Cuernavaca and reveals how their artistic collaborations formed a vital and effective culture of resistance.  As Schreiber recounts, the first exiles to arrive in Mexico after World War II were visual artists, many of them African-American, including Elizabeth Catlett, Charles White, and John Wilson. Individuals who were blacklisted from the Hollywood film industry, such as Dalton Trumbo and Hugo Butler, followed these artists, as did writers, including Willard Motley. Schreiber examines the artists’ work with the printmaking collective Taller de GrÁfica Popular and the screenwriters’ collaborations with filmmakers such as Luis BuÑuel, as well as the influence of the U.S. exiles on artistic and political movements.The Cold War culture of political exile challenged American exceptionalist ideology and, as Schreiber reveals, demonstrated the resilience of oppositional art, literature, and film in response to state repression.

In “Radical Histories of Sanctuary,” contributors explore both contemporary and historical invocations of “sanctuary,” paying particular attention to its genealogies in social movements against state violence. Expanding the scope of sanctuary, they address not only immigrant activism but also topics such as indigenous strategies of survival in the Americas, gay liberation in rural spaces, and urban housing for refugees. The essays contest liberal conventions of sanctuary that shore up the very forms of power and subjugation they seek to dismantle: from immigrant movements affirming the distinction between “good” and “bad” immigrants to gay liberation movements for police reform that fail to address the fundamental violence of policing. Examining both the liberatory potential of sanctuary and its limits, the contributors argue for intersectional strategies of resistance that connect the struggles of disparate groups against repressive and violent power.Contributors. Rachel Ida Buff, Caleb Duarte, Treva Ellison, Jason Ezell, Carla Hung, Kyle B. T. Lambelet, Sunaina Maira, Rachel McIntire, A. Naomi Paik, Jason Ruiz, Rebecca M. Schreiber, Aimee Villarreal, Elliot Young

Examining how undocumented migrants are using film, video, and other documentary media to challenge surveillance, detention, and deportationAs debates over immigration increasingly become flashpoints of political contention in the United States, a variety of advocacy groups, social service organizations, filmmakers, and artists have provided undocumented migrants with the tools and training to document their experiences.In The Undocumented Everyday, Rebecca M. Schreiber examines the significance of self-representation by undocumented Mexican and Central American migrants, arguing that by centering their own subjectivity and presence through their use of documentary media, these migrants are effectively challenging intensified regimes of state surveillance and liberal strategies that emphasize visibility as a form of empowerment and inclusion. Schreiber explores documentation as both an aesthetic practice based on the visual conventions of social realism and a state-administered means of identification and control. As Schreiber shows, by visualizing new ways of belonging not necessarily defined by citizenship, these migrants are remaking documentary media, combining formal visual strategies with those of amateur photography and performative elements to create a mixed-genre aesthetic. In doing so, they make political claims and create new forms of protection for migrant communities experiencing increased surveillance, detention, and deportation.