EVENT: Work in Progress Seminar by Beth A. Buggenhagen, assistant professor of anthropology, on Senegalese Muslim traders in U.S. cities

Anthropologist Beth A. Buggenhagen will discuss Senegalese Muslims in the United States in relation to counterterrorist measures at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 26, on the University of Rochester’s River Campus. The Work in Progress Seminar, sponsored by the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies at the University, will be held in room 314 of Morey Hall, and is free to the public.

Her talk, titled “Killer Bargain: The Global Circuits of Senegalese Muslims, the Migrant as Terrorist, and the War on Terror,” is based on ethnographic research in New York City where there are a substantial number of immigrants from Senegal, many of whom engage in street vending and the sale of counterfeit goods. The sale of many of these goods—DVDs and CDs in particular—has come under scrutiny because of concerns about the financing of designated foreign terrorist organizations and U.S. national security. The talk will consider the implications of counterterrorist legislation for immigrants from Senegal and elsewhere as well as for civil liberties in the United States.

Buggenhagen, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Rochester, received her doctoral degree from the University of Chicago, and has conducted field research in Senegal and the United States on such topics as gender, domesticity, and the historical development of global circulation. Her work has been supported by the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Chicago, the Ford Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation.

For more information, contact the Frederick Douglass Institute at (585) 275-7235.