“THE CHRONIC REFUGEE: HMONG AMERICAN AFTERLIVES IN EMPIRE”
Dr. Mai See Thao
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dr. Mai See Thao will be presenting on her book manuscript in progress, The Chronic Refugee: Hmong American Afterlives in Empire. This book project brings together the story of diabetes—one whereby Americans are told if they eat right, exercise, and take care of their health, they will be healthy–and the story of the refugee–where we are told refugees are “saved” upon resettlement in the U.S. This project’s framework, the chronic refugee, is a social figure that represents the intersection of chronic disease (diabetes) and the condition of being a refugee (even after the political designation no longer applies). This presentation argues that the chronic refugee articulates 1) the harms of empire–whereby life in the U.S. is not salvation but rather a slow death. 2) Sovereignty for the refugee is found in the dead. 3) Feminist Hmong ontologies of life provides a solution for slow death in empire and reimagines how the refugee comes back to life through (re)membering each other and living a life witnessed together.
Dr. Mai See Thao is a medical anthropologist whose research interests are the refugee body, biopolitics, ghosts, the dead, haunting, psychoanalysis, science, medicine, and empire. She is currently writing her book tentatively titled The Chronic Refugee: Hmong American Afterlives in Empire which examines older adult Hmong Americans’ post-refugee experiences with chronic type 2 diabetes and how it illuminates the structural vulnerabilities that refugees continue to face as they age in their place of home/resettlement. This book’s intervention is in the afterlives of imperialism, its materialization as health disparities in the refugee body, and the refugee’s critique of life after empire. These kinds of inquiries have led Dr. Thao to think about the interconnections of violence and care, aging for refugees, and the intervention of public humanities. Dr. Thao also ascribes to the belief that research should be impactful to the communities from which that research comes from. She is also a community-based participatory researcher (CBPR) who teaches social science theory to community members and have led CBPR projects on the social determinant of health for type 2 diabetes and a traveling exhibit on Hmong historical trauma and healing in Wisconsin. Before beginning her Assistant Professor position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she was the inaugural Director of Hmong Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and launched the university’s very first Hmong Studies Program.
Faculty profile: https://www.anthropology.wisc.edu/staff/thao-mai-see/