Eleanor Paynter
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eleanorbpaynter.net
Eleanor Paynter
@eleanorbpaynter.net
1.6K followers 830 following 310 posts
critical refugee studies, Mediterranean migration, testimony, crisis, transnational Italy | asst prof @ UOregon | poet |🎙host

book: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/emergency-in-transit/paper
website: https://eleanorbpaynter.net/
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eleanorbpaynter.net
Next Wednesday! Theorizing Migration through Film with Dagmawi Yimer, 4pm, EMU @uoregon.bsky.social
@uocas.bsky.social @uogsl.bsky.social @orhumanitiescenter.bsky.social
April 24, 2025 at 5:42 AM
eleanorbpaynter.net
Tonight at 6, in person

Im/migrant solidarity in an era of political exclusion and border violence

UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History

@uoregon.bsky.social @uogsl.bsky.social @uocas.bsky.social

mnch.uoregon.edu/learn/immigr...
April 17, 2025 at 3:54 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
Thanks to everyone who joined, online and in person, for a fabulous book launch. Celebrating Emergency in Transit in dialogue felt just right, and I'm inspired to carry the conversation forward -- especially now.

Solidarity and gratitude 🔥✨

Order/download the book: www.ucpress.edu/books/emerge...
I stand to present the book in a room with lots of windows; panelists are seated to my left. Image of book cover projected on the screen behind me. book cover cake! event flyer
April 13, 2025 at 10:33 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
Amid all that's happening, I'm excited to celebrate Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present at a hybrid author-meets-critics launch Fri, April 11, 10:00 Pacific (19:00 CET). I'll be joined by Kemi Balogun, Angelica Pesarini, Julie Weise, Nathalie Hester... & perhaps you!
flyer has book title and "book presentation & reception" at top and details below. Email Nathalie Hester for zoom link.
April 5, 2025 at 7:27 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
Took my "Borders, Memory, and Belonging in the Black Mediterranean" class to the UO Museum of Natural History&Culture to help prep materials for the Hostile Terraine 94 exhibit documenting migrant deaths in the Sonoran Desert. We connected this exhibit w realities in the Mediterranean... 1/
close-up of person's hands flipping through many pages of the list of deaths caused by Fortress Europe policies. On the table in front of them are manila folders and toe tags with the Hostile Terrain 94 exhibit close-up of hands filling out toe tags with the Hostile Terrain 94 exhibit
February 16, 2025 at 9:47 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
The 1st review of Emergency in Transit is here! 🙏 Ayşe Şanli for reflecting w/ such care on how it "envision[s] a future where migration & people on the move are understood w/out the constraining lens of emergency"

Review @ersjournal.com & book = open access! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
1/
February 7, 2025 at 10:17 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
when did the @nytimes.com start referring to asylum seekers as "asylum-seeking migrants"? Likely not new but seen twice just today www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/u...

lots more to focus on ofc, but these seemingly subtle shifts matter in legitimizing criminalizing discourses & the withholding of rights
January 20, 2025 at 10:25 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
After 10 yrs, Rome is inaugurating a welcome center for people in transit

The result of a decade of struggle

Says Baobab Experience: "This marks the 1st recognition that people in transit exist... our resistance across 42 evictions, farsical trials, & intimidation tactics has been heard..."
January 3, 2025 at 5:40 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net

6. Jonas Carpignano’s Stayblack Productions shared stills from the film Mediterranea. I use the stills to talk about different representations of familiar scenes and how they speak to collective memory, in a longer discussion about labor exploitation and racial capitalism
Abas picking oranges in the film Mediterranea
December 3, 2024 at 10:48 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
5. The Museo dell’Altro e dell’Altrove in Rome okayed my use of my own photos of the museum space, which I discuss in Chapter 5, on different forms of citizenship amid precarity
book page with photograph of a room in MAAM with red frogs on the windows "rane infinite"
December 3, 2024 at 10:48 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
4. Mauro Biani @maurobiani.bsky.social shared his piece “Uno a caso,” a response to the killing of Idy Diene on a bridge in Florence in 2018, which I talk about in Ch 4 “Street Vendor as Witness." More of his continued engagement w/ issues of borders, migrant rights & racial justice at maurobiani.it
page with cartoon, entitled "Uno a caso"
December 3, 2024 at 10:48 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net

3. The group United Against Refugee Deaths shared the postcard I include in Ch 1 commemorating deaths amid the fatal policies of Fortress Europe. They also maintain a list of border deaths & have a number of resources to build awareness around these issues unitedagainstrefugeedeaths.eu
book page with postcard with list of deaths over blurred blue images of people reaching shore
December 3, 2024 at 10:48 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net

2. Zakaria Mohamed Ali & the Archivio Memorie Migranti shared the still from the short film A chiunque possa interessare (To Whom It May Concern) with which I open Ch 1, on death at sea, what I call strange grief, & the figure of the boat
page featuring film still: director in front of Lampedusa boat cemetery
December 3, 2024 at 10:48 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
1. Dawit Petros, whose work graces the cover and still leaves me quite stunned. From “Indigo (Beyond the Conclusive Logic of Monumentality, Part II).” See www.dawitlpetros.com & his Chicago exhibition Prospetto a Mare www.mocp.org/exhibition/p... I’m going in a couple of weeks — see you there?
top half of book cover: blue cloth puffed in a ball hovering over the sea
December 3, 2024 at 10:48 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
Thanks to the Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell for the World in Focus feature on Emergency in Transit!

einaudi.cornell.edu/discover/new...
cc: @ucpress.bsky.social @uoregon.bsky.social
heading for article with image of people on boat. Reads: Eleanor Paynter, Migrations postdoctoral fellow from 2019-22, has published a book on the so-called “migration crisis,” with a focus on migration across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy.
December 3, 2024 at 4:28 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
It's official #PubDay for Emergency in Transit!

In paperback & open-access @ucpress.bsky.social #CriticalRefugeeStudies series

Immense thanks to all who've been part of the book's journey, from the people who shared their stories w/ me to readers & press editors
www.ucpress.edu/books/emerge...
book cover: vertical halves, each with a blue cloth hovering and opening over the sea book blurb text from back cover (also on website) epigraphs from the book (3)
November 26, 2024 at 3:42 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
Emergency in Transit is ready to share! Officially out Nov. 26. Paperback discount code UCPSAVE30 for 30% off, and open access via the book page www.ucpress.edu/books/emerge... @ucpress.bsky.social

Let me know if you read it, share it, teach it — would love to connect!
Front cover of book with centered title and two images of blue cloth unfurling over water
November 16, 2024 at 9:02 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
**Coming your way Fall 2024** w/ @ucpress.bsky.social

Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present

For now, excited to share this cover, which features the work of artist Dawit Petros
blue and white tones and a cover split in half vertically. on top, a ball of blue cloth hovers over the sea. below, the cloth has opened and floats over the water, in motion
February 23, 2024 at 2:08 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
A flipped seat is good news, but the rhetoric of a "new model for dems" is infuriating. Like, by new model, you mean adopt the rhetoric of closing the border? www.nytimes.com/2024/02/13/n...
linked news story reads: Tom Suozzi’s victory in a special House election in New York on Tuesday gave Democrats a badly needed dose of election-year optimism and a model for how to navigate one of their biggest political liabilities: the migrant influx overwhelming the southern border.
February 14, 2024 at 11:07 PM
eleanorbpaynter.net
Back on campus & happy to find my copy of Managing Migration in Italy & the United States

💫 eds @braun-strumfels.bsky.social @irpinaingiro.bsky.social & Daniele Fiorentino

My chapter is “Creating Crises: Risk, Racialization & the Migration-Security Nexus in Italy & the US”
cover of book first page of chapter TOC
January 12, 2024 at 8:38 PM