Sara L Mckinnon
Biographic Data
| ID | 298305 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sara L Mckinnon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sara L |
| FAMILY NAME | Mckinnon |
| SIGNATURE | MCKINNON S L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9847-0032 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 47 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Guatemala’s springs: Framing corruption to territorialize democracy
Although Guatemala has long struggled with corruption, recent years have seen growing public activism and collective resistance against entrenched abuses of power. During two critical periods of social unrest, the country displayed a shift in the framing of corruption. This essay focuses on the two periods: the 2015 corruption scandals and the 2023 presidential election. The discourse and social movements that emerge in these moments illustrate a…
Between dreams and disillusionment: Multinational comparisons in venezuelan experiences of reception and integration in Denver, Colorado, USA
(Counter)Publics, transnationalism, and globalization: Dan Brouwer’s intellectual legacy and methodological touchpoints
Democracy as Fetish
As theorists and critics, we should welcome books that call us to question the ideas and ideals that motivate our scholarship and, more specifically, the way we employ foundational concepts in the study of rhetoric and philosophy. Ralph Cintron's Democracy as Fetish is one such book. Cintron takes on one of the field's most important grounding concepts—democracy—and asks that we think it anew. The goal is not to abandon or abolish democracy but r…
Feminicidio in the International Courts: Agency and Responsibility in the Making of Justice
In 2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in González et al. (“Cotton Field”) v. Mexico that Mexico and the state of Chihuahua were responsible for cultivating conditions of feminicidio and pervasive structural violence against women. Drawing on theories of justice, agency, and responsibility, this essay examines the court’s legal decision to understand the power of rhetoric in creating the conditions for justice in the face of stat…
Life Outside: A Narrative Ethnographic Inquiry into the Determinants of Homelessness
Homelessness is one of the largest social issues currently in the United States.This study specifically investigates the lived experiences of those who are or were homeless in Madison, Wisconsin, to identify the uniquely pivotal aspects of their lives that led them down the path of homelessness. This study is based on participant observation and semistructured interviews with those who have personally experienced homelessness in Madison. The find…
Generations
Gendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics
Women filing gender-based asylum claims have long faced skepticism and outright rejection within the U.S. immigration system. Despite erratic progress, the United States still fails to recognize gender as an established category for experiencing persecution. Gender exists in a sort of limbo segregated from other aspects of identity and experience. This book exposes racialized rhetorics of violence in politics and charts the development of gender …
Gendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics
"Women filing gender-based asylum claims long faced skepticism and outright rejection within the U.S. immigration system. Despite erratic progress, the United States still fails to recognize gender as an established category for experiencing persecution. Gender exists in a sort of limbo segregated from other aspects of identity and experience. Sara McKinnon exposes racialized rhetorics of violence in politics and charts the development of gender …
US gender- and sexuality-related asylum law: The politics of transgender asylum
This essay addresses the politics undergirding the incorporation of transgender refugee provisions in the US system of political asylum. I first outline how asylum provisions for trans persons have developed through legal decisions in relation to two related categories of asylum law—gender-based asylum and sexuality-related asylum. I then question the future of transgender asylum in the context of US transnational aspirations and anxieties. What …
Necropolitical voices and bodies in the rhetorical reception of Iranian women's asylum claims
In the mid-1990s, US immigration courts were introduced to a group of Iranian women who claimed that they feared persecution because of their “pro-Western and feminist” political opinions and because of the way they performed gender on their bodies. The claims were, in total, unsuccessful bids to asylum. Analyzing these cases set against the geopolitical background of US–Iranian history and contemporary relations, I argue that their denials illus…
Rhetoric and Ethics Revisited: What Happens When Rhetorical Scholars Go Into the Field
As rhetorical scholars adopt field methods to complement traditional text-based criticism, it is necessary to reflect on the ethical standards that guide our practice of rhetorical criticism and analysis. In this essay, we highlight five points of ethical tension provoked when doing research that moves between texts and fields: responsibility, truth, power, relationships, and representation. Each section illustrates an ethical dilemma from the au…
Gender Violence as Global Phenomenon: Refugees, Genital Surgeries, and Neocolonial Projects of the United States
This essay investigates the mounting U.S. vision of gender violence since the 1990s as a global phenomenon. Focusing on U.S. legal, political, and media discourse about female circumcision in particular, and gender violence more broadly, this essay examines what U.S. imaginaries about global gender violence enable as warrants for neocolonial consolidations of U.S. power in the 21st century through international projects and programs of defense, d…
Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant
Book Review| October 01 2015 Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant. By Eithne Luibhéid. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013; pp. viii + 299, $25.00 paper. Sara L. McKinnon Sara L. McKinnon University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking (2015) 2 (3): 150–153. https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.2…
Kiva's Flat, Flat World: Ten Years of Microcredit in Cyberspace
While microcredit has been widely praised as a new, powerful tool for enabling development and empowering the poor, this form of ‘development from below’ does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, microcredit programs are inseperable from a host of neoliberal political, cultural, and economic practices and projects. These contexts are, however, systematically missing from Kiva.org, the largest and most popular peer-to-peer microlending portal. Instead, …
Diana and Beyond: White Femininity, National Identity, and Contemporary Media Culture
Sara L. McKinnonUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison© 2015, Sara L. McKinnon
Public Access, Privacy, and Queer Politics: An Interview with Nathan Fuller
Research Article| February 01 2014 Public Access, Privacy, and Queer Politics: An Interview with Nathan Fuller Sara L. McKinnon Sara L. McKinnon Sara L. McKinnon is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Politics & Culture in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research and teaching is in the areas of intercultural rhetoric, globalization/transnational studies, legal rhetoric, and transnational feminist t…
Text‐Based Approaches to Qualitative Research: An Overview of Methods, Process, and Ethics
This chapter provides an overview of the research process of text‐based qualitative research. The chapter not only explains what it means to work with texts in a qualitative manner, but outlines the various options researchers have at their disposal in trying to answer the research questions that most interest them, including rhetorical methods, discourse analysis approaches, and ethnographic methods. The chapter also provides readers with a step…
Positioned in/by the State: Incorporation, Exclusion, and Appropriation of Women's Gender-Based Claims to Political Asylum in the United States
Extending an important rhetorical tradition of investigating women's positioning/positionalities in the national imaginary, in society, and in the law, this essay examines how non-US citizen women and their experiences are deployed toward objectives of the US state. Specifically, I analyze the rhetorical significance of two precedent-setting gender-based asylum cases, those of Fauziya Kassindja and Rody Alvarado, to understand the different ways …
Excavating Gender in Women's Early Claims to Political Asylum in the United States
This essay examines how gender is figured as a discourse of U.S. political asylum through women's early gendered claims to political asylum. Using an archeology methodology, I explore how gender comes to matter discursively and materially in asylum courtrooms. Specifically, I find that sexual difference is used as an organizing schema for sexual violence, political access comes through assumed relationships to men with power, and women's subjecti…
“Bringing New Hope and New Life”: The Rhetoric of Faith-Based Refugee Resettlement Agencies
Faith-based organizations play an important role in the resettlement of refugees in the United States, though little is known about the function of faith in the organizations' assistance of refugees. Most literature about refugees also fails to attend to the intersubjectivity between refugees and other individuals or groups, focusing instead on a singular subject or group identity. This article bridges these gaps by rhetorically analyzing the way…
Citizenship and the Performance of Credibility: Audiencing Gender-based Asylum Seekers in U.S. Immigration Courts
The Real ID Act of 2005 gave immigration judges more power over determining who is worthy to remain in the United States. One trend to emerge from this development is that judges in asylum cases evaluate the claimants’ credibility rather than the content of the cases in order to expedite their case load. To understand this shift I focus specifically on the conventions of audiencing used by immigration judges to evaluate the credibility performed …
Citizenship and the Performance of Credibility: Audiencing Gender-based Asylum Seekers in U.S. Immigration Courts
The Real ID Act of 2005 gave immigration judges more power over determining who is worthy to remain in the United States. One trend to emerge from this development is that judges in asylum cases evaluate the claimants’ credibility rather than the content of the cases in order to expedite their case load. To understand this shift I focus specifically on the conventions of audiencing used by immigration judges to evaluate the credibility performed …
Excavating Gender in Women's Early Claims to Political Asylum in the United States
This essay examines how gender is figured as a discourse of U.S. political asylum through women's early gendered claims to political asylum. Using an archeology methodology, I explore how gender comes to matter discursively and materially in asylum courtrooms. Specifically, I find that sexual difference is used as an organizing schema for sexual violence, political access comes through assumed relationships to men with power, and women's subjecti…
Necropolitical voices and bodies in the rhetorical reception of Iranian women's asylum claims
In the mid-1990s, US immigration courts were introduced to a group of Iranian women who claimed that they feared persecution because of their “pro-Western and feminist” political opinions and because of the way they performed gender on their bodies. The claims were, in total, unsuccessful bids to asylum. Analyzing these cases set against the geopolitical background of US–Iranian history and contemporary relations, I argue that their denials illus…
Rhetoric and Ethics Revisited: What Happens When Rhetorical Scholars Go Into the Field
As rhetorical scholars adopt field methods to complement traditional text-based criticism, it is necessary to reflect on the ethical standards that guide our practice of rhetorical criticism and analysis. In this essay, we highlight five points of ethical tension provoked when doing research that moves between texts and fields: responsibility, truth, power, relationships, and representation. Each section illustrates an ethical dilemma from the au…
Gender Violence as Global Phenomenon: Refugees, Genital Surgeries, and Neocolonial Projects of the United States
This essay investigates the mounting U.S. vision of gender violence since the 1990s as a global phenomenon. Focusing on U.S. legal, political, and media discourse about female circumcision in particular, and gender violence more broadly, this essay examines what U.S. imaginaries about global gender violence enable as warrants for neocolonial consolidations of U.S. power in the 21st century through international projects and programs of defense, d…
Feminicidio in the International Courts: Agency and Responsibility in the Making of Justice
In 2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in González et al. (“Cotton Field”) v. Mexico that Mexico and the state of Chihuahua were responsible for cultivating conditions of feminicidio and pervasive structural violence against women. Drawing on theories of justice, agency, and responsibility, this essay examines the court’s legal decision to understand the power of rhetoric in creating the conditions for justice in the face of stat…
US gender- and sexuality-related asylum law: The politics of transgender asylum
This essay addresses the politics undergirding the incorporation of transgender refugee provisions in the US system of political asylum. I first outline how asylum provisions for trans persons have developed through legal decisions in relation to two related categories of asylum law—gender-based asylum and sexuality-related asylum. I then question the future of transgender asylum in the context of US transnational aspirations and anxieties. What …
Kiva's Flat, Flat World: Ten Years of Microcredit in Cyberspace
While microcredit has been widely praised as a new, powerful tool for enabling development and empowering the poor, this form of ‘development from below’ does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, microcredit programs are inseperable from a host of neoliberal political, cultural, and economic practices and projects. These contexts are, however, systematically missing from Kiva.org, the largest and most popular peer-to-peer microlending portal. Instead, …
“Bringing New Hope and New Life”: The Rhetoric of Faith-Based Refugee Resettlement Agencies
Faith-based organizations play an important role in the resettlement of refugees in the United States, though little is known about the function of faith in the organizations' assistance of refugees. Most literature about refugees also fails to attend to the intersubjectivity between refugees and other individuals or groups, focusing instead on a singular subject or group identity. This article bridges these gaps by rhetorically analyzing the way…
Citizenship and the Performance of Credibility: Audiencing Gender-based Asylum Seekers in U.S. Immigration Courts
The Real ID Act of 2005 gave immigration judges more power over determining who is worthy to remain in the United States. One trend to emerge from this development is that judges in asylum cases evaluate the claimants’ credibility rather than the content of the cases in order to expedite their case load. To understand this shift I focus specifically on the conventions of audiencing used by immigration judges to evaluate the credibility performed …
Excavating Gender in Women's Early Claims to Political Asylum in the United States
This essay examines how gender is figured as a discourse of U.S. political asylum through women's early gendered claims to political asylum. Using an archeology methodology, I explore how gender comes to matter discursively and materially in asylum courtrooms. Specifically, I find that sexual difference is used as an organizing schema for sexual violence, political access comes through assumed relationships to men with power, and women's subjecti…
Positioned in/by the State: Incorporation, Exclusion, and Appropriation of Women's Gender-Based Claims to Political Asylum in the United States
Extending an important rhetorical tradition of investigating women's positioning/positionalities in the national imaginary, in society, and in the law, this essay examines how non-US citizen women and their experiences are deployed toward objectives of the US state. Specifically, I analyze the rhetorical significance of two precedent-setting gender-based asylum cases, those of Fauziya Kassindja and Rody Alvarado, to understand the different ways …
Text‐Based Approaches to Qualitative Research: An Overview of Methods, Process, and Ethics
This chapter provides an overview of the research process of text‐based qualitative research. The chapter not only explains what it means to work with texts in a qualitative manner, but outlines the various options researchers have at their disposal in trying to answer the research questions that most interest them, including rhetorical methods, discourse analysis approaches, and ethnographic methods. The chapter also provides readers with a step…
Public Access, Privacy, and Queer Politics: An Interview with Nathan Fuller
Research Article| February 01 2014 Public Access, Privacy, and Queer Politics: An Interview with Nathan Fuller Sara L. McKinnon Sara L. McKinnon Sara L. McKinnon is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Politics & Culture in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research and teaching is in the areas of intercultural rhetoric, globalization/transnational studies, legal rhetoric, and transnational feminist t…
Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant
Book Review| October 01 2015 Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant. By Eithne Luibhéid. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013; pp. viii + 299, $25.00 paper. Sara L. McKinnon Sara L. McKinnon University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking (2015) 2 (3): 150–153. https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.2…
Kiva's Flat, Flat World: Ten Years of Microcredit in Cyberspace
While microcredit has been widely praised as a new, powerful tool for enabling development and empowering the poor, this form of ‘development from below’ does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, microcredit programs are inseperable from a host of neoliberal political, cultural, and economic practices and projects. These contexts are, however, systematically missing from Kiva.org, the largest and most popular peer-to-peer microlending portal. Instead, …
Diana and Beyond: White Femininity, National Identity, and Contemporary Media Culture
Sara L. McKinnonUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison© 2015, Sara L. McKinnon
Gendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics
Women filing gender-based asylum claims have long faced skepticism and outright rejection within the U.S. immigration system. Despite erratic progress, the United States still fails to recognize gender as an established category for experiencing persecution. Gender exists in a sort of limbo segregated from other aspects of identity and experience. This book exposes racialized rhetorics of violence in politics and charts the development of gender …
Gendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics
"Women filing gender-based asylum claims long faced skepticism and outright rejection within the U.S. immigration system. Despite erratic progress, the United States still fails to recognize gender as an established category for experiencing persecution. Gender exists in a sort of limbo segregated from other aspects of identity and experience. Sara McKinnon exposes racialized rhetorics of violence in politics and charts the development of gender …
US gender- and sexuality-related asylum law: The politics of transgender asylum
This essay addresses the politics undergirding the incorporation of transgender refugee provisions in the US system of political asylum. I first outline how asylum provisions for trans persons have developed through legal decisions in relation to two related categories of asylum law—gender-based asylum and sexuality-related asylum. I then question the future of transgender asylum in the context of US transnational aspirations and anxieties. What …
Necropolitical voices and bodies in the rhetorical reception of Iranian women's asylum claims
In the mid-1990s, US immigration courts were introduced to a group of Iranian women who claimed that they feared persecution because of their “pro-Western and feminist” political opinions and because of the way they performed gender on their bodies. The claims were, in total, unsuccessful bids to asylum. Analyzing these cases set against the geopolitical background of US–Iranian history and contemporary relations, I argue that their denials illus…
Rhetoric and Ethics Revisited: What Happens When Rhetorical Scholars Go Into the Field
As rhetorical scholars adopt field methods to complement traditional text-based criticism, it is necessary to reflect on the ethical standards that guide our practice of rhetorical criticism and analysis. In this essay, we highlight five points of ethical tension provoked when doing research that moves between texts and fields: responsibility, truth, power, relationships, and representation. Each section illustrates an ethical dilemma from the au…
Gender Violence as Global Phenomenon: Refugees, Genital Surgeries, and Neocolonial Projects of the United States
This essay investigates the mounting U.S. vision of gender violence since the 1990s as a global phenomenon. Focusing on U.S. legal, political, and media discourse about female circumcision in particular, and gender violence more broadly, this essay examines what U.S. imaginaries about global gender violence enable as warrants for neocolonial consolidations of U.S. power in the 21st century through international projects and programs of defense, d…
Generations
Life Outside: A Narrative Ethnographic Inquiry into the Determinants of Homelessness
Homelessness is one of the largest social issues currently in the United States.This study specifically investigates the lived experiences of those who are or were homeless in Madison, Wisconsin, to identify the uniquely pivotal aspects of their lives that led them down the path of homelessness. This study is based on participant observation and semistructured interviews with those who have personally experienced homelessness in Madison. The find…
Democracy as Fetish
As theorists and critics, we should welcome books that call us to question the ideas and ideals that motivate our scholarship and, more specifically, the way we employ foundational concepts in the study of rhetoric and philosophy. Ralph Cintron's Democracy as Fetish is one such book. Cintron takes on one of the field's most important grounding concepts—democracy—and asks that we think it anew. The goal is not to abandon or abolish democracy but r…
Feminicidio in the International Courts: Agency and Responsibility in the Making of Justice
In 2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in González et al. (“Cotton Field”) v. Mexico that Mexico and the state of Chihuahua were responsible for cultivating conditions of feminicidio and pervasive structural violence against women. Drawing on theories of justice, agency, and responsibility, this essay examines the court’s legal decision to understand the power of rhetoric in creating the conditions for justice in the face of stat…
(Counter)Publics, transnationalism, and globalization: Dan Brouwer’s intellectual legacy and methodological touchpoints
Guatemala’s springs: Framing corruption to territorialize democracy
Although Guatemala has long struggled with corruption, recent years have seen growing public activism and collective resistance against entrenched abuses of power. During two critical periods of social unrest, the country displayed a shift in the framing of corruption. This essay focuses on the two periods: the 2015 corruption scandals and the 2023 presidential election. The discourse and social movements that emerge in these moments illustrate a…
Between dreams and disillusionment: Multinational comparisons in venezuelan experiences of reception and integration in Denver, Colorado, USA
Sociology (17 works) · Political science (16 works) · Law (13 works) · Gender Studies (12 works) · Politics (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Power (physics (6 works) · Rhetoric (6 works) · Criminology (5 works)