Abolitionist Sanctuary in Scholarship and Practice: A Workshop with A. Naomi Paik (University of Illinois, Chicago)

Location: Maryland 114

This workshop will offer an informal space of discussion and collective thinking on the concept and practice of abolitionist sanctuary, which combines sanctuary’s radical hospitality and community defense that is needed right now with abolition’s organizing to dismantle life-annihilating systems and build life-affirming worlds in their place. We will have the opportunity to think through the histories and theories undergirding abolitionist sanctuary, as well as its practices in organizing and movement spaces. 

A. Naomi Paik is the author of Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the 21st Century (UC Press, 2020) and Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II (UNC Press, 2016; winner, Best Book in History, AAAS 2018; runner-up, John Hope Franklin prize for best book in American Studies, ASA, 2017). She coedited four special issues of the Radical History Review on militarism and capitalism, sanctuary, policing, and the Anthropocene. She coedits the “Borderlands” section of Public Books and “The Politics of Sanctuary” blog at the Smithsonian. She is a member of the Migration Scholars Collaborative and FSJP UIC and a founding member of the Sanctuary Campus Network and Sanctuary for All UIC. 

This workshop is co-sponsored by Critical Responses to Anti-Asian Violence and the Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism. It is part of the Chloe Center’s Spring 2026 series Critical Carceral Studies: Toward Abolition and Liberation.

This workshop is open to JHU graduate and undergraduate students, faculty, and staff. Refreshments will be served.