Sara Komarnisky

PhD Candidate
 
MA, Sociocultural Anthropology, University of Manitoba 
BCom, Latin American Studies, University of Alberta

Supervisor: Gaston Gordillo

Email: saravk[-at-]interchange.ubc.ca

Research Interests:
Anthropology of space and place, globalization and transnationality, mobility, immigration, citizenship, North America, food and eating

Current Project:
The goal of my dissertation research is to examine the historical and ongoing connections created between Alaska and Mexico by multi-generational families of Mexican background. In particular, I will focus on the spatial practices of families living in Anchorage, and how their constructions of a new sense of belonging in Alaska are entangled with ongoing patterns of mobility, practices, and imaginings that connect them with Acuitzio, their town of origin in Michoacán, Mexico. I am interested in exploring the potential tensions that may emerge between these people’s patterns of transnational mobility and the more rigid spatial imaginings that dominate media representations about Mexican migrants in the United States and about Alaska as a space of wilderness and of “real Americans”, a place produced as radically disconnected from elsewhere because of its geographic location as well as through its production as a wilderness frontier. I will explore how these representations are subverted, appropriated, or maintained by movements that connect Mexico and Alaska and their role in the construction of a sense of belonging for people of Mexican background.

Publications:
2009 Komarnisky, Sara V. Suitcases Full of Mole: Traveling foods and the connections between Mexico and Alaska. Alaska Journal of Anthropology 7(1).

Memberships:
Vanier Canada Graduate ScholarLiu Scholar, Liu Institute for Global Issues, UBC