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Eberly College of Arts & Sciences Department of Geology and Geography
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Cynthia Gorman

Associate Professor of Geography

Contact

cynthia.gorman@mail.wvu.edu

Profiles and Info

Google Scholar

Categorized As

Role: Faculty,
Focus or Research Area: Geography,

Dr. Gorman’s research examines the legal geographies of political asylum in the U.S. and advocacy to expand human rights protections outlined in UN Refugee Conventions and Protocols.

Research

Dr. Gorman’s research examines the legal geographies of political asylum in the U.S. and advocacy to expand human rights protections outlined in UN Refugee Conventions and Protocols. Using feminist legal archaeology, her work traces how gendered and racialized logics of border control shape immigration categories and refugee status in the United States with a particular focus on those displaced from Central America. More recently, her work explores how immigration raids shape the politics of community life for immigrants who live in rural towns due to employment in meatpacking industries.

Courses

  • World Regional Geography (GEOG 102),
  • online (GEOG 102 7D1)
  • Migration and Human Rights (GEOG 312)
  • Gender, Society, Space (GEOG 612)
  • Women and International Development (WGST 345)
  • Feminist Theory (WGST 330/530)
  • Women’s Movements Since the 1960s (WGST 449)

Publications

Page URL : Find Dr. Gorman on Google Scholar:  https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=kccJ0o8AAAAJ&hl=en

Gorman, C. and B. Wilson. 2021 . “After the Raid: Feminist Geolegality and the Spaces of Encounter in a Poultry Town.”  Gender, Place & Culture. DOI:  10.1080/0966369X.2021.1873745 

Gorman, C. and K. Culcasi. 2020. Invasion and colonization: Islamophobia and anti-refugee sentiment in West Virginia.  Environment and Planning C:  Politics and Space.  https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654420943897 

Culcasi, K., E. Skop and C. Gorman. 2019. Contemporary Refugee-Border Dynamics and the Legacies of the1919 Paris Peace Conference. The Geographical Review. DOI:10.1111/gere.12365

Gorman, C. 2019. “Defined by The Flood: Alarmism and the Legal Thresholds of U.S. Political Asylum.”
Geopolitics. DOI:10.1080/14650045.2018.1556642

Gorman, C. 2018. “Singled out: Scaling violence and social groups as legal borderwork in U.S. asylum law.”
The Geographical Review. https://doi.org/10.1111/gere.12311

Gorman, C. 2018. “Feminist Legal Archeology, Domestic Violence and the Raced-Gendered Juridical
Boundaries of U.S. Asylum Law.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X18757507.

Gorman, C. 2017. “Redefining Refugees: Interpretive Control and the Bordering Work of Legal Categorization
in U.S. Asylum Law.” Political Geography 58 (May): 36–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2016.12.006.

Gorman, C. 2016. “Containing Kassindja: Detention, Gendered Threats and Border Control in the United
States.” Gender, Place & Culture 23 (7): 955–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2015.1090412.

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