Thomas Parker Hatley

THOMAS HATLEY, then a graduate student at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, was awarded funding in April 2021 to aid research on “For Morristown: the Production of Everyday Hospitality and Hostility in Appalachian Tennessee,” supervised by Dr. Ieva Jusionyte. Retitled, “For Xexac,” this study of community and obstinate memory in the wake of the long Cold War explores the interpersonal, political-economic, and religious dimensions of absence and migration both in the Guatemalan highlands and the United States. In regions deemed increasingly inhospitable and characterized by the ascendance of xenophobic nationalisms, inequality, and militarized immigration systems, this project explores how people come to terms with transnational migration and the burden of mobility in the wake of counterinsurgency.