Pembroke Center

Sarah Chant is a cultural anthropologist who studies queer and trans placemaking and memory in the U.S. South. They have a Ph.D. in anthropology from The New School for Social Research, and a BA in anthropology with a minor in physics from New York University. 

Their first book, What This Used To Be: Memory and Imagination in the Queer South, currently in preparation, follows the historical and contemporary trajectory of queer and trans life in Alabama by tracing its resonances through closed down bars, monuments, photographs, and spotty memories. Using former queer bars as a scaffolding for mapping the state, the book argues that the act of memory-play, that is, the means through which these now-closed spaces are remembered and misremembered beyond their material presence, offers a method for queer and trans Southerners to make and claim space and history in the region. She is also developing a second ethnographic research project on the affective components of anti-trans legislation and sentiment in the Southeastern United States.