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Sona Kazemi

Pronouns: She/Her
Assistant Professor
Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

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Sona Kazemi Pronouns: She/Her

Assistant Professor

Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies

Specialty area(s)

Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Race and Ethnicity Studies; Socio-Legal Determinants of Health; Middle East Politics; Theocracy; Iran; Women and Revolution in the Middle East; Trauma and Torture Studies; Social Justice Education; War and Peace Studies; Critical Prison Studies; State Violence; Political Violence; Human Rights; Qualitative Methods and Advocacy; Adult Education; Disability Studies; Global Studies; Transnationalism; Migration Studies; Human Rights

Brief biography

Dr. Sona Kazemi is Assistant Professor of Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. She is the author of Disabling Relations: Wounded Bodyminds and Transnational Praxis (Temple University Press, 2025), a book that advances a transnational approach to disability, madness, survival, and the infrastructures of care. She is currently completing her second monograph, Captive Revolutionaries: Madness, Disability, and Ca(re)sistance among Iranian Political Prisoners, 1981-1989, which examines the production of disability and madness through imprisonment, torture, and psychiatric violence, alongside the collective practices of care and resistance cultivated by Iranian political prisoners. Additionally, Sona is co-editing three interdisciplinary collections: Disabling States (under contract with Canadian Scholars), Towards a Transnational Solidarity Theory and Praxis: Locating Disability and Feminist Consciousness in the Global, and The Uncanny of Woman, Life, Freedom: Internal Contradictions and Transnational Reverberations. An award-winning educator, Dr. Kazemi received the 2025 Eagle Teaching Excellence Award, the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse's highest teaching honor. She has also been recognized with the Most Accessible Professor Award, multiple Committed to Accessibility Awards, and the Best Mentor Award from The Ohio State University for her commitment to inclusive and transformative education. Her scholarship has been recognized by the Society for Disability Studies with an Honorable Mention for the prestigious Irving K. Zola Award for Emerging Scholars. 

Current courses at UWL

RGS 100; RGS 373; RGS 353; RGS 377

Education

Postdoctoral Fellow with the Society of Fellows: Human Rights Pasts and Futures at The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH~Jan 2021- Dec 2022

Research Justice at the Intersections Fellow with the Provost’s Office at Mills College, Oakland, California~Sep 2020 – April 2021

Postdoctoral Researcher of Global Migration, Disability Studies, and Medical Humanities at Mershon Center for International Security Studies and the Department of English at The Ohio State University~Aug 2018 - Aug 2020

PhD, Adult Education and Community Development at the Ontario Institute for studies in Education of the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, Sep 2014-June 2018

M.A., Critical Disability Studies at the School of Health Policy and Management, Faculty of Health, York University, Sep 2012-Oct 2013

B.A. (Hon), Psychology, York University, Sep 2008-Aug 2012

B.Sc (Pure Math) unfinished due to forced migration

Career

Teaching history

Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies

Global Human Rights

The Disability Experience in the Contemporary World

Disability, Race, Political Economy, and Gender

Global Migration and Transnational Disability Studies

Professional history

AWARDS AND HONORS

2026

  • Phenomenal Woman of the Year, ALANA (Asian, Latinx, African, Native American) Women Student Organization, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, awarded for social justice work and contributions to the campus community.

 

  • Committed to Accessibility Award, DREAM (Disability Rights Education Activism and Mentoring), University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, student-nominated.

2025

  • Eagle Teaching Excellence Award, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. Highest university-wide teaching honor; student-nominated. In 2025, 5,000 nominations were received and six faculty members were selected

 

  • Most Accessible Professor Award, DREAM

2024

  • Committed to Accessibility Award, DREAM
  • Finalist, Most Accessible Professor Award, DREA
  • Nominated, Eagle Teaching Excellence Award, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse.
  • Nominated, Research Excellence Award, College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse.

2022

  • Best Mentor for Making a Difference in the Lives of Their Students, Faculty and Staff Recognition, The Ohio State University. Nominated by the SPHINX Senior Class Honorary.

2019

  • Honorable Mention, Irving K. Zola Award for Emerging Scholars in Disability Studies, Society for Disability Studies, for “Silent Global and Oppressive Local: Fetishization of the Disabled War Veterans in Iran through the Ideological Construction of ‘Living Martyrs.’”

Research and publishing

Publications

Books

Kazemi, S. (2025). Disabling Relations: Wounded Bodyminds and Transnational Praxis. Temple University Press, Dis/Color Series.

Recognition and Reviews

Champlin, K. (2026, Spring). Review of Disabling Relations: Wounded Bodyminds and Transnational Praxis. (S. Kazemi, Author). Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature, 19(2s). 

Second Monograph in Progress

Kazemi, S. Captive Revolutionaries: Madness, Disability, and Ca(re)sistance among Iranian Political Prisoners, 1981-1989. Solicited by Duke University Press and Palgrave Macmillan.

 

Edited Volumes in Progress

Gorman, R. da S., Tam, L., & Kazemi, S. (Eds.). Disabling States. Under advance contract with Canadian Scholars.

Gold, E., Karah, H., & Kazemi, S. (Eds.). Towards a Transnational Solidarity Theory and Praxis: Locating Disability and Feminist Consciousness in the Global. Solicited by Amherst College Press.

Alav-rad, R., Zarabadi, L., & Kazemi, S. (Eds.). The Uncanny of Woman, Life, Freedom: Internals Contradictions and Transnational Reverberations. Solicited by Palgrave Macmillan.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Li, L., Kazemi, S., Zheng, W., & Lin, Y. C. T. (2025). Resisting multiple empires, cultivating transnational solidarity: A conversation among feminist-of-color scholar-activists. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 1-26.

Kazemi, S., Gold, E., & Karah, H. (2024). Mobile immobility: Disability in contexts of state violence and political incarceration. Disability and the Global South. (Equal authorship.)

Kazemi, S. (2024). Fetishization of the disabled war veterans in Iran through the ideological construction of "living martyrs." Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal, 18(4).

Kazemi, S., & Sarikaya, B. (2019). Politicizing disability-production mechanisms: Applying the transnational disability model to a case of incarceration, torture, and hunger strike/death fast of a Kurdish political prisoner in Turkey. Zanj: The Journal of Critical Global South Studies, 2(1).

Kazemi, S. (2019). Whose disability (studies)? Defetishizing disablement of Iranian survivors of the Iran-Iraq War by (re)telling resilient narratives of survival. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 8(4).

Kazemi, S. (2019). Disabling power of capitalism, nationalism, and imperialism: Looking at war injury through historical materialism, disability studies, and geopolitics. Disability Studies Quarterly, 39(3).

Kazemi, S. (2017). Toward a conceptualization of transnational disability theory and praxis: Engaging the dialectics of geopolitics, Third World, and imperialism. Critical Disability Discourse Journal, 8.

Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters

Gold, E., & Kazemi, S. (2026). Psychiatry as a nationalist project: Maddening political psychiatry through case studies of mental health education efforts in Iran and Canada. In A. Davis, L. Spring, & M. Castrodale (Eds.), Mad Studies and Education: Critical Pedagogy and Mad Praxis in the Classroom. Palgrave Macmillan.

Kazemi, S., Gold, E., Karah, H., & Hande, M. J. (2025). Transnational disability praxis: Archiving survival, resistance, and resilience amidst ongoing emergencies. In J. Barclay & S. Hunt-Kennedy (Eds.), Cripping the Archives. University of Illinois Press.

Kazemi, S. (2024). Dislocated selves, incarcerated rights. In A. Shuman & W. Hesford (Eds.), Human Rights on the Move. Ohio State University Press.

Kazemi, S., & Karah, H. (2023). Making sense of the disability autonomy and collectivity binary: A review of informal disability justice pedagogy across cultures. In M. A. Raja & N. T. C. Lu (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Literature and Social Justice. Routledge.

Kazemi, S., & Karah, H. (2023). Madness as response-ability against state terror: A case study from the Iranian Revolution. In N. Erevelles & M. Marrow (Eds.), Handbook of Critical Disability Studies. Springer.

Kazemi, S., & Shadmani, S. (forthcoming). Fetishized bodies and administered lives within disability aesthetics and politics in Iran. In D. Bolt (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Disability Studies. Oxford University Press.

Kazemi, S., & Gold, E. (in press). Piecing together the life of an Iranian woman political prisoner: Defetishizing the production of madness and disability through state violence. In S. Scalenghe & B. Tsacoyianis (Eds.), Disability History in the Modern Middle East. Bloomsbury.

Kazemi, S., & Karah, H. (forthcoming). Cultural imperialism and life of the mind: A review of cerebral bias in humanities pedagogy and beyond. In R. da Silveira Gorman & B. Le François (Eds.), Palgrave Encyclopedia of Critical Perspectives in Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan.

Kudos

published

Sona Kazemi, Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies, co-authored the article "Resisting multiple empires, cultivating transnational solidarity: a conversation among feminist-of-color scholar-activists" in International Feminist Journal of Politics, which was published on Sept. 2 by Routledge. What steps are necessary to achieve transnational solidarity in the fight against various imperial forces, and what would you like your colleagues in the Global North to know if they want to become allies?

Submitted on: Sept. 8, 2025

published

Sona Kazemi, Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies, authored the chapter "Transnational Disability Praxis: Archiving Survival, Resistance, and Resilience Amid Ongoing Emergencies" in "Cripping the Archive: Disability, history, and power," published on Aug. 5 by University of Illinois Press. This project represents an ambition to imagine and create something like a digital living archive designed toward maximizing accessibility across various ages, disabilities, bodyminds, languages and other differences.

Submitted on: Sept. 8, 2025

published

Sona Kazemi, Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies, co-authored the article "Mobile Immobility: Disability in Contexts of State Violence and Political Incarceration" in "Disability and the Global South," published on Dec. 1, 2024 by DGS Journal.

Submitted on: April 15, 2025

interviewed

Sona Kazemi, Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies, was interviewed by Crystal Flintrop of WXOW on Feb. 27. Dr. Kazemi spoke on her panel for International Women's Day on March 4 and her global activism.

Submitted on: Mar. 12, 2025

published

Sona Kazemi, Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies, authored the article "Mobile Immobility: Disability in Contexts of State Violence and Political Incarceration" in Disability & the Global South (DGS) published on Dec. 24, 2024. The concept of mobile immobility serves as an invitation to further trouble disability studies discourses on mobility and immobility. In this article, we theorize what im/mobility means in contexts of political incarceration and violent oppression in the Middle East, as numerous bodies are caught and injured by ableist barriers, borders, carceral institutions, walls and wars. Troubling ableist hierarchies that assume the superiority of mobility, we highlight the many ways that immobility is leveraged towards political mobilization, casting away any clear definitional boundary between the concepts of mobility and immobility. Through a disability studies lens, we unpack mobile immobility by exploring three examples that demonstrate the complexity and nuance needed to theorize im/mobility. First, we enter through the case of a Kurdish political prisoner in 1980s Turkey who became disabled as a result of participating in a hunger strike and two death fasts during his incarceration. We then explore the genre of incarceration ecriture, detailing written and artistic creations produced by political prisoners and survivors in the Middle East, and drawing attention to how inmates mobilize their experiences of immobility towards transformative justice. Finally, we consider the category of kulbars, or illegal cross-border carriers that are at once both forced into mobility and immobility due to extreme poverty and lack of political and social recognition. Through each of these examples, we question what mobility and political mobilization mean in the contexts of state violence, surveillance, authoritarianism, austerity, and borders.

Submitted on: Feb. 17, 2025

presented

Sona Kazemi, Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies, presented "Woman, Life, Freedom: Redefining Social Justice in a Globalized World" to a full house at the TEDxUWLaCrosse event on Oct. 10 in The Bluffs, Student Union. Drawing from her childhood experiences with the "Morality Police" in Iran and the recent "Woman-Life-Freedom" movement, Kazemi explored the importance of empathizing with the struggles of "Other" people. She emphasized the need to build connections and solidarity movements worldwide. Recordings of Kazemi's presentation will be available on the TEDxUWLaCrosse website. 

Submitted on: Oct. 14, 2024

Memberships & affiliations

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Important links

Sona Kazemi's office hours

Tuesday
1 p.m. to 2 p.m.
or by appointment
Thursday
1 p.m. to 2 p.m.
or by appointment