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Sex Trafficking, US Evangelicals, and the Promise Of Captivated: Sex Trafficking, U.S. Evangelicals, and the Promise of Rescue by Kimberly Pendleton Schisler B.A in Women’s Studies, May 2009, Georgetown University M.A. in Religious Studies, May 2011, Yale Divinity School A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 19, 2018 Dissertation directed by Melani McAlister Associate Professor of American Studies and International Affairs The Columbian College of the Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Kimberly Pendleton Schisler has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of November 29, 2017. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Captivated: Sex Trafficking, U.S. Evangelicals, and the Promise of Rescue Kimberly Pendleton Schisler Dissertation Research Committee Melani McAlister, Associate Professor of American Studies and International Affairs, Dissertation Director Jennifer C. Nash, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Gender & Sexuality Studies, Northwestern University, Committee Member Joseph Kip Kosek, Associate Professor of American Studies, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2017 by Kimberly Pendleton All rights reserved. iii Dedication For my parents, and for their parents. iv Acknowledgements This dissertation is the product of tremendous support from family, faculty, and friends. It is with tremendous gratitude and humility that I wish to acknowledge those without whom this project simply would not have happened. I would like to thank my committee and my outside readers for contributing their invaluable feedback and time to this project. This project is indebted to the institutions that made this work possible, first and foremost the Department of American Studies at George Washington University. I also thank the Lake Institute for Faith and Giving at IUPUI, for furthering the work of philanthropy, giving, and religion through their support of early scholars. Sharing my work as a doctoral dissertation fellow with the board of directors and students at the institute was a joy, and their feedback shaped my project. I am also thankful for the support of the Columbia College of Arts and Sciences doctoral dissertation fellowship, as well as the Jeffrey C. Kasch grant that made my research possible. When I began my graduate work, I found mentors in Kathryn Lofton, Melani McAlister and Jennifer Nash. Anything good in these pages is an attempt to follow in their footsteps with verve and precision. All mistakes are entirely my own. Without Jennifer Nash’s feedback, questions, and in-laws in Kolkata, this would be an entirely different project. Melani McAlister’s example as a professor, and as a mentor has shaped me indelibly, reminding me of what kind of work I want to do, in academia and in the world. Her patience, support, and advice guided every good turn this project took, and I am so grateful. Kathryn Lofton’s thoughtful, committed investment in me led me down this path, offering me the much-needed encouragement as I considered applying for PhD v programs, “You can have this life, if you want it.” I would not be here without these women, and I hope to someday inspire and empower students with a shimmer of that same invitation. I am grateful for my wonderful colleagues and friends in the American Studies department at George Washington University, who fostered an environment of support, curiosity, and happy hours. I owe the greatest thanks to Shannon Davies Mancus, Kathryn Kein, Julie Chamberlain, Rahima Schwenkbeck, and Michael Horka, who read drafts, took me to dinner, and let me talk about sex trafficking for much longer than anyone should ever have to. Thank you, too, to Mona Azadi, whose willingness to get coffee with me and help me out of my near-constant bureaucratic trouble were equally critical. Mari Andrew and Linnea Farnsworth championed not only this project but me, withstanding the best and worst of the last seven years, and never leaving my side. I am also eternally grateful for the support of my oldest friends throughout this process. Thank you to Hillary Caudle, Tegra Swogger, Katie Dally, Kat Adams, Jackson Emmer, and Sam Marks, whose kindness, words of encouragement, and distractions have kept me going in the most difficult points. Also, to the “group,” Erika Satterwhite, Jackie Black, Caroline Scott, Hilary Miners, Naomi Jacobs, Lyda Ghanbari, Leigh McCurdy, Tara Gelb, and Anna Lippe, who have made these last two years a pleasure. Finally, without Chris Maier, Pam Carmesine, Dylan Gilbert, Cat Breen, and Lucian Mattison, I would never have realized that my skills as a feminist scholar translated so well to the field of reality television. I accept this rose. Thank you to Naseem and Ameer Ahmad, for generously hosting me in India, and to Janell Anema, whose inspiration and openness vi made my research possible. Kathleen Pointer, you are my soul sister and proofreader, and without you this dissertation would simply not exist. Throughout this journey, like all of my journeys, my family has given me the encouragement and confidence to believe that not only could I do this, but that my contribution to the world mattered. Without my parents, Yvonne Pendleton and George Schisler, Laurie Shelton and Dale Cruikshank, and my siblings, none of this would have been possible. Thank you for making me laugh when I came home, and for letting me avoid answering the question of when I would be done. My grandparents, uncles and aunts, and cousins, supported this project from afar. And thank you to Dizzy and Mila, my cat gurus who taught me about the value of taking a break and napping when needed. Finally, to Nick, thank you. You arrived just in time and ensured that I finished this project with promises of rescue of your own: of travel, of adventure, of takeout. There is no way for me to thank you enough for the generosity, creativity, and love that you have poured out in the moments I needed it most, so I will simply offer this invitation: “stay as long as you want.” Throughout the course of this program, I have experienced more loss than I ever could have imagined. In particular, I will always remember this season of my life as being marked by losing my brother, Paul Cruikshank. In moments when it did not seem possible to continue on, my support system held me together and held this project, too. For that, I am so humbled, and so grateful. Every moment of dark humor that propelled me through the hardest moments of this work was dedicated to, and inspired by, Paul. vii Abstract of Dissertation Captivated: Sex Trafficking, U.S. Evangelicals, and the Promise of Rescue This dissertation tracks the rise of sex trafficking as an issue of investment for U.S. evangelical concern, mission work, and financial donation in the after the Cold War. I argue that it is the unique political, cultural, and religious climate of U.S. evangelicalism in the 1990s and early 2000s that rendered sex trafficking a legible cause for missionary interest, empathetic compassion, and monetary investment to evangelicals in the United States. I trace the narratives of imagined captivity abroad and longings of rescue as they circulate within cultural products for evangelical audiences designed to raise awareness, galvanize action, or solicit donation. I argue that participation in the fight against sex trafficking guarantees its own kind of rescue for evangelical participants. Whether as a mechanism by which their own faith can be revived, a warning that their sexuality is being scrutinized, or an initiation to join in an adventure abroad, the narratives of sex trafficking with which this project is concerned position evangelicals as the target of transformation. It is to them that rescue is truly promised. Narratives of rescue and redemption within the canon of evangelical storytelling about sex trafficking promise a revival of restless faith, a restoration of broken sexuality, and a remodeling of stale lives devoid of adventure and beauty. By tracing stories of captivity, rescue, and redemption in the evangelical fight against sex trafficking—where both trafficking victims and those who donate to their cause are freed—this project establishes the crucial role that narrative plays in the relationship between religious belief viii and humanitarian intervention abroad. Racialized bodies operate within evangelical narratives of sex trafficking as the very terrain of transformation. An historical understanding of Asian women's condition is erased through their aestheticization, while an historical understanding of slavery is erased through its de-racialization. Additionally, there is an evacuation of the history of slavery in the universalized language of harm that conjoins trafficking, modern-day slavery, and abolition. Race operates within these narratives to signify innocence or brutality, indicate foreign space as one of danger, and sometimes promising an enticing engagement with fantasies of the exotic, sensual, and authentic that are imagined to exist uniquely abroad. How does the concept of the global sex industry, and of sex trafficking, come to be useful for evangelical transformation in this particular historical moment, after the Cold War, in the United States? Along similar lines, why is the body of the transnational trafficking victim the terrain upon which such a transformation is imagined to be available and possible? In what follows, I examine the role that racialized figures and spaces of abjection abroad play in evangelical imaginings, unthreading the various ways that images, stories, and imaginings of foreign space, and foreign bodies, work within sex trafficking narratives for evangelical audiences. The central argument of this project is that as viewers, readers, donors, or missionaries, evangelicals understand the issue of human trafficking to be transformative, both for victims abroad and for themselves, moved to learn more, give financially, travel abroad, or change their behavior.
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