See our 2024-25 events at this link: https://www.yorku.ca/cfr/2024-2025-events/
Postponed Events
Advancing Equity and Applying Intersectionality in Europe: Challenges and Contradictions
with Dr. Ashlee Chistoffersen, Banting Postdoctoral Fellow
Organized by the Department of Politics Seminar Series and the Graduate Diploma in European Studies with the advertising support of the Centre for Feminist Research
Date: N/A
Time: N/A
RSVP EVENT CANCELLED
2025 will mark half a century since the first European directives prohibiting identity-based discrimination. However, social inequities are increasing. Moreover, equity policy remains hugely ‘siloed’, predominantly focused around single issues/identities, best serving intersectionally privileged groups (e.g. white women). Yet, intersectionality, the Black feminist theory that inequalities are indivisible from one another, is increasingly difficult for those with influence on equity policy to ignore or explicitly resist. This presentation will give an overview of intersectionality, identify barriers to its operationalization in Europe, examine the UK in more detail as a case study, and reflect on contemporary challenges and contradictions for advancing equity and applying intersectionality.
Ashlee Christoffersen is Banting Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Politics and Honorary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Her research is about the operationalization of intersectionality in policy and practice. She is the author of The Politics of Intersectional Practice: Representation, Coalition and Solidarity in UK NGOs (forthcoming 2024, Bristol University Press), and articles about equity policy and intersectionality in the European Journal of Politics and Gender, Social Politics, Canadian Public Administration & Policy & Politics.
DEI: The Good, The Bad and The Performative
This event is sponsored by: Faculty of LA&PS, VPRI, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, York Centre for Asian Research, The Harriet Tubman Institute, Founders College, The Black Canadian Studies Certificate, Centre for Feminist Research, IRDL, YUFA Race Equity Caucus, and the Graduate Program in Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies.
Date: EVENT POSTPONED DUE TO CUPE3903 STRIKE
Time: N/A
Location: N/A
The School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies invites you to join the Annual Lecture event featuring a roundtable on the possibilities and limitations of institutionalized Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.
The roundtable will explore various fields such as higher education, broadcasting, news organizations and politics and the ways in which racialized and other marginalized people with progressive politics are initially welcomed in spaces of power, becoming symbols (or tokens) of progress in achieving “diversity and inclusion,” only to then be gaslighted, vilified or face reprisals for espousing their views.
Featured speakers:
- Ginella Massa, Broadcast journalist and media consultant
- Desmond Cole, Journalist, activist and author of The Skin We’re In
- Dr. Nadiya Ali, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Trent University
- Somar Abuaziza, President of the Palestine Solidarity Collective (PSC)
The event will be moderated and hosted by Dr. Bianca Beauchemin and Dr. Nadia Hasan, Assistant Professors from the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University.
The roundtable will be followed by a reception with refreshments.
Space is limited.
Elaborated Images as De Colonial Praxis
Presentation by Laurence Butet-Roch and Deanna Del Vecchio
Date: EVENT POSTPONED DUE TO CUPE3903 STRIKE
Time: N/A
Location: N/A
Elaborated images, created through participant intervention on photographs, actively disrupt static notions of meaning. In this presentation, we will situate the practice; explaining what the method consists of, its lineage, and contributions to visual participatory methodologies.
Drawing on the projects of several social documentary photographers, (Bieke Depoorter, Patrick Waterhouse, Nigel Poor, Wendy Red Star, and Laurence Butet-Roch), we will elucidate the decolonial potentials of this photographic praxis. We’ll conclude with an outline of practical and logistical considerations to keep in mind when using the method, all in the hopes of inspiring more researchers to adopt it in their projects.
Organizing for Change: Women in Engineering and Science at York University
Date: EVENT POSTPONED DUE TO CUPE 3903 STRIKE
Time: N/A
Location: N/A
Women and Visual Culture in Iran
Presented by Professor. M. Reza Moridi and Dr. Khatereh Sheibani
Date: EVENT POSTPONED DUE TO STRIKE
Time: N/A
Location: Virtual (Zoom)
EVENT POSTPONED
Iranian women artists have played an important role in challenging stereotypes in masculine visual culture. To understand the changes in the visual culture in Iran, this event examines several key questions:
How have women been depicted in cinema and visual arts? How have women artists challenged these representations?
How do women’s artistic experiences act as a field of resistance against the masculine subjectivity?
How are these artworks, in Foucault’s words, a war against the subjectification of women?
Women artists attempt to deconstruct the visual ideology that men have constructed about women. They resist subjectification of the woman, use new visual strategies, and create gaps in the reproduction of masculine dominant culture. These visual strategies act not only as works of art in the art world but also as social action in the public space.
New Parenting in Academia Postponed
Date: Wednesday, February 21, 2024
Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Location: 6th Floor, Kaneff Building, York University
RSVP: https://forms.gle/qDnsJ91ZfqiqwBnD8
All CFR parents of small children are welcome to a casual get-together at the CFR, with your children to engage in dialogue with other parents and CFR faculty about navigating parenting in academia.
Light snacks will be provided.
Hosted by Dr. Elaine Coburn, Director, CFR
Who is an Activist Scholar?
Praxis, Challenges and Opportunities
Date: November 17, 2023– EVENT WILL BE RESHEDULED
Time: 1:30pm-2:30pm
Location: EVENT POSTPONED
Past Events
Generation: The Fourth Annual Critical Femininities Conference
Date: August 16-18, 2024
Location: Online
Registration: https://forms.gle/xrTYczJtn6RMS76t7
The Centre for Feminist Research at York University is hosting scholars, researchers, activists, and artists for the fourth annual Critical Femininities Conference on the theme of ‘Generation.’ This year’s conference will also include a collage workshop by artist stylo starr and Keynote address by Dr. Gina Starblanket!
Registration is free for all attendees and the conference will take place virtually on August 16-18, 2024.
Register using this form until August 1: https://forms.gle/xrTYczJtn6RMS76t7
To generate is to cause, create, or bring about. A generation may refer to a relation in time or the creation of art, scholarship, solidarity, or power. This conference aims to explore the multifaceted dimensions of and attitudes towards femininity across different generations, interrogating how various social, cultural, political, and technological factors intersect with and shape our experiences. In this moment of intergenerational conflicts, climate crisis, and generative AI, the time has come to think critically about our generations and what we generate.
If you have any questions, please contact us at criticalfemininities@yorku.ca
Follow us on Instagram @crit_fem for more updates!
Book Launch: Fire Dancers in Thailand’s Tourism Industry: Art, Affect, and Labour
Date: Thursday, July 18, 2024
Time: 6:30pm – 8:00pm ET
Location: A Different Booklist | 779 Bathurst Street, Toronto
Register: https://forms.office.com/r/YfxiSYwVdi
Join us for an evening of celebration and discussion on the intersections of affect, performance and tourism in Thailand’s fire dance scene.
Launch of the new book with author Tiffany Rae Pollock
Remarks by Professor David Murray and Professor Penny Van Esterik
Seating is limited so please register in advance at this link : https://forms.office.com/r/YfxiSYwVdi
About the Book: Fire Dancers in Thailand’s Tourism Industry explores the evolution of fire dancing from informal community jam sessions into the iconic, tourist-oriented performances at beach parties and bars, through a close consideration of the role of affect in the lives of fire dancers in the ever-changing scene. Read more about the book at this link : https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501774935/fire-dancers-in-thailands-tourism-industry/#bookTabs=1
The York Centre for Asian Research and the Centre for Feminist Research at York University are pleased to co-present this launch.
Women During the Holocaust: How Did They Cope?
Date: Thursday, July 11, 2024
Time: 11:00am – 12:15pm ET
Location: On Zoom
Register: https://yorku.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_KcZ0cUOFTd2yQn-Nl7Pg2A#/registration
Join us for a conversation and Q&A with Dr. Myrna Goldenberg and Dr. Sara Horowitz.
Myrna Goldenberg, Ph.D., has published seminal articles on women and the Holocaust and co-edited, with Amy Shapiro, Different Horrors, Same Hell: Gender and the Holocaust; with Elizabeth Baer, Experience and Expression: Women, the Nazis, and the Holocaust; and, with Rochelle L. Millen, Testimony, Tensions, and Tikkun: Teaching the Holocaust in Colleges and Universities as well as numerous articles on American Jewish women’s literature and history. Her prize-wining book, Before All Memory is Lost, is composed of short memoirs of east European women who survived the Holocaust and emigrated to Canada.
Still actively researching women’s experiences during the Holocaust, she has retired from academic life and makes her home in Bethesda, MD, and New York City, in close proximity to the two major American museums on the Holocaust.
Her next writing project will be a biography of the founder of Barnard College, Annie Nathan Meyer.
Her abiding focus is her family—Neal, her husband; her children, Liz, David, and Eve, and her grand girls, Olivia and Louise.
Samosas and Chai Salon at the Centre for Feminist Research
When: Every Tuesday (unless otherwise communicated)
Time: 5:00pm – 6:00pm
Location: The Centre for Feminist Research, 6th Floor Kaneff Building
Come and join as we talk informally and convivially, in a curious and open way about matters that concern feminisms, writ broadly, and the world. Whether we are three people or many, it is a moment in the evening to think together. The idea is to take up scholarly and world concerns, in a supportive conversation, where mistakes and changes in argument and point of view are especially welcome! The CFR will provide hot water, chai (tea bag form) and please BYOS (bring your own samosas) if you wish to snack.
Graduate students, post-docs, visiting scholars and faculty are welcome.
Please RSVP to cfr@yorku.ca by 12 noon each Tuesday. We need to know you are coming as we may need to let you into the building.
The Salon is hosted by CFR graduate student associate Shantanu Mehra, York University instructor and former CFR Visiting Scholar Dr. Salman Hussain, and (as often as she can) the CFR Director, Elaine Coburn.
An Ethnography of Vengeance: Serb Women in Besieged Sarajevo- Dr. Jelena Golubović
Date: Friday, February 16, 2024
Time: 4:00pm – 6:00pm EST.
Location: Virtual (Zoom)
RSVP here:
The Legacy of Forough Farkhzad Persian Poetry and Sexual Politics
Date: Wednesday, February 14, 2024
Time: 2:30pm – 4:30pm EST.
Location: 519, 5th Floor, Kaneff Building, York University
RSVP to attend in person here
Attend Virtually by joining here
This event commemorates the legacy of Forough Farokhzad’s poetry on the 57th anniversary of her death. Forough Farokhzad (1934-1967) was the prominent female Persian poet, filmmaker and cultural activist, whose life and artistic oeuvre made a tremendous impact on Iranian culture and the feminist movements in the Middle East.
Introduction:
Professor Elaine Coburn (York University)
Speakers
Professor Mohammad Ghanoonparvar (University of Texas at Austin)
Professor Marta Simidcheiva (York University)
Khatereh Sheibani (York University)
Special Guests:
Jahangir Kosari (Filmmaker, I Am Forough, 2023)
Baran Kosari (Actor in I Am Forough, 2023)
Art of Freedom of Freedom Project Exhibit: Gender and Peace, Sharing narratives of Afghan Women through art.
Presented by Shataakshi Verma, Art of Freedom Project in collaboration with The Centre for Feminist Research at York University and the Kabul Arts Kafe.
Date: February 9, 2024
Time: 10:00am – 11:30am
Location: Virtual (Zoom)
RSVP here
“Borderlands of Desire and Liberation: A Transnational History of Gay Print Culture in the Americas.”
Date: Thursday, January 25, 2024
Time: 2:00pm – 3:15pm
Location: This is a virtual event.
This presentation draws on Juan Carlos Mezo-González, PhD current book project, which explores the relationship between transnational gay liberation politics, periodicals, and images in Mexico, the United States, and Canada from the early 1970s through the mid-1990s. The bookaaaaaaa examines the production, content, circulation, and reception of leading gay periodicals published in these countries, including gay liberation newspapers, lifestyle, and erotic magazines. Juan Carlos argues that gay periodicals were at the center of the transnational history of gay liberation, both because they facilitated the circulation of information across borders and because they developed an ideological and visual language legible at the local, national, and international levels.
Presenter:
Juan Carlos Mezo-Gonzalez, PhDVisiting Scholar in Sexuality Studies at The Centre for Feminist Research.
Juan Carlos Mezo-Gonzalez has published work in the Hispanic American Historical Review and Left History. He is also interested in digital and public scholarship; he is an advisory board member of the digital platforms OutHistory and NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality, and he has contributed on several occasions to the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory.
To learn more about Juan Carlos’ scholarship here.
Juan Carlos Mezo-González is a historian of sexuality, race, and visual culture in Mexican and transnational contexts. He holds an Honors B.A. in History from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (2014) and an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Toronto (2022). His research and teaching focus on Mexican, Latin American, LGBTQ+, and Indigenous history. His current book manuscript examines the relationship between transnational gay liberation politics, print culture, and images in Mexico, the United States, and Canada from the early 1970s through the mid-1990s. The book employs an interdisciplinary methodology and a wide variety of sources to examine the production, content, circulation, and reception of gay periodicals published in these countries, which include gay liberation newspapers, lifestyle, and erotic magazines.
Staying Connected: Women in Engineering and Science at York University
Date: Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Time: 12:00am – 1:30pm
Location: The Centre for Feminist Research, 6th Floor, Kaneff Towers.
Light snacks will be provided.
Weaving Stories and Memories: Militant Education and the path of learning from it
A public lecture with Sónia Vaz Borges, introduced by Gabrielle Moser
Co-presented by the Art Gallery of York University, Faculty of Education and Centre for Feminist Research at York University, and Art Museum at the University of Toronto.
Date: Friday, January 19, 2024
Time: 3:30pm – 5:00pm
Location: RSVP here
In times of crisis and conflict, when political organizing and public mobilization demand new strategies for solidarity, what can we learn from radical education projects of the past? How might decolonial projects from the global south provide a blueprint for imagining a different future together?
Weaving Stories and Memories: Militant Education and the path of learning from it is a lecture by historian and social-political organizer Sónia Vaz Borges. Vaz Borges’ research works through radical education initiatives that traverses global geographies, including public and private spaces from institutions of incarceration to the domestic space of the kitchen table. Questioning the conditions of pedagogical structures is key to their interest in historic and contemporary revolutionary movements.
Vaz Borges states: “Since 2012 I have been researching the liberation struggle of Guinea Bissau, walking the different terrains where the struggle took place – from the city to the countryside, from the asphalt to the mangrove crossing the rice fields and the forest, traveling between continents. By doing this I also weave a particular set of stories, memories, and encounters that so much influence the way I share my work. In this talk, I will explore the different venues, the tools, and inspirations of how, where, and when these memories and stories are presented, in a constant learning and designing of my own decolonization path.”
Please join us for this in-person lecture on Friday, January 19, at the Art Gallery of York University, co-presented by the Art Gallery of York University, Faculty of Education and Centre for Feminist Research at York University, and Art Museum at the University of Toronto.
This event emerges in relation to the group exhibition Sediment: The Archive as a Fragmentary Base curated by Denise Ryner and presented by Art Museum. The exhibition features work by Sandra Brewster, Filipa César, Justine A. Chambers, Michael Fernandes, Louis Henderson, Pamila Matharu, and Krista Belle Stewart and opens Wednesday, January 17, 2023. For more information please refer to the Art Museum website.
The Art Gallery of York University is located on York University’s Keele Campus in Accolade East Building, at 83 York Blvd. We are easily accessible by subway, and there is paid parking on campus. The building is wheelchair accessible. Please review our visual story for more details about our location.
For further audience accommodations, please contact Maria Won at mwon11@yorku.ca.
Gabrielle Moser is an art historian, writer, and independent curator. She is the author of Projecting Citizenship: Photography and Belonging in the British Empire (Penn State University Press, 2019). A founding member of EMILIA-AMALIA, she is an Associate Professor of Aesthetics and Art Education in the Faculty of Education at York University in Toronto, Canada.
Kick-Off and Connect
Date: Monday, December 11, 2023
Time: 11:30am – 1:00pm
Location: LAS 3033, 3rd floor Lassonde Building–Keele Campus
RSVP here
This gathering is part of our grassroots efforts, born out of our collective personal and professional experiences with the EDI and WiCSE committees at the EECS department, POLARIS, and active involvement in Canadian Computing Associations like Can-CWIC. These experiences have inspired us to take a proactive step by collaborating with the Center for Feminist Research (CFR) to further enhance our community using the wealth of expertise available at York.
Our vision is centered around building a community and support network to ease the academic journey and provide valuable support and mentorship. Your participation in this event will contribute to the creation of a more connected and supportive environment for all of us. This gathering will offer a wonderful opportunity to meet colleagues, shape future sessions for the upcoming year, and share ideas for how to make community for inclusive and supportive.
Come join us for an hour of camaraderie over refreshments!
New Parenting in Academia
Date: Friday, December 8, 2023
Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Location: Room 626 Kaneff Tower, York University–Keele Campus
RSVP HERE
All CFR parents of small children are welcome to a casual get-together at the CFR, with your children to engage in dialogue with other parents and CFR faculty about navigating parenting in academia.
Light snacks will be provided.
Hosted by Dr. Elaine Coburn, Director, CFR
Critical Trafficking and Sex Work Studies
Sex Work(er) Research Symposium
Date: November 18, 2023
Time: 2pm-7pm
Location: William Doo Auditorium
45 Willcocks Street Toronto, ON M5S1C7
Hosted by the Critical Trafficking and Sex Work Studies Research Cluster in the Centre for Feminist Research (York University), in partnership with the Women and Gender Studies Institute (University of Toronto) and the Department of Criminology (Toronto Metropolitan University), this symposium will bring together sex workers, academics, activists and allies
to discuss recent books, research activities, and mobilizing efforts in Canada and abroad.
The event will feature recently published academic works by Lyndsey Beutin (McMaster University/Princeton University), Kamala Kempadoo
(York University), Elena Shih (Brown University), Juana María Rodrígues (Berkeley, University of California), Tuulia Law (York University), and Katrin Roots (Wilfrid Laurier University) in conversation with workers, activists, legal experts, and organizers.
Healing Memories: A Feminist Ethnography on Disappearance in Mexico with Aida Hernandez Castillo
Date: November 16, 2023
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm
This is a hybrid event
If you will attend in person, please register here
by November 14 to secure your spot.
If you will attend via Zoom, please register here
Dr. Hernández Castillo is a leading scholar in the field of Legal Anthropology, and for the past six years she has been working in partnership with collectives of relatives of disappeared persons. Based on different collective activist research projects and interdisciplinary dialogues in which she has participated, Dr. Hernández Castillo will share insights of her activist work with two collectives of relatives of disappeared persons: Las Rastreadoras de El Fuerte, in northern Sinaloa, and Regresando a Casa Morelos, in central Mexico. These organisations, like many others in the country, are mainly made up of mothers and wives of the disappeared who have witnessed the incompetence of the Mexican state and have taken on their hands the task of searching for the remains of their relatives in clandestine graves. From these dialogues, Dr. Hernández has collaborated in the systematisation of information processes on cases of forced disappearance in Sinaloa and Morelos, as well as in the construction of a database of the collective’s findings of clandestine graves. In addition, she has coordinated a series of creative writing workshops in which women who have been released from prison share their knowledge with relatives of disappeared persons. The fruit of this exchange is the publication of two books, Nadie Detiene el Amor and Sanadoras de Memorias, on which Hernández Castillo will reflect on the methodological challenges and political commitment of this experience.
Moderator: Dr. Alison Crosby
Decolonial Anti-Fascism Symposium: Lessons in Aotearoa New Zealand
Date: November 14, 2023
Time: 9:30pm – 6:30pm
For location of the event, please RSVP to cfr-coor@yorku.ca
This is a Hybrid Event
Registration to attend via zoom: via this link
This will be a one day hybrid (in-person and online) symposium that brings together Māori and Asian activists and scholars from Aotearoa New Zealand with Canada-based anti-racist activists, so that we can learn from each other. The aim is to share best practices and to create transnational solidarities as we counter the growing threat of fascism and white supremacy.
We explore the context of fascism and white nationalist accelerationism in Aotearoa in connection to so-called Canada. Together, we will address the challenges and praxis of solidarity building and decolonial and treaty-based activist strategies and tactics to resist fascism. The growth of fascism in Aotearoa is linked to a transnational context that has shapeshifted during the pandemic, instigating a revival of more overt forms of anti-Māori and anti-Asian racism. In recent years, Canadian and UK white supremacist and transphobic figures have visited to spread fascist ideologies, only to be de-platformed by Indigenous and People of Colour (POC) coalitional organizing. At the same time, much like in other settler colonial contexts, there has been an absence of political discourse that has been able to name and make sense of fascist and white supremacist violence. State responses are increasingly focused on limiting mis- and disinformation specifically focused on far-right and conspiracy theory networks which often remove from view the continuities of colonial violence and the racialized nature of nation-states.
Consequently, state and mainstream responses to increased racist discrimination have tended to resort to politics of reconciliation, seeking improved or pacified relationships between Indigenous, POC and White settler publics, and then moving on. The white liberal state insists on awareness raising and group cohesion rather than on addressing political and material conditions that maintain
white supremacy and give rise to fascism.
Voices that Matter:
A Book talk with Dr. Marlene Schäfers , Assistant Professor in Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University
Date: November 9, 2023
Time: 1pm – 3pm
Location: Natalie Zemon Davis Seminar, Room (SS2098)
Sid Smith Hall, 100 St. George Street
University of Toronto
Dr. Schäfers’ research focuses on voice, memory, and representation, and the politics of death and the afterlife in the context of modern Turkey and the Kurdish regions. Her first monograph, Voices that Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey, was published in 2022 with the University of Chicago Press. Among others, her work has been published in the Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
PE ATAJU JUMALI/HOT AIR, a film by Juma Pariri
Date: October 24, 2023
Time: 7:00pm EDT
Location: OCADU Auditorium | Room 190 | Reception with Artist to follow
This special Toronto screening, part of the Abya Yala Sowing Tour 2023, is organized in partnership with OCAD University Graduate Studies, Pleasure Dome, and York University: Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean, Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology, Centre for Feminist Research, Indigeneity in Teaching and Learning Fund, and Hemispheric Encounters Network
The Abya Yala Sowing Tour 2023 is a series of public screenings of Pe ataju jumali/Hot Air and artist talks with filmmaker and performance artist Juma Pariri (Hemispheric Encounters collaborator and former Postdoctoral Fellow) across Brazil, Colombia, Canada, and the USA. The Abya Yala Sowing Tour is co-presented by Hemispheric Encounters and Collective United Against Colonization: Many Eyes One Heart.
This an experimental, magical, performative storytelling by the forest creatures of the Global South of their perforMAGIC ACTivations that reveal the face of the carbon credit system of the global north that purports to protect forests. In the film, the forest creatures reveal this great farce and invite everyone into a great cosmic spiral in which environmental justice, Indigenous knowledge, and lives are centered.
Abya Yala is the Indigenous Kuna name for the continent known as America. Abya Yala means flourishing land. In this series of exhibitions across Brazil, Colombia, USA, and Canada, we will share our audiovisual seeds to sow other possible worlds together here and now.
Pe ataju jumali/Hot Air is a short film produced by the following artists’ sowings: Margarita Weweli-Lukana, Juma Pariri, Frê Arvora, Gurcius Gewdner, Amaya Torres, Jules Zinn, Juan Camilo Herrera Casilimas, and Juliana Pongutá Forero.
Still Brazen: Twenty Years of Queering Femininity
Launch and Listening Party
Date: October 21, 2023
Time: 1:00pm – 4:00pm EDT
Location: The ArQuives (34 Isabella Street, Toronto)
RSVP: https://arquives.ca/store/still-brazen-twenty
The foundational femme anthology Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity was published in 2002. Editors Chloë Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri curated a collection of prose, poetry, visual art, and theory that explored femme on its own terms and brought us new, complex understandings of femme experience that changed the conversation about queer femininities. Now, twenty years later, original contributors to the collection and emerging femme writers and scholars come together on this podcast to talk about femme’s past, present, and future.
Join us in person at The ArQuives on Saturday, October 21, to celebrate the launch of Still Brazen: Twenty Years of Queering Femininity. Come out for the chance to listen to all six podcast episodes before they’re online, see ephemera from the early days of Brazen Femme, and share your memories of the book and visions of femme’s future.
Find out more about the podcast here.
DESIRE LINES is a creative space for research, experiment and finding new connections through a workshop offered bi-weekly for more information please contact Shabnam at ssukhdev@yorku.ca.
Irreverence: The Third Annual Critical Femininities Conference
Dates: August 17-20, 2023
Location: Online
Registration: Coming soon!
The Centre for Feminist Research at York University invites abstracts for the third annual Critical Femininities Conference on the theme of “Irreverence.” The conference will take place virtually on August 17-20, 2023. Abstracts are due May 10, 2023.
To be irreverent is to show disrespect where respect is demanded, to be flippant in the face of serious situations, and to satirize what others hold sacred. In western culture, the mother, the virgin, and the queen are figures of femininity that are often held sacred, exemplifying the entrenchment of idealized feminine characteristics such as domesticity, piety, and (hetero)sexual or moral purity. But for decades, irreverence has been woven into camp and poststructuralist approaches to femme theory, which insist that femme is an intentionally ironic performance of this idealized white, cis-heterosexual femininity (Albrecht-Samarasinha 1997; Case 1988; Duggan & McHugh 1996). Irreverent attitudes toward femininity—especially white, heterosexual, and colonial femininities—are also integral to other queer cultures and modes of critique: in recent years, hypersexual and outrageous impersonations of the sacred feminine figures the Virgin Mary and Queen Elizabeth (I and II) have been presented on the mainstage of TV’s Rupaul’s Drag Race. In this way, irreverence has wrought countercultural styles of femininities that relate to punk, drag, sex work, working-class, Indigenous, and racialized sensibilities (Bailey 2014; Chepp 2015; McCann 2016; Padaan 2023).
See the full CFP here. If you have any questions, please contact us at criticalfemininities@yorku.ca
Women’s Voices from Conflict Zones: Experiencing, Understanding, and Embodying Identity, Home, and Belonging in Diaspora & War Zones
Date: June 16, 2023
Time: 10:00am – 1:30pm EDT
Location: Online
Register: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMvduGrpzIiHtHsqgEZJ_Zlm7DlyfXEpIxh
Diaspora triggers an intense articulation of identity, belonging, and home. These three fundamentals are intertwined and inseparable. In the diaspora, and migration the once-considered stable identity experiences tremor as individuals or communities undergo the travail of uprooting, dispossession, displacement, marginalization, and ignorance. As the diaspora is surrendered by others who claim the shared and fluid space specifically in mainstream culture, the issue of identity comes to the forefront and becomes a contested issue. Diaspora brings instability and fluidity to the notion of self and leads to such questions as: “Who am I” or “Who are we?” or conversely “who are they?” Moreover, the question of where I belong and where is my home are critical questions, that lead to human rights, privilege, and the concept of citizenship. As the result, for many women experiencing war and conflict in their home country, the concepts of home, identity, and belonging are complicated and multi-layered.
A deep understanding of the women’s story is the first step towards solidarity and empowerment, and it strengthens the sense of global sisterhood. This one-day seminar endeavors to collate and curate the narratives and stories of female migrants and refugees from war and conflict zone countries, to create synergy and solidarity to jointly overcome the main struggles and challenges that these women are facing. To shape this solidarity, we will collaborate with academics, activists, artists, and local leaders to ethically and carefully platform the processes and plight of migration and female refugees. Consequently, this seminar, has aim to build upon the scholarship of contemporary Integrative anti-racist, anti/post-colonial feminist perspective and transnational feminism of geographers and other social scientists to discuss the relationship between women’s experience of living in conflict and war zones and their sense of belonging and identity in North American host societies, such as Canada and the United States, however, the other host societies are strongly welcome.
Our panelists will elaborate women’s experiences from Afghanistan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, Rwanda/Congo, Sudan, and Turkey, and they are in the hopes of imagining and working towards a world that is safe for women, family, and next generation.
The Feminist Digital Methods Drop-in Virtual Lab
Dates: May 18, June 22, July 20 & September 21
Time: 11:00am-12:00pm EDT
Registration: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYucOCqpzgiEtP23LZk7XBsTJwLiAWs1Ze5#/registration
The Feminist Digital Methods Drop-in Virtual Lab is an informal space to:
- Chat & network with Feminist Digital Methods practitioners and learners
- Discuss Feminist Digital Methods projects and ideas
This Drop-in Virtual Lab is part of the Feminist Digital Methods Research Cluster, which centres early career scholars and aims to foster communities of practice around feminist digital methods by creating intentional space for dialogues, knowledge sharing, workshops, project showcases, and presentations. We also aim to engage topics of feminist ethics, digital tools and infrastructure, feminist digital pedagogies, knowledge mobilization, social media, and online work, performance, and presence.
Join us for four drop-ins this spring and summer:
Thursday May 18 at 11 AM ET
Thursday June 22 at 11 AM ET
Thursday July 20 11 AM ET
Thursday September 21 11 AM ET
The Critical Trafficking & Sex Work Research Cluster Meet & Greet
Date: May 1, 2023
Time: 1:00pm – 4:00pm EDT
Location: South Ross 701, York University
RSVP: adelisio@yorku.ca
Join the Prof. Amanda De Lisio and Prof. Tuulia Law for an in-person event to share insights, project ideas, and facilitate connection. Coffee and snacks provided.
Check out more information about the cluster here.
Book Launch: The PhD Experience in African Higher Education
Date: April 10, 2023
Time: 10:00am – 11:00am EDT
Location: Online
Register: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcod-mrqTsiG9fp2FMLLkfXslCpnpmZc5Ax
With editor Dr. Ruth Murambadoro and discussants Dr. Joseph Mensah and Vivien Bediako
The PhD Experience in African Higher Education, edited by Ruth Murambadoro, John Mashayamombe, and uMbuso weNkosi, addresses the growing call to invest in the humanities and social sciences by exploring the nature of doctoral training in select institutions of higher learning in South Africa. In the past two decades, South Africa has become a key player in the global higher education landscape and dubbed the hub for doctoral training in Africa because of its developed educational infrastructure and highly ranked universities. Given South Africa’s positioning, the contributors in this volume argue that the government, donors, universities, and faculty have a socio-legal duty to ensure that doctoral programs in the humanities and social sciences are not offered to amass numbers of African graduates but are grounded on equipping students with both hard and soft skills necessary to succeed. This is achieved by offering skills training and research apprenticeships fostered in communities of practice because, as the contributors show, the humanities and social sciences are the backbone of society. Furthermore, they argue that treating doctoral candidates as equal partners is emancipatory because intellectual projects are best nurtured through collaborative learning.
Dr. Ruth Murambadoro is an African scholar with research interest in women, transitional justice, gender justice, peacebuilding and politics of the Global South. Her work focuses on understanding the intersecting realities that inform human interactions and the role of African value systems in re-centering and redressing encounters that damage the essence of humanity. She has conducted ethnographic field research in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mozambique and Ghana, where she explored African mechanisms of resolving conflicts and their efficacy in meeting the justice needs of communities living on the margins. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Feminist Research she is leading the project, ‘Gender justice and narratives of violence by women in post-colonial Zimbabwe,’ which involves working with women’s social movements in Zimbabwe and the diaspora to produce new insights on how networks of women provide avenues for healing, justice and peace, outside the auspices of the state. Ruth has growing interest in curating women’s stories and amplifying African voices in peace education and scholarship.
Discussants:
Dr. Joseph Mensah is a Professor and former Chair of Geography at York University. His research focuses on globalization and culture; race, gender, and employment; and African development. He has written several journal articles and contributed chapters to numerous books and encyclopedias. Best known among his publications is Black Canadians: History, Experience, and Social Conditions (Fernwood, 2002, with second edition in 2010). His latest book (co-authored with Christopher Williams) is Boomerang Ethics: How Racism Affects Us All (Fernwood, 2017).
Vivien Bediako is a first-generation Ghanaian-Canadian born and raised in postcolonial Ghana, and now residing in Toronto, Canada. She completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s studies in Ghana and Norway respectively and is currently pursuing her doctoral studies at York University. She is in the Graduate Program in Geography at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change. Her thesis seeks to explore the conceptualizations of home, migrant identity, and place attachment by Ghanaian immigrants who embark on frequent return visits to their parental homeland. Her past research focused on biodiversity conservation and wildlife management issues in relation to ecotourism development in the global South where she has had considerable fieldwork experience in the African nations of Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Kenya. Her areas of knowledge and experience include (eco)tourism planning and management, environmental conservation, and development practice. Her research interests span the areas of tourism, migration, transnationalism, gender and development, and African diaspora issues.
CFR Winter 2023 Graduate Student Writing Group
Dates: Wednesdays, February 1 – April 5, 2023
Time: 10:00am – 12:30pm
Location: Online
Link: https://yorku.zoom.us/j/91509225081?pwd=OFFBck91RUJQYmsrTnB0TUZqWUcwQT09
The graduate student reps for the Centre for Feminist Research will be hosting a writing group using the Pomodora method (25 mins. writing followed by a 5 min. break) for ten weeks from February 1 to April 5. The group is drop-in, so you do not need to sign up in advance and can attend based on your availability.
Queer Feminism and Comedy: A Serious Talk with Carolyn Taylor
The 2023 Wendy Michener Talk
Date: April 4, 2023
Time: 2:30pm – 4:00pm EDT
Location: McLean Performance Studio, 244 Accolade East Building (ACE), York University, 83 York Blvd
Register: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/wendy-michener-memorial-lecture-queer-feminism-and-comedy-a-serious-talk-tickets-586005667727
About the lecture:
In this talk, Carolyn Taylor will discuss the (often) lonely intersection of queer feminism and comedy, elaborating on her own body of work and experiences in the field. She will explore what it means to centre, rather than other, the feminist perspective in comedy, and how nuanced and empathetic characters can be created through a feminist lens. Taylor will take up a number of timely topics, ranging from examining gender identity and drag in sketch comedy, to using comedy to infiltrate dominant discourses, to blending the esoteric and the relatable – we’re all laughing, but why? Along the way, she will showcase scenes from her subversive and groundbreaking comedy series, Baroness von Sketch Show (CBC), which speak directly (or obliquely) to some niche queer feminist experiences (the feminist academic conference, queer theory reading group, and more).
About the speaker:
Carolyn Taylor is an award-winning comedian, actor, writer, director, and showrunner. She is one of the creators, executive producers, and stars of CBC/IFC’s hit comedy Baroness von Sketch Show. To date, the series has received national and international critical acclaim in The New York Times, IndieWire, and Vogue, won 20 Canadian Screen Awards, including Best Sketch Show/Series, Best Writing in a Sketch Show/Series (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021), an ACTRA Award for Best Ensemble (2018), two international
Rockies for Best Comedy (2019, 2020), The Rogers Prize for Excellence in Canadian Content (2019, 2020), and an international Rose D’or. Carolyn honed her skills in improvisation and social satire at The Second City in Toronto. She’s written and performed political commentary for This House Has 22 Minutes, The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos and CBC Radio’s This Is That. Carolyncan be seen on the hit CBS comedy Ghosts (2022)as a lesbian organic farmer opposite SNL’s Punky Johnson and as a quixotic would-be choreographer on Crave’s upcoming figure skating comedy I Have Nothing (Fall 2023). Carolyn brings a queer perspective to her work and a commitment to the personal as political.
The Wendy Michener Memorial Lecture, named in commemoration of the Canadian arts critic and journalist, was established at York University in 1986 to provide a forum for discussion of vital issues and developments in culture and the arts. Some of the past presenters of the lecture include journalist Anna Maria Tremonti, artists Matthew Ritchie and Wafaa Bilal, and creative industries executive Hael Kobayashi.
Event co-presented by the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design, York University’s Department of Theatre and Performance, Department of Dance, Centre for Feminist Research, and Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology
The Art, Social Science, and Science of Climate Change
Date: March 30, 2023
Time: 4:00pm – 5:00pm EDT
Location: Online
Register: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcof-CoqjovHdMJkVFzKo8dJf5GQvAdKgXz
Climate change is the existential crisis of our times. We will need all the ways that way know — through the arts, sciences and social sciences — to take up the climate emergency, for human beings and for the natural world that sustains us all. In this one-hour panel, we bring together a scientist, a social scientist, an environmental studies scholar, and a film director to talk about how their work takes up climate change and the challenges it presents. The aim is to invite reflection on how we can understand and mitigate climate change, from the perspective of two scientists, a social scientist and a filmmaker working on climate change.
Panel:
Chair, Dr. Elaine Coburn, Director of the Centre for Feminist Research
Dr. Laura McKinnon (Biology, Glendon) examines the ecology and evolution of migratory birds. Her work examines how the potential reproductive benefits of migration may be threatened by climate change, in studies of the growth and survival of offspring in a changing arctic climate.
https://www.glendon.yorku.ca/mckinnonlab/
Dr. Joanna Robinson (Sociology, Glendon) is an expert in environmental politics, climate change and social movements. Among other works, she recently co-edited the Routledge Handbook on the Green New Deal, which examines this major policy initiative across different national contexts and in the global economic system.
https://www.glendon.yorku.ca/about/spotlight-sociology-joanna-robinson/
Shabnam Sukhdev is an Indo-Canadian filmmaker and educator with a double major in psychology and sociology in her undergraduate studies, and a B.Ed in special education. Driven by a strong social conscience, her films revolve around core issues of identity and culture, feminism and sexuality, migration and mental health. Her film Earth Crusader highlights the sustainability ideology of self-taught architect and environmentalist Didi Contractor.
https://greetingsfromisolation.com/profile/shabnam-sukhdev/
Dr. Byomkesh Talukder is the inaugural Planetary Health Fellow (Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research) , where he works at the intersection of health, sustainable development, climate change, food and agriculture. His research models the health impacts of climate change related extreme weather events.
https://www.yorku.ca/dighr/person/byomkesh-talukder/
Frequently Asked White Questions:
A Conversation with the Authors
Co-sponsored with the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, the Harriet Tubman Institute & Career Nexus
Date: March 24, 2023
Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm EST
Location: Virtual
Register: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEqdOCrrj8iG9C9p52KIJewQTbu_2_j8GYk
Are you a white person with questions about how race affects different situations, but you feel awkward, shy or afraid to ask the people of colour in your life? Are you a racialized person who is tired of answering the same questions over and over? Join us for a virtual conversation with the authors of Frequently Asked White Questions (Fernwood Publishing) who will be discussing the most common questions asked of them by people seeking to understand how race structures everyday life.
Ageing Online: Exploring Older 2SLGBTQ+ Adults’ Experiences with Digital Platforms
The Visiting Scholar in Sexuality Studies Talk with Dr. Christopher Dietzel
Date: March 23, 2023
Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm EDT
Location: Virtual
Register: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJclf-ysrDgrHtc1z55sqjICOHf63HGZrwhc
Most of the research that examines how people interact via online technologies, including recent research exploring use of technology during the COVID-19 pandemic, has focused on young people rather than older adults. There are even fewer studies on the experiences that older adults who identify as Two Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other gender and sexual minorities (2SLGBTQ+) have with digital platforms, and most of the research focuses on risks and harm rather than the positive impacts of technology. Additionally, since March 2020, community organizations have faced challenges when adapting their resources and services to the virtual context, with some choosing to stop offering support rather than provide that support online. However, this means that marginalized populations, like older 2SLGBTQ+ adults, may have been unable to access important services and resources during this critical period.
In this Visiting Scholar Talk, I will begin by exploring what is known about the technologically-facilitated connections that older 2SLGBTQ+ adults have via digital platforms, and I will focus my review on studies that have examined their socio-sexual relationships and online interactions. Next, I will present preliminary findings from my scoping review that investigated how older 2SLGBTQ+ adults used online technologies to maintain connections during the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, I will discuss four main themes uncovered in this research: older 2SLGBTQ+ adults’ use of technology; the benefits and positive impacts of technology on this population; the challenges and negative impacts of technology on this population; and the resilience and solidarity of this population. Then, I will speak about my current research, which includes an investigation of the socio-sexual and health needs of older 2SLGBTQ+ adults during and since the pandemic, and how community organizations can better support this population moving forward. The presentation will close with a Q&A conversation with the audience about this research, its implications, and future directions for this field.
Book Launch: Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies
Co-sponsored with the Institute for Digital Literacy Research & Sensorium
Date: March 15, 2023
Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm EDT
Location: Online
Registration: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIpcuyhrD0uEtfHx5ELkVR0W6Tvi6C9kkQW
Speakers:
Dr. Bo Ruberg (they/them) is an associate professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine and the co-editor of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. They are the author of three monographs: Video Games Have Always Been Queer (NYU Press, 2019), The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games (2020), and Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies (MIT Press, 2022). They are also the co-editor of Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) and Real Life in Real Time: Live Streaming Culture (MIT Press, 2023).
Book Launch: The End of This World: Climate Justice in So-Called Canada with authors Angele Alook and David Gray-Donald
Co-sponsored by York University’s Global Labour Research Centre; Centre for Feminist Research; Centre for Indigenous Knowledges and Languages; Office of the Associate Vice Presidents of Indigenous Initiatives; and School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies.
Date: March 8, 2023
Time: 12:00pm – 1:30pm EST
Location: Second Student Centre
Register: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/book-launch-the-end-of-this-world-climate-justice-in-so-called-canada-tickets-539725382147
Join us for a book launch and conversation of The End of This World: Climate Justice in So-Called Canada, with authors Angele Alook (York University) and David Gray-Donald (The Grind).
The climate crisis is here, and the end of this world—a world built on land theft, resource extraction, and colonial genocide—is on the horizon. In this compelling roadmap to a livable future, Indigenous sovereignty and climate justice go hand in hand.
Drawing on their work in Indigenous activism, the labour movement, youth climate campaigns, community-engaged scholarship, and independent journalism, the six authors challenge toothless proposals and false solutions to show that a just transition from fossil fuels cannot succeed without the dismantling of settler capitalism in Canada. Together, they envision a near future where oil and gas stay in the ground; where a caring economy provides social supports for all; where wealth is redistributed from the bloated billionaire class; and where stolen land is rightfully reclaimed under the jurisdiction and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples.
Packed with clear-eyed analysis of both short- and long-term strategies for radical social change, The End of This World promises that the next world is within reach and worth fighting for.
Angele Alook is an Assistant Professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at York University. She is a proud member of Bigstone Cree Nation in Treaty Eight territory, where she has carried out research on issues of sociology of family and work, resource extraction, school-to-work transitions, Indigenous identity, and seeking the good life (miyo-pimatisiwin) in work-life balance. Her current research examines a just transition away from fossil fuels. She is an active member of the labour movement and a former labour researcher in the movement.
David Gray-Donald is a media worker, fundraiser, and climate justice advocate living in Toronto. He was the publisher of Briarpatch Magazine in Treaty Four (Regina, Saskatchewan) until 2019, and co-founded Resource Movement, a group of young people with class privilege or wealth working toward the redistribution of wealth, land, and power. He is an editor with the Media Co-op and recently co-launched a free alt magazine in Toronto, The Grind.
Workshop: Listening, Resonating, Attuning: Exploring Sound as Method
Organized by the Feminist Digital Methods Research Cluster; Co-sponsored by the Digital Scholarship Centre at the Scott Library
Date: March 1, 2023
Time: 10:00am – 11:30am EST
Location: Virtual
Register: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYkdOmuqD8sHtAVbWdE48I0BE7Pl_CbNolA
The visual has often been considered the primary mode of digital experience and analysis. The privileged position of the visual mode all too often goes unquestioned in scholarship that analyzes internet phenomena, which, through the deployment of largely visually-oriented methods such as content analysis, often struggles to rigorously incorporate other forms of sensory experience. This session seeks to focus on how we as researchers can move beyond the visual to engage with the role of sound and the sonic in analyses of digital cultures and practices. We especially focus on how “soundwork” (creative/constructed texts that employ basic sonic elements of speech, music, and noise) and sonic research-creation projects can be used as methods through which to enter investigations of digital phenomena.
The proposed session is envisioned to be a collaborative and generative space within which participants can both brainstorm potential new sound methodologies and speak about and get feedback on current projects. Throughout this session we also draw from Robinson’s understanding of listening itself as an inherently political and cultural act, thinking through the ways that settler researchers must additionally reflexively engage with our own positionality when working through/with sound.
Indigenous Women’s Speakers Series with Kim Anderson, Jennifer Adese and Vanessa Watts
Co-sponsored by the Centre for Feminist Research and the Centre for Indigenous Knowledges and Languages
Date: January 25, 2023
Time: 12:00pm – 1:30pm EST
Location: Virtual
Register:
https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEudeGurj8jHdclEsNvHAnd7h3GKKXUjImq
The Indigenous Women’s Speakers Series is co-hosted with the Centre for Indigenous Knowledges and Languages and co-sponsored by the Faculty of Health. Since 2017, the series has highlighted scholars working at the intersection of feminist and Indigenous scholarship.
The 2022-23 series features Kim Anderson, Jennifer Adese, and Vanessa Watts.
Kim Anderson, Métis, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition at the University of Guelph where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Relationships. Her books include A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood (CSPI, 2nd Edition, 2016) and Life Stages and Native Women: Memory, Teachings and Story Medicine (University of Manitoba Press, 2011).
Dr. Jennifer Adese (otipemisiwak/Métis) is the Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Métis Women, Politics, and Community, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM). She is the author of Aboriginal™: The Cultural & Economic Politics of Recognition (University of Manitoba Press) and the co-editor of A People and a Nation: New Directions in Contemporary Métis Studies (UBC Press), and Indigenous Celebrity (University of Manitoba Press). Her work has also been published in journals such as TOPIA, American Indian Quarterly, SAIL: Studies in American Indian Literatures, MediaTropes, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society (DIES), Public, and appears in select edited anthologies on Indigenous land rights, colonization, art, activism, and resistance
Dr. Vanessa Watts is Mohawk and Anishinaabe Bear Clan, Six Nations of the Grand River. She is an assistant professor of Indigenous Studies and Sociology at McMaster University, and holds the Paul R. MacPherson Chair in Indigenous Studies. Her research examines Indigenist epistemological and ontological interventions on place-based, material knowledge production. Vanessa is particularly interested in Indigenous feminisms, sociology of knowledge, Indigenous governance, and other-than- human relations as forms of Indigenous ways of knowing.
Workshop: Untold Stories of the Research Process: Indigenous, Feminist, and Decolonial Approaches
Date: Friday, January 20, 2023
Time: 11:00am – 1:00pm EST
Location: Virtual
Registration closed.
The workshop invites participants to explore aspects of the research process that may be underestimated or unspoken, including the role of emotions, political commitments, and relationships in shaping research. Such an approach draws on a “thinking-feeling” epistemology. We employ feminist, decolonial and Indigenous frameworks to foster a multidimensional understanding of research. Our engagements are centred on challenging and changing Western and patriarchal conceptions of thinking about knowledge, the actors involved, their processes, and research goals.
Moderator: Alison Crosby
Speakers:
Maria Gloria Cayulef is a Mapuche and feminist researcher. She works as an assistant professor at the Institute of Research and Graduate Studies in Health Sciences at Central University of Chile, where she coordinates the Master in Gender Studies and Psycho-Social Intervention. Her work centers on integrating the feminist and anti-racist perspective into the academic setting and has addressed issues of political violence, violence against women, and community and intercultural praxis in contexts of socio-cultural and territorial diversity.
She holds a Master’s in Social Psychology and she is pursuing her Ph.D. in Gender Studies: Cultures, Societies, and Politics at the University of Girona, Spain. Her dissertation focuses on understanding the historically established articulations between the race-gender categories, which shape the social construction of the Mapuche woman. She is currently participating as a Visiting Graduate Student at the Centre for Feminist Research at York University.
Maria Gloria specializes in critical social psychology, decolonial feminist methodologies, and southern feminist theories.
Ruth Murambadoro is an African feminist who writes on women, transitional justice, gender justice and politics of the Global South. Based at the Centre for Feminist Research, York University, her work explores the gendered nature of the post-colonial state to broader understandings of violence perpetrated against women in Zimbabwe. She holds research affiliations with the Harriet Tubman Institute, and Wits School of Governance. Her long term project involves working with emerging and seasoned African artists to build a digital repository (re)presenting African women’s resistance in the postcolony.
Dolores Figueroa is a researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico City. Dr. Figueroa’s academic expertise focuses on conceptualizing structural, social and feminicide violence against indigenous women in rural areas and critically dialoguing with the anti-gender violence institutional framework in Mexico. During the last two years, she was part of an initiative aimed at creating networks between social researchers, technicians and indigenous women’s organizations, such as the National Coordination of Indigenous Women of Mexico (CONAMI) to strengthen their community initiative called “Community Emergency of Violence” to build a database to document various types of violence that impact indigenous women and their peoples in various regions of Mexico. Dr. Figueroa has published numerous articles in refereed academic journals and chapters in edited volumes on violence against indigenous women in Guerrero, such as: “Defensoras comunitarias, violencias múltiples y búsqueda de justicia en territorios indígenas Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero” 2020, with María Teresa Sierra and Marisol Alcocer; “Anti-Manual for conducting workshops with survivors of grave human rights violations through a territorial and participatory focus”; with Teresa Sierra Camacho (2020); “Alertas de género y mujeres indígenas: interpelando las políticas públicas desde los contextos comunitarios en Guerrero, México” in the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Everything You Wanted to Know About… Anti-Racist Feminist Podcasting (But Were Afraid to Ask)
Date: January 17, 2023
Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm EST
Location: Virtual
Registration: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0sf-2qqTsiGd0FvOrK66rj8WzEVdocJcof
Join Professor Ethel Tungohan of Academic Aunties and Alexandra Lambropoulos of Urban Limitrophe for this skill share on anti-racist feminist podcasting.
Ethel Tungohan is a Canada Research Chair in Canadian Migration Policy, Impacts and Activism and an Associate Professor of Politics at York University. Her research examines temporary labour migration, migrant social movements, and public and social policies pertaining to labour, health, education, and care work. In 2022, she has two forthcoming books: first is “Containing Diversity: Canada and the Politics of Immigration in the 21st Century” (University of Toronto Press), which is co-authored with Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Christina Gabriel and second is “Care Activism: Migrant Domestic Workers, Communities of Care and Movement Building” (University of Illinois), which won the National Women’s Studies Association First Book Prize. She regularly uses socially-engaged research methods in her work and has a long history of research and advocacy collaborations with migrant social justice movements. In her spare time, she hosts the Academic Aunties podcast, which debunks the ‘hidden curriculum’ in academia for first-gen BIPOC listeners and advocates for structural changes in the academy.
Alexandra Lambropoulos is a podcast host and is pursuing a Master of Science in Planning at the University of Toronto. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto in Human Geography, Urban Studies, and GIS. Alexandra is interested in researching urban planning strategies and policies that develop strong communities and solutions for the cities of tomorrow, especially where they intersect with the arts, community economic development, resilience, and technology. She is also very interested in urban planning in African cities, which she explores through her podcast Urban Limitrophe.
Seminar: Engage in Public Scholarship with Alex Ketchum
Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2022
Time: 10:30am – 12:00pm EST
Location: 626 Kaneff Tower
Register: Limited spots available. RSVP to cfr@yorku.ca
Public scholarship—sharing research with audiences outside of academic settings—has become increasingly necessary to counter the rise of misinformation, fill gaps from cuts to traditional media, and increase the reach of important scholarship. Engaging in these efforts often comes with the risk of harassment and threats—especially for women, people of color, LGBTQ+ communities, and precariously employed workers. This workshop, based on Ketchum’s book Engage in Public Scholarship provides constructive guidance on how to translate research into inclusive public outreach while ensuring that such efforts are safer and more accessible. The workshop will discuss practices and planning for a range of activities from in-person and online events, to publishing and working with the media, social media activity, blogging, podcasting, cartoons, and more! This workshop will both address the key challenges and benefits of feminist and accessible public scholarship and provide toolkits for doing this important work.
Since 2018, Dr. Alex Ketchum has been the Faculty Lecturer of the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies of McGill University. She is the Director of the Just Feminist Tech and Scholarship Lab and the organizer of Disrupting Disruptions: The Feminist and Accessible Publishing, Communications, and Tech Speaker and Workshop Series. Her work integrates food, environmental, technological, and gender history. Ketchum’s first peer-reviewed book, Engage in Public Scholarship!: A Guidebook on Feminist and Accessible Communication (Concordia University Press, 2022), examines the power dynamics that impact who gets to create certain kinds of academic work and for whom these outputs are accessible. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the trailblazing restaurant Mother Courage of New York City, Ketchum’s second book, Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses (2022), is the first history of the more than 230 feminist and lesbian-feminist restaurants, cafes, and coffeehouses that existed in the United States from 1972 to the present. Ketchum’s interest in past imaginings of utopia through business creation and the implementation of communications technologies has guided her new research and third book project on historically contextualizing the relationship between feminist ethics and AI. You can find out more about her other writings, podcasts, zines, exhibitions, and more at https://www.alexketchum.ca.
CFR Graduate Student Writing Group
Hosted by CFR Graduate Representatives Evan Vipond and Kenya Thompson
Dates: Wednesdays from November 16 – December 7
Time: 10:00am – 12:45pm EST
Location: Virtual
Link: https://yorku.zoom.us/j/95478866985?pwd=WUVYalhXOXdqOTdhL2IxM1BXQlErZz09
The graduate student reps for the Centre for Feminist Research will be hosting a writing group using the Pomodora method (25 mins. writing followed by a 5 min. break) for four weeks from November 16 to December 7. The group is drop-in, so you do not need to sign up in advance and can attend based on your availability.
Community Participation: An Intersectional Feminist View of a ‘Fuzzy’ Concept with Julia Fursova
Date: Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm EST
Location: Virtual
Register: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYvdO6gqz4sGNJurKQNl5YWHg9CCysmHC5P
The interactive discussion invites researchers and practitioners in non-profit and community development work to reflect on a seemingly benign and benevolent topic of community participation. The event features findings of participatory action research that examined the quality of volunteer participation in neighbourhood-based projects in Lawrence Heights, Toronto. The findings were recently published in a peer-reviewed publication written in co-authorship with community partners. In the publication, we approached volunteer participation with an intersectional feminist lens, critically examining who is participating, why, and with what money and whose time volunteer participation is enabled. Drawing attention to the gendered and under-resourced nature of the non-profit and community development work, we argue that when approached uncritically, community engagement may contribute to extractivist processes endemic to patriarchal, white supremacist, heterosexual capitalism. To support reflexive practice among researchers and practitioners, we offer Community Engagement Continuum that features indicators for the technocratic vs. transformative community engagement process.
Julia Fursova, PhD, (she/they), community-based researcher, and incoming assistant professor, Renaissance College, University of New Brunswick. Julia contributes to nurturing diversity, equity, and justice through participatory research, facilitating learning/unlearning for transformation, and supporting leadership for systems change.
WOMEN. LIFE. FREEDOM: What does solidarity with the Iranian uprising look like?
Co-sponsored by the Iranian Graduate Student Association York University (IGSAYU); The Centre for Feminist Research; and the Faculty of Graduate Studies
Date: Tuesday, November 29, 2022
Time: 10:30am – 12:00pm EST
Location: Virtual
Register: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0pcu6tpzorGtFbrazeJatMbJi4cPAcKZ4x
ALL members of the York University Community are invited to attend to learn more about events in Iran in the wake of the death of Mahsa Amini. In particular, we consider connections to worldwide social movements for self-determination, and actions that community members can take in support of these uprisings.
Speakers:
Minoo Derayeh, “From ‘I Act, therefore I am,’ to “Woman Life Freedom.” Department of Equity Studies
Khatereh Sheibani, “A National Uprising to Celebrate Life and to Redefine Gender and Sexuality.” Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics
Fereydoon Rahmani, “Generation Z, Rooftop Society and Women-Life-Liberty Movement.” Department of Equity Studies
Fereydoon Rahmani is the UPD and associate professor at the Department of Equity Studies, focusing on social justice, Democracy, Human Rights, Kurdish political movement, and Quality of Life analysis in the Middle East. Professor Rahmani is also a community researcher, public speaker and human rights activist.
Fatemeh Gharibi, “Building Intersectional Solidarity.” Graduate Program in Gender Feminist and Women’s Studies
Fati Gharibi (they/them) is a Ph.D. student in Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies at York University. Their work intersects queer feminism, education, and theatre. Using performance, they explore the question of voice when it comes to women, queer and trans folks in Canada and Iran.
Detransition: Connecting research, practice, and lived experiences
Date: November 21, 2022
Time: 8:30am – 4:30pm EST
Register: https://form.typeform.com/to/pJv6jhrj?typeform-source=mail.google.com
Register for this one-day, in-person symposium to discuss the results of to recent research studies on detransition.
Book Launch: “White Supremacy, Racism, and the Coloniality of Anti-Trafficking” with editors Kamala Kempadoo and Elena Shih
Organized by the Critical Trafficking and Sex Work Research Cluster
Date: November 11, 2022
Time: 5:00pm – 7:00pm EST
Location: William Doo Auditorium, 45 Willcocks Street, Toronto, ON
With remarks by contributors Elene Lam, Julie Ham, Lyndsey Beutin, Menaka Raguparan, and introductory comments by Ilan Kapoor and Janie Chuang.
The event is sponsored by York University (Criminology Program, Department of Social Science, and Centre for Feminist Research); University of Toronto (Women and Gender Studies Institute); Brown University Centre for the Study of Slavery and Justice; and Another Story Bookshop.
Book Talk: “Quarantined – Governance, ethics, and uncertainty in early responses to Covid-19 in Uganda” with Jimmy Spire Ssentongo
Date: November 8, 2022
Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm EST
Location: Online via Zoom
Register: https://yorku.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wFmq-VFaRO6oou6xfgAhkg
In the wake of Covid-19 control lockdowns, Jimmy was among the very first Ugandans to be placed under institutional quarantine in the country, for 24 days. The government measure was characterised by panic, unpreparedness, violence, gender insensitivity, and corruption. In Quarantined, Jimmy critically chronicles the experiences and his activism in pushing back to government’s exploitation of fear and anxiety. The conversation of this workshop picks from the account of the book for wider reflections on differentiated experiences that situations of panic tend to flatten and silence. It also speaks to ethics in the face of survival threats, both as to what ethics to uphold in uncertainty and how it’s deficiencies may influence outcomes.
CFR 30th Anniversary Celebration
Date: Friday, November 4, 2022
Time: 1:00pm – 2:30pm EDT
Location: Virtual
Register: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0tfuqorz0jHNUmfZxyZu755jU1QiXcGpvc
Join us for the launch our 30th anniversary collection, “Thirty Years of Feminist Research” and a roundtable discussion on the past, present, and future of feminist research with CFR Associates Ena Dua, Meg Luxton, Nancy Mandell, Alison Crosby, Ruth Murambadoro, and more.
Film Screening: Unfinished by Shabnam Sukhdev
Co-sponsored by the York Centre for Asian Research, Theatre and Performance Studies, and the Centre for Feminist Research
Date: Monday, October 24, 2022
Time: 3:00pm – 4:30pm EDT
Location: 519 Kaneff Tower
“Unfinished” is a film by Shabnam Sukhdev. The 30-minute screening will be followed by a discussion with filmmakers Shabnam Sukhdev and Leena Manimekalai, moderated by Elaine Coburn.
CFR Meet and Greet
Date: Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Time: 1:00pm – 2:30pm EDT
Location: 626 Kaneff Tower
RSVP to cfr@yorku.ca
All are invited to meet the CFR Director, Coordinator, and Associates. Join us to hear more about the services and events the CFR offers and find out how you can be involved.
Please RSVP to cfr@yorku.ca
Everything You Wanted to Know About… Peer-Reviewing (But Were Afraid to Ask)
Co-Sponsored by the Centre for Feminist Research, the Centre for Jewish Studies, and Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies
Date: Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm EDT
Location: Virtual
Link: https://yorku.zoom.us/j/94761835402?pwd=T1M5T3dvbmk3aitiRnlWTTNWdGk0QT09
Join David Koffman, Editor of Canadian Jewish Studies, and Elaine Coburn, Co-editor of the Journal of Canadian Studies for this skill share for graduate student and early-career scholars.
