ANTI-RACISM LAB

Decolonization in Context: South Africa 

The Anti-Racism Lab and the Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation (CriSHET) at Nelson Mandela University is hosting the Decolonization in Context: South Africa workshop on April 17 from 5:00pm-6:45pm (Johannesburg time). 

Panelists: 

Farouk Abrahams (Aboriginal Business Council)

Professor Babalwa Magoqwana (Nelson Mandela University) 

Dr Jenny Boźena du Preez (Nelson Mandela University) 

Facilitator 

Professor Nomalanga Mkhize (Nelson Mandela University) 

Organizer 

Dr Jenny Boźena du Preez (Nelson Mandela University)

Farouk Abrahams is a local small business owner and resident  of Schauderville. He has been in local arts and education activism since 1999. He founded Save our Schools and Community and a member of the Aboriginal Business Council.

Professor Babalwa Magoqwana is a Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and a Director for the Centre for Women and Gender Studies at Nelson Mandela University.  She is a former president of the South African Sociological Association (SASA from 2017-2019); an Erasmus Mundus Scholar; a Presidential Scholar with the University of Michigan. She is a fellow with the American Learned Societies Council’s African Humanities Programme and DHET Future Professors Programme. She is the recipient of the National Research Foundation/First Rand Foundation Sabbatical Grant for her project on Building a Woman-Centred Vernacular Sociology. Her research on Maternal Legacies of Knowledge was supported by the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Areas of Research: Service Work, Labour Sociology, Sociology of Gender; Sociology of Knowledge; Indigenous Knowledge Systems.

Dr Jenny Boźena du Preez has a PhD in Literary Studies in English and is currently the Senior Manager: Programmes of the Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation (CriSHET) at Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, South Africa. She is an active member of ACUSAfrica, a network of scholars and practitioners interested in Critical University Studies and other alternative and radical approaches to studying the university. Her research explores the representation of the university in South African fiction and how literature and Literary Studies might offer a ‘disclosing critique’ of the social imaginary of the university. She is also interested in the representation of gender and sexuality, literature from Africa and the diaspora, women’s writing, and the erotic.

Professor Nomalanga Mkhize is a historian based at the Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha. She is the Director for the School of Governmental and Social Sciences. Her research interests are in African language historical literatures, vernacular historiography and 19th century Eastern Cape history. Her current research interest is in Eastern Cape historiography and she takes a particular interest in the historiography of 19th century Xhosa writers. Her academic career spans more than a decade

If you're interested in registering for the workshop, you can register here.

Decolonization in Context: Finland

The Anti-Racism Lab is hosting the Decolonization in Context: Finland workshop on March 13 from 5:15-7:00pm (Helsinki Time).

Panelists: 

Dr. Rauna Kuokkanen (University of Lapland)

Dr. Maïmouna Matikainen-Soreau (University of Helsinki)

Dr. Patricia Scalco (University of Helsinki)

Organizer: 

Dr. Suvi Keskinen (University of Helsinki)

Dr. Rauna Kuokkanen is Research Professor of Arctic Indigenous Politics at the University of Lapland (Finland) and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto (Canada). Her research focuses on comparative Indigenous politics and law, Indigenous feminism and gender, Arctic governance, and settler colonialism in the Nordic countries. She is the editor of the Settler Colonial Studies journal. Rauna Kuokkanen is a member of Sámi Climate Council, an independent expert body formed in accordance with the 2023 Climate Act in Finland, and of the Standing Committee on Indigenous Involvement, International Arctic Science Committee. Prof. Kuokkanen’s most recent book Restructuring Relations: Indigenous Self-Determination, Governance and Gender by Oxford University Press (2019) has been awarded with three prizes (the International Studies Association’s Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section Best Book Award 2020, the British International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Best Book Prize and the Canadian Political Science Association Prize in Comparative Politics in 2020).

Dr. Maïmouna Matikainen-Soreau is a postdoctoral researcher in Educational Sciences at the University of Helsinki, currently working on a project on racism and antiracism in Finnish lower secondary schools. She holds a double PhD in Nordic literature from the University of Helsinki and in Scandinavian studies from Paris-Sorbonne University. In her doctoral thesis she developed the term "postmigration literature" and analysed processes of racialisation and white-normativity in Nordic fiction. Her teaching and research interests include racism and antiracism, critical race and whiteness studies, decolonial studies, intersectional feminism and critical mixed-race studies.

Dr. Patricia Scalco trained as a social anthropologist in Brazil (BA), Turkey (MA), and the United Kingdom (PhD), and engaged in decolonial efforts in her approach to research, and pedagogical practices, as well as through her editorial contributions and public engagement activities. Her doctoral and postdoctoral ethnographic research in Turkey explored, respectively, the intersections of kinship, emotions, moralities, and reproductive health (University of Manchester), and informal trade, moralities, and cultures of expertise (University of Helsinki). Currently, she is a researcher with the Irritation Research Project (University of Helsinki), where she explores intersections of those themes in the context of family-run businesses in the south of Brazil. She serves as a co-editor of the Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society and beyond academia, she acts as an audience-artist engagement facilitator, collaborating with local and international artists in the development of critical spectatorships in the fields of performance and visual arts in the Nordic region.

Dr. Suvi Keskinen is Professor in Ethnic Relations and leads the activities of The Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism (CEREN) at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests include structural and institutional racism, antiracist mobilisations, Nordic colonial and racial histories, postcolonial and decolonial feminism, and media and political narratives of migration and (anti)racism.

If you're interested in attending the event, register here

Black History Month at Glendon: Does Unconscious Bias Training Work? 

Black History Month with Dr. Andrea A. Davis

On February 20^th from 12:00pm-2:00pm (Mountain Time), Dr. Andrea A. Davis will give a talk on her recent book, Horizon, Sea, Sound: Caribbean and African Women's Cultural Critiques of Nation. In her recent book, Horizon, Sea, Sound: Caribbean and African Women's Cultural Critiques of Nation (Northwestern UP, 2022), she explores possibilities for collaboration among Indigenous, Black, and other racialized women and offers new reflections on the relationship between the Caribbean and Canada.

Dr. Andrea A. Davis, a professor of Black Cultures of the Americas in the Department of Humanities at York University in Toronto and co-editor of the Journal of Canadian Studies. As Chair of the Department of Humanities (2015-2020), Dr. Davis developed the Black Canadian Studies Certificate, one of only two Black Studies programs in Canadian universities at the time A leading scholar in Black Studies in Canada, her widely published interdisciplinary research is rooted in an anti-racism feminist theoretical framework that analyzes questions of race and gender through a focus on the literary and cultural productions of Black women, the location of Caribbean diasporic communities in Canada, and the constructions of Black youth masculinities. She has been invited to present her research in Ghana, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Austria, Germany, Australia and across the Caribbean and United States. As a public intellectual and sought-after speaker, she has also made numerous presentations to schools, and government, business, and community organizations.

If you're interested in attending the event, please register by clicking the link in the flyer. If you have any issues with opening the link through the flyer, you can register here

Decolonization in Context: Canada

Dr. Smith serves on several national bodies, including SSHRC Council and Executive, Statistics Canada’s Immigration and Ethnocultural Statistics Advisory Committee, and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) External EDI Advisory Board.

Dr. Enakshi Dua is a professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at York University. Her teaching and research areas include race and racism , gender Issues, Marxism, critical race theory, post-colonial studies, intersectionality, anti-racist feminism, feminist theories

Dr. Shirley Anne Tate is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. Her research interests focus on Black feminist decolonial diaspora studies. Her been in the areas of intersectional institutional racism, racism, affect, hybridity, creolization, beauty and Black anti-racist aesthetics, 'race' performativity, Black/white mixed-race lives, and the “race”d and gendered body in enslavement and freedom. 

If you'd like to know more about the panelists and organizers, click their names in the flyer. If you're interested in attending the workshop, register here. 

Decolonization in Context: USA

The Anti-Racism Lab is hosting the Decolonization in Context: USA workshop on February 6th from 10:00am-11:45am (Pacific Time). 

Panelists: 

Dr. Theresa Jean Ambo (UC San Diego), 

Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly (Wayne State University)

Dr. Amanda Batarseh (UC San Diego)

Organizer: 

Dr. Shaista Aziz Patel (UC San Diego) 

Dr. Theresa Jean Ambo is an assistant professor in education studies at UC San Diego and co-directs the Indigenous Futures Institute. Her primary research examines historical relationships and contemporary partnerships between Native Nations and public universities. Theresa also collaborates with community members and colleagues to examine settler land acknowledgment statements and histories of universities. She holds a B.A., M.Ed., and Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is currently a William T. Grant Scholar. Theresa’s research has been funded by the Spencer, Lumina, and William T. Grant Foundations and published in Social Text, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, American Educational Research Journal, and The Journal of Higher Education.

Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University and a 2023-2024 Visiting Scholar at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. She is the author of Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in
the United States, the co-author of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History, and the co-editor of Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women’s Political Writings and of Reproducing Domination: On the Caribbean Postcolonial State. Dr. Burden-Stelly has published in peer-reviewed journals including Small
Axe, Souls, Du Bois Review, Socialism & Democracy, International Journal of Africana Studies, and CLR James Journal. Her words in popular publications like Monthly Review, Boston Review, Essence magazine, The Nation, Teen Vogue, Black Perspectives, and Black Agenda Report. She is a member of the Black Alliance for Peace.

Dr. Amanda Batarseh received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Davis and was a UC Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Riverside in the Department of Languages and Literature. Her research and teaching interests include Modern Arabic Literature, Arab Literature in the Diaspora, Palestine Studies, Indigenous Studies, Mediterranean Studies, and Comparative Literature.

Dr. Shaista Aziz Patel works as an Assistant Professor of Critical Muslim Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UCSD. Her scholarly and all other political investments are in several questions that draw upon theories in Indigenous (to North America and South Asia), Black, Dalit, anti-caste, Muslim, and transnational feminist studies.

If you'd like to know more about the panelists and organizers, click their names in the flyer. If you're interested in attending the workshop, register here.

Origins: An Investigation into Khoi-San Heritage Sites

On November 29^th, the Anti-Racism Lab is pleased to host the November Annual lecture on November 29^th from 12:00pm to 1:45pm (Mountain Time). Dr. Magda Minguzzi will give a lecture and show a documentary called “Origins: An Investigation into Khoi-San Heritage Sites” The Documentary is about a community engagement research project with the First Nations of South Africa.

Dr. Magda Minguzzi is a professor in the School of Architecture at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. Dr. Magda is also the lead researcher at the Institute for Coastal and Marine Research at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa, where she first conducted ground-breaking research on Indigenous fish traps in the Eastern Cape of South Africa (NRF). Dr. Magda’s research interests are on tangible and intangible Indigenous heritage in South Africa, Indigenous Knowledge System of the built environment, action, and community engagement research.

There will be a Q&A session shortly after the documentary viewing. Register via Zoom here

Descolonização E Antiracismo Nas Univerisidades: Análises Comparativias Do Canadá, Suécia, Finlândia, Brasil E África Do Sul-September 4, 2023 

Decolonizing Alliance Institute: Pluriversal Dialogues on Decolonization, Indigenization, and Antiracism in Universities

July 26-29, 2023

Unlearning Colonialism and Renewing Kinship Relations: River Valley Walk with Dr. Dwayne Donald - June 14, 2023

Challenging the stereotypes, changing the statistics...with Carl James - March 21, 2023

For March, Anti-Racism Lab speaker series welcomes Dr. Carl James, Jean Augustine chair in Education, Community and Diaspora in the Faculty of Education. Dr James' talk will take place online on March 21, 2023, from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM. To sign up for the event, please use this link. Please see below for a brief description of the talk:

Data of OECD countries – including Canada – indicate that first-generation students are increasingly the ones entering today’s postsecondary institutions. With reference to the stories of some first-generation students who attended York University in 2004 where they participated  in an access program that Leanne Taylor and I administrated, this presentation will discuss their stories of what university education meant for them, their struggles and strategies accessing and navigating university, their lives since university (we did follow-up interviews with 9 of them in 2020), and how their university experiences inform the legacy they are passing onto their children. I will also reflect on how the stories of these first-generation students are being engaged by readers such as teachers and graduate students with whom I am working. 

White feminist supremacy: The impossibility of Black feminist allyship - March 17, 2023

Roots, Routes, and Reckonings: On Blackness and Belonging in North America with Debra Thompson - February 16, 2023

To honour Black History Month, the Anti-Racism Lab Research Network & Department of Sociology are pleased to welcome Dr. Debra Thompson to present Roots, Routes, and Reckonings: On Blackness and Belonging in North America. Sign up here to get a link. Below is a brief description of Dr. Thompson's talk:

Through an intimate exploration of the roots of Black identities in North America and the routes taken by we who have crisscrossed the world’s longest undefended border in search of freedom and belonging, this lecture journeys back and forth across the Canada/US border, and from coast to coast, combining memoir and analysis to highlight the tensions, contradictions, translations, and complications that anchor our understandings of race. It examines key, competing facets of Canadian and American manifestations of racism, including the intersection of racial formations and settler colonialism, analyzes the transnational dynamics and contours of the African diaspora in North America, and ultimately seeks to think through what it means to be in a place, but not be of that place. Across time and space, this research asks: where is home for those of African descent, and is belonging within the confines of the nation-state either possible or desirable?

Emergencies: The Antiracism Tasks of Decentred Critical University Studies (DCUS) - Jan 19, 2023

The Anti-Racism lab Speaker Series is back fro the Winter Term! Our first speaker is Andre Keet, Research Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education and Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Engagement and Transformation at Nelson Mandela University. Please register here to get a meeting link.

Here is a short description of Andre's talk:

‘The university is in a state of emergency’; ‘the university is a state of emergencies’.

 In these statements, two different notions of the relationship between the concepts ‘university’ and ‘emergency’ can be understood. The first suggests that the university is faced with an existential threat, and that this imminent threat is something that ought to be addressed with an equally imminent response. The second notion advances the argument that the university is not simply in a state of emergency, but as being a state, a site, a realm of emergencies. The latter refers to a condition, and the former to an occurrence. Racism, in both instances, predominates … as occurrence and condition. Weaving abolitionist and decolonial critiques of the university together, this talk proposes Decentred Critical University Studies (DCUS) as one possible framework to sketch the antiracism tasks of the sector through the notion of ‘emergencies’. 

Unlearning Colonialism: Laying a Path by Walking - Nov 16, 2022

Join us for Anti-Racism Lab's Annual Public Lecture with Dr. Florence Glanfield, Vice-Provost indigenous Programming and Research. Dr. Glanfield will share the path that she has walked and is still walking in learning about concepts such as inequities and racism, colonial structures and "un"learning colonialism. Register here

Decolonization and Antiracism in universities - Next Steps - June 17, 2022

In commemoration of Indigenous History Month, join us for a conversation on Decolonization and anti-racism efforts in Canadian universities. Our panelists are Dr. Jennifer Adese, (Dept. of Sociology, University of Toronto) Dr. Paul Gareau (Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta), and Dr. Nykkie Lugosi-Schimpf (Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta). You can register here

Refusal as Affective Pedagogical Practice with Michalinos Zembylas - April 19, 2022

Join the BGSA and CRC in Feminism and Intersectionality for the final episode of our  speaker series for the year!  Our guest speaker is Dr. Michalinos Zembylas, Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the Open University, Cyprus. The questions driving Dr. Zembylas' presentation are: What sort of affective (dis)investment is needed in higher education to refuse the colonial university? How can educators and students in higher education invent ‘pedagogies of refusal’ that function affectively to challenge colonial futurity? What do pedagogies of refusal look like? This presentation theorizes refusal as an affective practice which produces political effects and desires that challenge normative manifestations of power and control. Dr. Zembylas will argue that argue that refusal may constitute a fruitful avenue toward decolonization of higher education, because it directs attention to the affective (dis)investments from/in desires that can be fulfilled by the university. To this end, it is suggested that if the aim is to disrupt the seductive workings of colonial power in its most intimate dimensions, then it is crucial to invent pedagogies that engage with the affective (dis)investments of students and educators in colonial relations. Enakshi will reflect on her landmark coauthored piece with Bonita Lawrence "Decolonizing Antiracism" which challenged anti-racism scholars and social movements to intentionally include Indigenous perspectives. This event is open to the general public. You can register here

Researching Black Alberta History with Jennifer Kelly - February 17, 2022

Join us for a special Black History Month Episode of our speaker series. Our guest speaker is Dr. Jennifer Kelly. Dr. Kelly will provide a counterstory to broader and commonplace accounts of Black people as not present in Alberta history. It is a counterstory that highlights the making of a white settler society through the weaving together of colonialism, capitalism, racism and gender to create a social order that is still with us today. Through an exploration of documents, texts, and photographs, Dr. Kelly's presentation will demonstrate that Black Albertans did make history, and we can therefore rightly claim that Black history is Canadian history and central to an understanding of the formation of Alberta.