Mapping feminist scholarship / Tracer les études féministes

second annual symposium / deuxième symposium annuel

adresse

Thomson House / 3650 rue McTavish
corner / coin avenue Docteur-Penfield / metro Peel
This is a wheelchair-accessible venue / ce lieu est accessible aux personnes en fauteuil roulant

informations

registration is required / l’inscription est exigée
please register in advance by e-mail, before monday, june 5.
veuillez s’inscrire par courriel avant lundi, le 5 juin.
ggfs.mcgill@gmail.com

there is no cost to attend and everyone is welcome!

horaire

• 8h30 Registration / Inscription
• 9h00 Welcome / Bienvenue
• 9h15 – 10h30 Session 1: Race, Space, and Place

[1] Tracey Nicholls, Centre de Recherche en Éthique, Université de Montréal: Following Haiti’s Lead: Radical possibilities for de-ontologizing race and gender

[2] Aiyyana Maracle, McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women, McGill University: Indigenous Contemporary Realities: Neocolonialism and Decolonization

[3] Sarah Waisvisz, Department of English, McGill University: Fugitive Rhythms: Re-Imagining Diasporic Caribbean Canadian Communities in Dionne Brand’s ‘What We All Long For’

• 10h30 Coffee break / Pause-Café
• 10h45 – 12h00 Session 2: L’art et le corps

[1] Catherine Girard, Département d’histoire de l’art, Université de Montréal: Les résistances d’un portrait: vers une décolonisation de l’histoire de l’art

[2] Alex Anber, Department of Art History, Concordia University: Mona Hatoum’s Corps étranger

[3] Rachel Lauzon, Département d’histoire de l’art, Université Concordia: Identité, corporalité et automatisation: La répresentation du corps chez Vanessa Beecroft et les enjeux qu’elle soulève

• 12h00 Lunch / Dejeuner — provided for registered participants
• 13h00 – 14h00 Session 3: Women, Work and the Global Economy

[1] Marlène Elias, Department of Geography, McGill University: Bridging Women’s Worlds: Global Markets, Fair Trade, and African Shea Butter

[2] Anjali Abraham, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University: What’s love got to do with it? Women, Teaching and Global Education Reform

• 14h00 Coffee Break / Pause-Café
• 14h15 – 15h15 Session 4: Gendered Human Rights in International Politics

[1] Joshua Philbrook, Department of Political Science, Concordia University : Western Wombs, African Aliases

[2] Benjamin Persett, Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut: Speaking Queerly: U.S. Foreign Policy Making, Queer Theory, and the Human Rights of Sexual Minorities

• 15h15 Break / Pause
• 15h30 – 16h45 Session 5. Les conceptions et la practique du féminisme

[1] Julie Girard-Lemay, Département de Philosophie, Université de Montréal: Sortir du dualisme catégorique en études féministes

[2] Eve-Marie Lampron, Département d’Histoire, Université de Montréal: Entre solidarité feminine et solidarités féministes: enjeux théoriques et applications pratiques

[3] Debbie Lunie, Humanities Program, Concordia University : Un/learuning solidarity through transnational feminist activism

• 17h00 Reception / Réception * — open to the public, no registration required
• 18h00 – 19h30

Keynote Address

Discours-Programme *

Sherene Razack

Sociology and Equity Studies in Education (SESE), Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto

The ‘Sharia Law Debate’ in Ontario: The Modernity/Premodernity Distinction in Legal Efforts to Protect Women From Culture

* présenté avec l’Institut d’ études islamiques, Université McGill

* co-presented with the Institute of Islamic Studies (IIS), McGill University

Abstract: The normative figure in Western feminism remains the liberal autonomous individual of modernity. ‘Other’ women are those who have their freedom to choose restricted. Typically, ‘other’ women are those burdened by culture and hindered by their communities from entering modernity. If we remain in the terrain of thinking about women as vulnerable or imperilled, and some women as particularly imperilled, as we generally do of Muslim women, we remain squarely within the framework of patriarchy understood as abstracted from all other systems. A modernity/premodernity distinction will continue to invade any projects intending to help Muslim women. This paper shows the persistence of the modernity/premodernity distinction in contemporary debates around applying Sharia law to the settlement of family law disputes under the Arbitration Act in Ontario, Canada. Professor Razack argues that in their concern to curtail conservative and patriarchal forces within the Muslim community, Canadian feminists (both Muslim and Non-Muslim) utilized frameworks that installed a secular/religious divide that functions as a colour line, marking the difference between the modern, enlightened West, and tribal, religious Muslims. Professor Razack suggests that feminist responses might have helped to sustain a new form of governmentality, one in which the productive power of the imperilled Muslim woman functions to keep in line Muslim communities at the same time that it defuses more radical feminist and anti-racist critique of conservative religious forces.

Professor Razack’s research and teaching interests lie in the area of race and gender issues in the law. Her most recent book is Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism (University of Toronto Press, 2004). Previous books include an edited collection, Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping A White Settler Society (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002); Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998,1999, 2000); and Canadian Feminism and the Law: The Women’s Legal and Education Fund and the Pursuit of Equality (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1991). She has also published articles on Canadian national mythologies and immigration policies of the 1990s, race, space and prostitution, and gendered racism. She is a founding and coordinating committee member of Researchers and Academics of Colour for Equality (R.A.C.E.).

organisé par / organized by the graduate group for feminist scholarship (GGFS)