Past Events

Abstract: This lecture weaves together strands of scholarly work on neoliberal university, diversity governmentality and affect under racial capitalism, to think through a specific process of interpellation. It seeks to understand how the newest playing field of neoliberal diversity complex, namely EDI/DEI portfolio, hails us as “persons of diversity” and succeeds to recruit some of us as its players.  It asks, what does it mean to engage in EDI enterprise within university at this historical moment? In what ways do EDI rhetorics, procedures, and protocols articulate to neoliberal university’s ongoing ingestion of difference and neutralizing of dissent?

Bio: Sirma Bilge is Full Professor of Sociology at Université de Montréal. She founded in 2005 Intersectionnalité Research Unit within the Centre for Ethnic Studies of Montreal Universities (CEETUM) at a time intersectionality was unheard of in the French-speaking academy. An internationally recognized scholar in the field of intersectionality studies, Bilge is the author of two books, three edited volumes and over 60 scholarly articles and book chapters. She is currently working on a monograph tackling the double problem faced by “minority” knowledges (e.g., CRT, intersectionality, Ethnic studies, Black and Indigenous studies, postcolonial and decolonial studies, feminist, gender and sexuality studies...): their repression from the far-right populist movements and governments and their depoliticizing incorporation within the neoliberal university. She is also preparing a new book (under contract) on intersectionality’s global counterparts, both past and present. Her coauthored book Intersectionality has been translated to several languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, Romanian, French and Turkish).

“Panel Honouring the late Dr. Gülden Özcan: Activist & Intellectual Legacies”
Co-organized with the Department of Sociology
Monday November 14 2022, 12-1:30pm (via Zoom)
Watch the recorded session here

Dr. Gülden Özcan was a brilliant scholar, activist, colleague, friend, loving partner, and mother. She worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Lethbridge prior to her untimely passing in May 2022. This panel brings together scholars and activists to discuss her important legacies both within and outside of the academy. Panelists include:

• Khadija Baker: Montreal-based, multidisciplinary artist of Kurdish-Syrian descent (born 1973 in Amuda, Syria). Baker immigrated to Canada from Syria in 2001; she completed her MFA studies at Concordia University 2012. She is a core member of the Centre for Oral History & Digital Storytelling (COHDS) at Concordia University. Her installations investigate social and political themes centered on the uncertainty of home as it relates to persecution, identity, displacement, and memory. As a witness to traumatic events, unsettled feelings of home are a part of her experience. Her multidisciplinary installations often combine textiles, sculpture, performance, sound and video, and involve participative storytelling and performance to create active spaces for greater understanding. Baker continues her research creation at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CISSC) at Concordia University 
   
• Dr. Simten Coşar:  A feminist political scientist (Ph.D. in Political Science, Bilkent University; MA, in Political Science, Bilkent University; BA, Political Science & International Relations, Boğaziçi University). Between 2007 and 2021 she researched and taught courses in University of Pittsburgh, Cornell University, Northern Michigan University in the United States, and at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She has published on political theory, feminist politics, Turkish intellectual history, history of political thought in Turkey. In the English-speaking and reading world, she is the co-editor of Universities in the Neoliberal Era: Academic Cultures and Critical Perspectives (UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) (with Hakan Ergül), and Silent Violence: Neoliberalism, Islamist Politics and the AKP Years in Turkey (Canada: Red Quill Books, 2012) (with Gamze Yücesan-Özdemir). She has translated major texts in social sciences from English to Turkish, and from Turkish to English. Her most recent translation is Handan Çağlayan’s seminal work on the Kurdish women’s movement (Women in the Kurdish Movement: Mothers, Comrades, Goddess, Palgrave, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). She has been conducting research on feminist encounters in the neoliberal academia with a view to autoetnographic extensions. Coşar has been acting as the associate editor of Sampsonia Way magazine.
   
• Dr. Nisha Nath  is a settler woman of colour living in Amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton) and an Assistant Professor of Equity Studies at Athabasca University.  In December 2020, alongside Dr. Gulden Özcan, Dr. Tarek Younis and Dr. Evan light, she began collaborating on a British Academy funded project on racial capitalism and security. She is also working on a manuscript on ‘The Letters’ with Drs. Davina Bhandar, Rita Dhamoon and Anita Girvan, and continues her work with Dr. Willow Samara Allen on a SSHRC-funded project on the settler-colonial socialization of public sector workers.
   
• Arturo Tejeda Torres  is a PhD candidate in Cultural, Social and Political Thought in the Department of Sociology at the University of Lethbridge).  He graduated BA in Social Psychology from the Autonomous University of Queretaro (UAQ) in 2014 and MA in Philosophy from the University of Guanajuato in 2017. Currently, his PhD research aims an analysis of discourse and ideology as it unfolds within the context of Facebook commentaries and the Mexican daily presidential conferences by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, surrounding the recent feminist protests against the increasing number of femicides in Mexico.