Race-Making and the State: Between Postracial
Neoliberalism and Racialized Terrorism
10TH ANNUAL CRITICAL RACE & ANTICOLONIAL STUDIES CONFERENCE
UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA
8-10 OCTOBER 2010
PRE-CONFERENCE:
MENTORING & PDWORKSHOPS
FRIDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2010
8:30 REGISTRATION
9:30-11:00 Workshop 1: Indigenous Human Rights
Maple Leaf Room, Lister Hall Conference Centre
“Translating Critical Race Theory into Practice.” With Robert A. Williams, Jr., Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law and American Indian Studies, University of Arizona Law School.
11:00-11:15 BREAK
11:15-12:45 Workshop 2: Racialization, Equity & The Academy
Maple Leaf Room, Lister Hall Conference Centre
“From PHD to Tenure and Promotion.” With Dr Narda Razack, Professor of Social Work and Associate Dean (Faculty), Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University
12:45-2:00 LUNCH
2:00-3:30 Workshop 3: Teaching Race in the Academy
Maple Leaf Room, Lister Hall Conference Centre
“Teaching Critical Race Theory.” Workshop with Professor Angela P Harris, Berkeley Law School and Bady Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Buffalo Law School
3:30-4:00 Workshop Rapporteur Synopsis
4:00-6:00 BREAK
Race-Making and the State: Between Postracial
Neoliberalism and Racialized Terrorism
10TH ANNUAL CRITICAL RACE & ANTICOLONIAL STUDIES CONFERENCE
FRIDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2010
6:00-6:30 CONFERENCE OPENING CEREMONY
Maple Leaf Room, Lister Hall Conference Centre
Welcome by Elder – Marge Friedel (Métis)
Marge Friedel is a Métis Elder born at Lac Ste. Anne. She is a mother of five children, a grandmother and great grandmother. She has long been a strong voice for the Aboriginal community in Edmonton and in Alberta, and has been involved with the University of Alberta for many years. She is also a member of Métis Nation of Alberta Elders Council, as well as a founding Elder of Amiskwaciy Academy (Aboriginal Junior/ Senior High School). Marge is actively involved within the Métis community and its initiatives.
University Welcome by Dr. Lesley Cormack, Dean, Faculty of Arts
Conference Welcome: Dr. Malinda Smith, Political Science, Convenor
Keynote Introduction: Priscilla Campeau, Athabasca University
6:30-7:30 Keynote Address:
Robert A. Williams, Jr. “From Aristotle to Avatar: The Idea of the Savage in the Western Imperial Imagination.”
Abstract: Beginning with the ancient Greeks and Romans and continuing through the Medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment eras, the idea of the savage has haunted the West's imperial imagination. On the edges of the earth, along the distant, lawless frontier regions, deep within the heart of darkness, beyond the pale, the idea of the savage has always represented a threatening, subversive force, irredeemably opposed to the West’s will to empire over distant lands and peoples. Even today, indigenous tribal peoples are stereotyped and portrayed as being less civilized and culturally advanced according to images and tropes of dark-sided and ennobled savagery that trace back to the Homeric epic poems and the Roman imperial conquests of the Classical era. This keynote address will provide a critical legal genealogy, through familiar images and canonical texts, of the idea of the savage as it has helped to shape the West’s will to empire over non-Western peoples for the past three thousand years, and how that idea continues to be used today in popular culture and by courts and policymakers in the Western settler-states.
7:30-9:00 Opening Plenary: Indigenous Peoples, Knowledge and the Academy
· Maria Campbell, “Honouring the Place/Places of Honour” (Métis author, playwright, broadcaster, filmmaker, Elder and Trudeau Mentor).
· Patricia A. Monture, citizen of Mohawk Nation, professor of Sociology, College of Arts and Science, University of Saskatchewan
· Tracey Lindberg, “Blood. Breath. Memory. Indigenous Teachings, Indigenous Education, and Indigenous Academy” (Cree Métis legal scholar, Athabasca University faculty member. University of Ottawa Common Law lecturer.)
· Robert A. Williams, Jr. (Lumbee Indian Tribe, N. Carolina), E. Thomas Sullivan professor of Law and American Indian Studies and Director, Indigenous Peoples Law & Policy Program.
· Chair: Kiera Ladner, Canada Research Chair, Indigenous Governance, University of Manitoba
Maria Campbell, Abstract: The speaker will discuss how language, storytelling and Indigenous knowledge shape places of learning and places of honour. She will pose the question: Can the academy be a place of honour?
Tracey Lindberg, Abstract: The author discusses Indigenous academy and academic traditions in the First Person, identifying the process and place of Indigenous Knowledge and addresses the requirements for respectful inclusion of the same in western institutions.
Patricia Monture, Abstract: In her talk, Dr. Monture will focus on her reflections about the multiple ways in which feminism (including anti-racist feminism) has had an impact on her career, life and her family.
SATURDAY, 9 OCTOBER 2010
8:00 am REGISTRATION
Continental breakfast provided
9:00-10:00 Welcome and Keynote
Maple Leaf Room, Lister Hall
Keynote Introduction: Sedef Arat-Koç, Ryerson University
Keynote Address
LH.M. Ling. “Asia is a Woman: Revivals of Asian Masculinity and Femininity in the Region and their Implications for World Politics”
L.H.M. Ling: Popular culture in both Asia and the West has long fixated over the victimization of women in Asia. Such victimization certainly exists and requires redress. Nonetheless, this focus tends to serve two, patriarchal purposes. For the West, the victimization of women in Asia affirms Gayatri Spivak’s famous observation that “white men want to save brown women from brown men.” What more justification for colonialism and imperialism could hypermasculinists ask for? For Asia, such depictions aim for a reactionary, nationalist purpose: that is, to rally support for reform which means, ultimately, a strong (patriarchal) state.
Recent cultural productions in Asia, however, are changing. These depict an alternative image of Asian femininity – and by extension, Asian masculinity. These portray strong female figures who enact their strength by drawing on tradition, not defying or overcoming it. Equally important, these strong female figures have manly men by their side, offering comfort and support, even if their mutual love remains unrequited. Two recent examples come from the 2003 Korean drama “Dae Jang Geum” (“Jewel in the Palace”), whose popularity swept through
Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Latin America, and the Indian epic, “Jodhaa Akbar” (2008), winner of multiple international and domestic awards. This representation breaks from past cinematic portrayals of strong female figures who are disappointed or abandoned by the men in their lives, who are either weak or authoritarian or both, leading the women to descend into madness, perversion, or destitution.
Such portrayals of strong Asian femininity and supportive Asian masculinity reflect a return to, not departure from, a longstanding tradition of complementarity and complexity in the region.
Furthermore, these revived understandings of identity bear significant implications for the future of world politics.
10:00-10:15 BREAK
10:15-11:45 SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS
Panel 1: Race Making, Indigeneity and the State
Maple Leaf Room
· Yasmeen Abu-Laban & Abigail B. Bakan. “Indigeneity and the State: The Case of Israel/Palestine.”
· Sarah Jamal. “Resistance of/to the Body: A Palestinian Woman’s Struggle in a Racialized Camp.”
· Stephen Sheps. “Racialization, Development and Risk Management: Palestinians and Israelis.”
· Chair: Makere Stewart-Harawira, Educational Policy Studies, U of Alberta.
Panel 2: Racial Thinking and Science
Glacier Room
· Lorraine Halinka Malcoe. “Racial Thinking in Population Research on Racial/Ethnic Health Inequalities: 21st Century Scientific Racism?”
· N. Ernest Khalema. “Embodiment of ‘Race’ and Colorism in Public Health and Epidemiological Discourses: Engaging Publics and Hegemonies.”
· Amanda Perry. “Abolitionist Statistics: The Ethics, Effects, and Affect of Numbering the Slave Trade.”
· Chair: Rosslyn Zulla, University of Alberta
Panel 3: Race/Culture / Humour / Resistance
Aurora Room
· Phillip S.S. Howard. “Too easily offended?: Racial Humour and Strategic Whiteness.”
· Maki Montapanyane. “Capitalizing on Multiculturalism: Reading the Success of Canadian Comedian Russell Peters.”
· Humera Javed. “From homo monstrous to homo sapiens – Muslim comedians using humour as a tool of resistance and recovery.”
· Matthew Dorrell. “Waterboarding White People: The Elision of Race in Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother.”
· Chair: Janki Shankar, University of Calgary
Panel 4: Interrogating Multiculturalism Post September 11
Prairie Room
· Tania Das Gupta. “Re-visiting the politics of multiculturalism and citizenship in post 9-11 Canada.”
· Alnoor Gova. “The Impact of Racial Profiling of Muslims via Post 9/11/01 Security Measures in Canada; Findings and Conclusions of the 2007 MARU/UBC Law Faculty Study.”
· Hasan Alam. “The Problem with Awareness, And a Paranthetical Comment on Time: A Close Examination of the Canadian Islamic Cultural Expo Project.”
· Chair: Zenobia Jamal, ZENEV Consulting
11:45-1:00 LUNCH & ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Light lunch provided.
1:00-2:30 SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS
Panel 5: Producing Otherness: Race, Religion and Alterity
Glacier Room
· Jasmin Zine. “Race, Religion and Securitization: Islamist Youth Radicalism and the Imperial Roots of ‘Home Grown Terror’.”
· Mitra Rastegar. “Liberal Tolerance and the Exceptional Muslim.”
· Daphne Jeyapal. “Regarding the Protests of Others.”
· Pedro F. Marcelino. “Excluding the Other within: deconstructing racial blindness, and exclusion in Cape Verde.”
· Chair: Fatima Jaffer, University of British Columbia
Panel 6: Disposable Bodies: Race, Violence and the Media
Aurora Room
· Yasmin Jiwani. “Disposable Bodies: Race, Femicide and the Reporting in the Pickton Trial.”
· Sorouja Moll. Counter Memorials: Transforming the Framework in ‘520’ and the Missing White Girl Syndrome.”
· Corinne Mason. “The Kingston Mills Murder and the Construction of ‘Honour Killings’ in the Canadian Media.”
· Chair: Lara Fenton, University of Alberta
Panel 7: Racism, Violence and the State
Prairie Room
· Sedef Arat-Koç. “Exclusionary States and Imploding Democracies: Political Citizenship in a Time of Neoliberalism and Endless War.”
· Sourayan Mookerjea. “The Wretched of the Multitude: Racism, the Spectacular State and Accumulated Violence.”
· Tejwant K. Chana. “Decolonization?! Examining the core-periphery persistence in contemporary neo/colonial struggles and the ‘new racism’ within the political economy of ‘neoliberal racism’.”
· Chair: Sunera Thobani, University of British Columbia
Panel 8: Negotiating Race, Space and Academe
Maple Leaf Room
· Narda Razack. “Sleeping with the enemy and/or giving up research? Navigating administration through the lens of postcolonial and critical race theory.”
· Satwinder Bains. “Silent voices: race-making in academic corridors.”
· Carol Schick. “Just Tell Me What to Do: Teacher Education and the Control of Bodies.”
· Kamran Shaikh. “Identity Formation in Academe.”
· Chair: Sherene Razack, University of Toronto
2:30-2:45 BREAK
Coffee and tea provided
2:45-4:15 SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS
Panel 9: Resisting Culture, Imperialism and Colonial Imaginaries
Maple Leaf Room
· Sitara Thobani. “Colonial Imaginaries and the Devadasi Dancer: Race, Gender and the Formation of a Colonial Identity.”
· Chandni Desai. “Analyzing Homeland Hip Hop from Turtle Island to Palestine.”
· May Al-Fartousi & Dolana Mogadine. “Analyzing the Media’s Images of Muslim Women Wearing Burka.
· Tabassum F. Ruby. “When Saving Muslim Women Marks Canada as Civilized, Would Their Rights Be Protected?”
· Chair: Yasmin Jiwani, Concordia University
Panel 10: Representing Queerness/ Queering Representations
Glacier Room
· Dean Spade. “Empirically Queer?: Race, Gender, Standardized Data Collection and Nation-Making.”
· Nisha Eswaran. “Representing ‘Culture’: Queer Racialized Subjectivity and the Problem of Liminality.”
· Chair: Gloria Filax, Athabasca University
Panel 11: Race, Space, Citizenship
Aurora Room
· Syeda Nayab Bukhari. “Transnational Migration of South Asian Women, Empowering or Disempowering: Case of Pakistani Women Immigrants to Canada.”
· Shana Almeida. “Race in Democratic Spaces: The Politics of Racial Embodiment in the City of Toronto.”
· Tod Duncan. “Becoming-Citizen: Histories of the Internment and the Discourse of Japanese Canadian Citizenship.”
· Donna Jeffery. “Race and the Environmentally Aware Social Worker.”
· Chair: Nermin Allam, University of Alberta
Panel 12: Settler Literacies and Decolonizing Knowledge
Prairie Room
· Mrinalini Greedharry. “Policing the postcolonial classroom; the institutional limits of teaching anti-colonialism’.”
· Ujju Aggarwal. “Public Education in the U.S.: Ketchup, Standards, and Neoliberal Adaptability.”
· Araceli Frias. “(Dis)connecting from the Matrix: Reflections of a Cultural Studies Doctoral Student on the Path to Decolonization.”
· Chair: Rosslynn Zulla, University of Calgary (Edmonton)
4:20-6:00 Plenary – Representations of Race and Indigeneity in Art, Literature and the Academy
Maple Leaf Room
· Steven Loft. “The Group of Who?... Creating an Indigenous Art History” (Trudeau National Visiting Fellow, Ryerson University, Scholar-in-Residence, Ryerson Gallery and Research Centre)
· Clare Bradford. “Indigeneity and Australian Children’s literature: The Politics of Race” (Trudeau Fellow, Deakon University, Australia & Visiting Professor, University of Winnipeg)
· Emma LaRocque. “When the Other is Me in the Academy: Deconstructing the Master Narrative.” (Professor of Native Studies, University of Manitoba)
· Chair: Janine Brodie, FRSC, Trudeau Fellow, and Canada Research Chair, Political Economy and Social Governance, University of Alberta
Co-Sponsored by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
Steven Loft’s Abstract: As Aboriginal curators, theorists and art historians, our function lies in creating a nexus for critical discussions of indigenous visual and material culture, identifying the place of contemporary Aboriginal artistic production in defining Indigenous presence socially, politically and culturally that take into account differing forms, aesthetic processes, cultural symbologies and histories. It
rejects the categorizing of indigenous art in catch all western canons such as ‘post modernism’ and breaks down the false boundaries that have been created by so called experts. As we develop a new language of art history that is located in indigenous cultures, we must create radical, critical and culturally dynamic discourses that respond to, and engage with, an Indigenous cultural sovereignty.
Clare Bradford’s Abstract: By examining texts for children it is possible to discern what adults hope and fear. This paper tracks some of the shifting politics of race in Australia by considering a range of children's books from colonial to contemporary times. It focuses on how concepts of citizenship and nationhood inform texts by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian authors and illustrators
Emma Larocque’s Abstract: To be Native and to read White colonialist writing is to be placed in a war zone of images and feelings. To be Native and to read White literature is to walk a long journey of alienation. To be a Native intellectual is to wrestle with ideas, images and words that attack our humanity.
The assault on Native humanity is embedded in western-centered academia, namely, through the key master narrative which I have long ago called ‘the civ/sav dichotomy’. The Civ/Sav doctrine permeates Canadian culture and like an uncontrolled wildfire, has raged on long enough, all the while burning into the hearts and minds of Aboriginal peoples. All intellectuals and academics are called upon to extinguish this super myth because its essence is racist.
6:15-8:30 RECEPTION & BOOK LAUNCH
Hors d’Oeuvres provided, Cash bar
SUNDAY, 10 0CT0BER 2010
8:00- REGISTRATION
Continental breakfast provided
8:30-9:30 Keynote Address
Maple Leaf Room
Introduction: Dr. Lahoucine Ouzgane, University of Alberta
Keynote: “A ‘Devil Theory’ Of Islam.”
By: Mustapha B. Marrouchi (Rogers Fellow in Post-colonial Literature, Department of English, University of Nevada-LV).
Abstract: The history of trying to come to terms with the somewhat surreal (or at least constructed) Islam and its people who have become “enemy people” has always been marked by crisis and conflict, rather than by calm and mutual exchange. Then there is the added factor now of the cyberspace, ever on the lookout for a quick snapshot that will tell us in what way Islam, as if it were one giant entity, is a “degenerate” religion. In fact, it has become an (im)possible story to tell. Simplified and degraded, it continues to fuel anger and even rage in the West—a West that is deployed literally all over the globe. Even so, to understand anything about human history, it is necessary to see it from the point of view of those who made it, not to treat it as a packaged commodity or as an instrument of aggression. Alas, this is the world we live in today! Its colors have a loathsome pastel quality, like Malls, which reflect the bad taste of infantile mass production on the other side the cultural divide; the bloody physical violence and counter-violence (of the letter) that pervade our daily life. If there is aesthetic pleasure here, it is that of a syrupy nausea that repeats on you; so that the end of the world has some of the cleansing, bracing effect of sand and waste landscape, of the seashore. For now, though, one may be tempted to ask: Is religion not itself ideology and who will recount the pleasures of pain at the end of the day?
9:35-11:00 SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS
Panel 13: Technologies of (Mis)Representations and Resistance
Glacier Room
· Agustin Goenaga Orrego. “Struggles for Recognition in the Postcolony: The Zapatista Uprising and Narcocultura.”
· Melissa Stephens. “We Are the World and You Are the Disaster: Text Messaging, Haiti Disaster Relief, and the Cultural Capital of Racialized Suffering in American Music.”
· Anne Porter. “Neoliberal Reconfigurations of ‘Literacy as White Property’: The Bush-era ‘Advancing Global Literacy’ Campaign.”
· Prabhsharanbir Singh. “Rethinking Technology as a Trojan Horse: Colonialism, Technology and Racialization of the Colonized.”
· Chair: Lara Fenton, University of Alberta
Panel 14: Anti-Racism, Feminism and Decolonisation
Aurora Room
· Benita Bunjun. “Discourses of Entitlement and Power Relations within a Feminist Organization.”
· Carol Lynne D’Arcangelis. “Theorizing the dynamics of white feminist settler subjectivity in solidarity efforts.”
· Dana Olwan. “Between Ontario Feminists and Quebec Secularists: Muslim Women in Canadian Racial Logic.”
· Amina Jamal. “Islamist Women: What’s Race Got to Do With It?”
· Chair: Aliya Jamal, Edmonton Community Member
Panel 15: Settler Society & Indigenization
Prairie Room
· Johnny Mack. “Hoquotist: Steadying Through Story.”
· Mike Burton. “Identity and the Indian Act.”
· Shalene Jobin Vandervelde. “Re-Constituting Indigeneity through a Dialectic of Double and National Consciousness.”
· Chair: Priscilla Campeau, Athabasca University
11:05-12:30 SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS
Panel 16: Race and the Law
Glacier Room
· Frank Collington King, Jr. “The Criminalization of the Black Body: Foucault, The Coffle and the Spectacle of Criminalblackman.”
· Sarah Pemberton. “Imprisonment as state racism: criminal justice policy in the UK and US.”
· Delia D. Douglas. “White Canada Forever? The Fatal Complacency of the Law’: Response to Racism.”
· Peter O. Nwosu. “Context Matters. No Race or Color-Blindness: Toward a Redefinition and Application of the Concept of Fairness and Justice in the Modern State.”
· Chair: N. Ernest Khalema, University of Calgary
Panel 17: Racialization, Gender, Migration and Labour
Aurora Room
· Maria Veronica G. Caparas. “Dissecting the International Human – Social Capital Through Critical Lenses.”
· Habiba Zaman. “Naturalized Social Inequality via Racialized and Gendered Immigrant Labour: Fact or Faction in Canada?”
· Carolina Alvarado Zuniga. “Mexican Agricultural Migrant Workers and H1N1: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Media’s Discursive Racialization of Migrant Bodies.”
· Chair: Rosslynn Zulla, University of Calgary
Panel 18: Settler/Colonial Discourses and Neoliberal Subjectivity
Prairie Room
· Malissa Phung. “Are People of Colour Settlers Too?”
· Lynda Lange. “A Colonial Discourse of Fear in the Present.”
· Nadine Attewell. “‘Colonization in Reverse’: Britishness, Indigeneity, White Supremacy.”
· Beenash Jafri. “Privilege vs Complicity: Situating Racialized People in Relation to Indigenous Self-Determination Struggles.”
· Chair: Zenobia Jamal, ZenEv Consulting, Edmonton
12:30-:1:00 LUNCH
A Light lunch will be provided
1:05--2:30 Closing Plenary – Race, Terror and The State of Exception
Maple Leaf Room
· Sherene Razack, “Canada’s Afghan Detainee Torture Scandal: How Stories of Torture Define the Nation” (OISE/University of Toronto).
· Sunera Thobani, “Race, Sovereignty and The State of Exception” (Women and Gender Studies, University of British Columbia).
· Mustapha Marrouchi (Rogers Fellow in Post-colonial Literature, University of Nevada-LV)
· Chair: Mojtaba Mahdavi, Political Science, University of Alberta.
Sherene Razack’s Abstract: On April 23, 2007, the Globe and Mail reported that 30 face to face interviews with Afghan prisoners detained by Canadian soldiers and then sent to Kandahar jails run by Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security revealed that torture was rampant and that Canadian Forces were unlikely to be ignorant of it. Torture, either doing it or facilitating it, as in the rendition of detainees post 9/11 to places where they will be tortured, provides Western states such as Canada with membership in the fraternity of ‘white nations’, led by the United States, who wage a ‘war on terror’. As several analysts have pointed out, notably Phillipe Sands, President Bush was in direct contact with the room in which torture took place in the case of Mohammed al-Qahtani and the secretary of state Donald Rumsfeld personally authorized torture techniques (Sands, 2008). Torture has thus been central to the ‘war on terror.’ Importantly, as Elaine Scarry has argued, since there is an absolute prohibition on torture in international law, the Bush regime’s authorizing of torture announced contempt for the rule of law and marked legally authorized lawlessness as the key feature of the ‘war on terror’ (Scarry, 2010). When the Canadian state acquiesces to torture, we declare ourselves to be a part of this political community and, simultaneously, we expel Afghans (among others) from it. I read Canadian responses to the torture of Afghan detainees through the 1993 incidents and argue that the tracks have long been laid for Canadians to understand their participation in the ‘New World Order’ as a Northern nation, a member of a fraternity of white nations, obliged to discipline and keep in line a chaotic Third World. Violence, of which torture is one manifestation, has a central role to play in this narrative about an apocryphal encounter between the civilized and the uncivilized.
Sunera Thobani’s Abstract: Much of the current analysis of the War on Terror draws upon Giorgio Agamben’s theory of the state of exception to examine the relation between the state, violence and the rule of law. The Italian philosopher draws upon Michel Foucault’s theory of biopower and re-reads this in relation to the classical Greek period to theorize sovereign power. Agamben argues that the sovereign – who has the power to determine the limits of the law through the state of exception - paradoxically stands both inside and outside the law. The paradox of sovereignty is such that the sovereign’s determination of the state of exception (in which the rule of law is no longer applicable) binds it inextricably to the juridical order. Further, Agamben argues that the state of exception, exemplified for him by the concentration camp, has now become the rule. My presentation makes the case that despite Agamben's refrain from substantive engagement with critical race and third world theories of sovereignty, law and international relations, the question of race haunts his theory of the state of exception. Drawing upon these neglected critical traditions, and using salient examples from the War on Terror, I discuss how the state of exception and ‘bare life’ are shaped by distinct forms of colonial relations and processes of racialization.
2:30-3:00 CLOSING CEREMONY
Maple Leaf Room
KEYNOTE BIOS
CLARE BRADFORD
Biography: Clare Bradford is Professor of Literary Studies at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. She has published more than fifty essays and book chapters on children´s literature. Her books include Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children´s Literature (2001), which won both the Children´s Literature Association Book Award and the International Research Society for Children´s Literature Award; Unsettling Narratives: Postcolonial Readings of Children´s Literature (2007); and New World Orders in Contemporary Children´s Literature: Utopian Transformations (2009)(with Mallan, Stephens and McCallum). Dr Bradford is the first International Trudeau Fellow and during 2010 is working at the University of Winnipeg.
MARIA CAMPBELL
Biography: Maria Campbell is an Elder, writer, playwright, film maker and teacher. She started her career in 1973 when she published her first book Halfbreed. Since then Campbell has published People of the Buffalo: How the Plains Indians Lived (1976), Riel’s People (1978), The Book of Jessica: A Theatrical Transformation (1982), co-authored with actor/playwright Linda Griffiths, and Stories of the Road Allowance People (1995), which translates oral stories into print. She has also written four children’s books including Little Badger and the Fire Spirit (1977). Halfbreed (1973) continues to influence and inspire generations of Indigenous men and women. Her work has been translated and published worldwide, including versions in German, Chinese, French and Italian.
L.H.M. LING
Biography: Lily H.M. Ling is an Associate Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs at The New School in New York City. She holds a PHD and M.S. in Political Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in Political Science from Wellesley College. Dr. Ling’s research interests include democracy in international relations, critical security studies, transcultural politics and postcolonial discourses (race/gender/ class/culture), modalities of transnationalism, ethnographies of knowledge production and international development practice, and emerging regional economies. Her geocultural area of interest centers on East, Southeast, and South Asia and its relations with the West. Her books include Postcolonial International Relations: Conquest and Desire between Asia and the West (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) and Transforming World Politics: From Empire to Multiple Worlds (2009), co-authored with Anna M. Agathangelou, York University. Dr. Ling's publications have appeared in International Feminist Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Review, Journal of Peace Research, Millennium, positions: east asia cultures critique, Review of International Political Economy, Review of Politics, among others, as well as various anthologies.
ANGELA P. HARRIS
Biography: Angela P Harris is a Professor of Law and on the Executive Committee of the Centre for Social Justice at the University of California-Berkeley. For the academic year 2009-2010 she is the University of Buffalo Law School’s Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy Distinguished Scholar. Dr. Harris holds a J.D. (1986) and M.A. (1983) from the University of Chicago and B.A. from the University of Michigan (1981). Her fields of research and teaching are in the areas of critical race theory, feminist legal theory and criminal law. Her publications include Race and Races: Cases and Resources for a Diverse America (with Juan Perea, Richard Delgado and Stephanie Wildman) (2000)) and Gender and Law: Theory, Doctrine, Commentary (with Katherine Bartlett) (1998)). She is also the author of, among other writings, “Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory,” 42 Stanford Law Review 581 (1990); “Embracing the Tar-Baby: LatCrit Theory and the Sticky Mess of Race,” 85 California Law Review 1585 (1997) (with Leslie Espinoza), and Gender and Law: Theory, Doctrine, Commentary (with Katherine Bartlett, 1998). Before joining the Boalt faculty in 1988, Angela Harris served as a law clerk to Judge Joel M. Flaum of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, and as an attorney in the San Francisco office of Morrison & Foerster. She was a visiting professor at Stanford Law School in 1991, Yale Law School in 1997 and Georgetown Law Center in 2000. In 2003 Harris received the Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction, an annual award that honors a Boalt Hall professor who has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to teaching. She also received the 2003 Mathew O. Tobriner Public Service Award, an annual prize that recognizes Bay Area law school professors for their commitment to academic diversity and for mentoring the next generation of lawyers.
TRACEY LINDBERG
Biography: Professor Tracey Lindberg is Cree and Métis from northern Alberta. She is an associate professor in Indigenous Education at Athabasca University and a lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa. A graduate of the University of Saskatchewan College of Law, she is the first Aboriginal woman in Canada to complete her graduate law (LLM) degree at Harvard University. She is thought to be the first Aboriginal woman to receive a doctorate in law from a Canadian University as well, having received the Governor General’s Award in 2007 upon convocation for her dissertation Critical Indigenous Legal Theory – joining a long list of distinguished recipients of GG Awards including Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Kim Campbell, Robert Bourassa and Gabrielle Roy. An award winning scholar, Professor Lindberg writes and publishes in areas related to Indigenous law, Indigenous governance, Indigenous women and Indigenous education. One of her most recent publications is a co-edited book, Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colony (with Robert J Miller, Larissa Behrendt, Tracey Lindberg and Jacinta Ruru (2010).)
STEVEN LOFT
Biography: Steven Loft is a Mohawk of the Six Nations. He is a curator, writer and media artist. In 2010, he was named Trudeau National Visiting Fellow at Ryerson University in Toronto, where he is continuing his research in Indigenous art and aesthetics. Formerly, he was the first Curator-In-Residence, Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada. While there he curated exhibitions including Back to the Beginning: Indigenous Abstraction and Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal artists (both currently touring) among others. Previously, he was the Director/Curator of the Urban Shaman Gallery (Winnipeg) Canada´s largest Aboriginal artist run public gallery, Aboriginal Curator at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and Artistic Director of the Native Indian/Inuit Photographers´ Association. He has written extensively on Indigenous art and aesthetics for various magazines, catalogues and arts publications. Loft co-edited Transference, Technology, Tradition: Aboriginal Media and New Media Art, published by the Banff Centre Press in 2005. This book of essays by artists, curators, and scholars frames the landscape of contemporary Aboriginal art, the influence of Western criticism and standards, and the liberating advent of inexpensive technologies including video and online media.
EMMA LAROCQUE
Biography: Emma LaRocque is a scholar, writer, poet, and a professor in the Department of Native Studies, University of Manitoba. She holds a BA in Communications and English from Goshen College, an MA in Peace Studies from AMBS; an MA in History from U of Manitoba and a PhD in Interdisciplinary History, English and Women’s Studies from Manitoba. Dr. LaRocque is a co-founder and Executive member of Manitoba Studies in Native History. She is a 2005 recipient of an Aboriginal Achievement Award. Dr. LaRocque specializes in colonization and its impact on Native/White relations, particularly in the areas of cultural productions and representation. Her current research projects focuses on the development of an Aboriginal literary theory and negotiating indigeneity and post-coloniality. She continues to research colonial interference and Aboriginal resistance strategies in the areas of literature, historiography, representation, identity, gender roles, industrial encroachment on Aboriginal (Indian and Métis) lands and resources, and governance. She has written numerous scholarly and popular articles on images of ‘Indians’ in the media and marketplace, Canadian historiography, Native literature, education, racism, and violence against women. Her poetry has appeared in national and international journals and anthologies. Professor LaRocque is the author of Defeathering The Indian (1975); When the Other is Me: Native Resistance Discourse, 1850-1990 (2010); and co-editor, Across Cultures/Across Borders: Canadian Aboriginal and Native Literature (2010).
MUSTAPHA B. MARROUCHI
Biography: Mustapha Marrouchi is currently the Rogers Fellow is Post-colonial Literature in the Department of English Literature at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. He received his Licence, Maîtrise, and DEA degrees from the Université de Provence (France), and his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Dr. Marrouchi has taught at the University of Toronto and the University of Lethbridge in Canada, the University of Tunis I (Tunisia), Hannover Universität, Brunshweig Universität (Germany), and Louisiana State University. In 2006, he was given the James L. Kinneavy Award. Dr. Marrouchi’s publications include Edward Said at the Limits (2004) and Signifying with a Vengeance (2002). He edited Algeriad: Colonialism, Islamism, Terrorism (West Chester University Press, 2003) and has written widely on Islam, terrorism, African-American literature, Arabic literature, theory, colonial discourse, couscous, war, and soccer. His essays have been translated into Catalan, Urdu, and Arabic and his writing has appeared in a variety of journals including Boundary 2, Texte, College Literature, Journal of African Philosophy, JAC, The Dalhousie Review, Akhbar al-Adab, Ariel, The Southern Review, Countercurrents, Globalcomment. A frequent public speaker, he has voiced his opinion on the invasion of Iraq, terrorism, fundamentalism, torture, injustice. Most recently, Dr. Marrouchi has submitted a manuscript, The Delights of the Margin, which documents the value, surplus, and management of subculture and argues that this way of telling and/or seeing challenges and keeps the core—wherever that may be—in check. He is also editing a collection of essays tentatively titled Embargoed Literature: Arabic. Dr. Marrouchi is currently working on a book he calls Unspeakable Things Spoken at Last as well as on an essay which examines The Clash of Ignorance between the East, the West, and the Rest.
PATRICIA A. MONTURE
Biography: Professor Patricia A. Monture is a citizen of the Mohawk Nation, Grand River Territory (near Brantford, Ontario). She is mother, sister, and auntie. She is a full professor in the Department of Sociology, where she teaches in the area of Aboriginal justice. Trisha was educated as a lawyer in Ontario and has graduated from the University of Western Ontario (BA, Sociology), Queen’s University (LL.B) and Osgoode Hall Law School (LL.M), and holds honorary LL.D degrees from Athabasca University (2008) and Queen’s University (2009). From 1989 to 1994, Professor Monture taught in Canadian law schools. In 1994, she joined the Department of Native Studies at the University of Saskatchewan as an associate professor. She was granted tenure in 1998 and promoted to full professor in 1999. From 2001 to 2004 in addition to her teaching responsibilities, she was Special Advisor to the Dean of the College of Arts and Science at the University of Saskatchewan on Indigenous Initiatives and Academic Coordinator of Aboriginal Justice and the Criminology Program. She also has advised several Aboriginal organizations including the Assembly of First Nations and the Native Women's Association of Canada. Professor Monture is the author of a number of important works, including: Thunder in My Soul: A Mohawk Woman Speaks (2003) and Journeying Forward, Dreaming First Nations Independence (2001), and co-editor (with Patricia McGuire), First Voices: An Aboriginal Women’s Reader (2009). Professor Monture is also the recipient of a number of awards, including the 2008 Human Rights in Action Award from the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. Her contribution to the advancement of women in the university was recognized with a 2007 Sarah Shorten Award from the Canadian Association of University Teachers.
NARDA RAZACK
Biography: Dr. Narda Razack is an Associate Dean, Faculty in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies and Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at York University. She has extensive experience in administration, research and teaching. She began her tenure at York as the Field Education Director which led to articles and a book Transforming the Field: Critical Anti-racist and Anti-oppressive Perspectives for the Human Services Practicum. She also served as the Graduate Program Director and spearheaded a 2 yr MSW and a PhD program. Dr. Razack co-edited the journal Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict and World Order and is s a co-applicant on a recently awarded CURA, Assets Coming Together for Youth: Linking Research, Policy and Action for Positive Youth Development. She is also a team member on a CIDA funded project, Social Work in Nigeria. She has held many leadership roles - nationally with the Canadian Association of Social Work Education and internationally where she is currently a Board Member of the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and chairs the Task Force on International Exchanges and Research Collaborations for this association. Her research areas include: North-South relations, globalization and international social work, critical race theory and post-colonialism. Dr. Razack is drawing on her current experiences as the Associate Dean, Faculty to add a new dimension to her research – race and equity in administration.
SHERENE RAZACK
Biography: Sherene Razack is professor of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her research and teaching interests lie in the area of race and gender issues in the law. Her courses include ‘Race, Space and Citizenship;’ ‘Race and Knowledge Production’ and ‘Racial Violence and the Law.’ Her most recent book is entitled Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims From Western Law and Politics (2008). She has also published Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism (2004), an edited collection Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping A White Settler Society (2002), Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms (1998, 1999, 2000) and Canadian Feminism and the Law: The Women’s Legal and Education Fund and the Pursuit of Equality (1991).
SUNERA THOBANI
Biography: Sunera Thobani is Associate Professor at the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of British Columbia. Prior to coming to UBC she was the Ruth Wynn Woodward Endowed Professor in Women's Studies at Simon Fraser University (1996-2000). Dr. Thobani was the Lansdowne Scholar in Residence at the School of Social Work, University of Victoria (1997), and the Robert Sutherland Visitor at Queen’s University (2009). Dr. Thobani's academic publications are in journals such as Canadian Woman Studies, Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal, Journal of Canadian Women and the Law, Refuge, Feminist Theory and Race & Class. Her research focuses on globalization, citizenship, migration and race and gender relations. Her book, Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (2007), and her current research projects focus on Gender, Race, Globalization and Media Representations of the War on Terror. Dr. Thobani is also past president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), Canada's then largest feminist organization (1993-1996). The first woman of colour to serve in this position, Ms. Thobani's tenure was committed to making the politics of anti-racism central to the women's movement. She has been invited to help organize and give addresses at numerous international conferences, including the NGO Forum at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China (1996), the First International Women's Conference on APEC in Manila, Philippines (1996), and the National Association of Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority Councillors in Manchester, Britain (1998). She is also a founding member of the Researchers and Academics of Colour for Equity (RACE) network.
ROBERT A WILLIAMS, JR.
Biography: Robert A. Williams, Jr. is the E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law and American Indian Studies and Director of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law in Tucson. An enrolled member of the Lumbee Indian Tribe of North Carolina, Professor Williams received his B.A. from Loyola College (1977) and his J.D. from Harvard Law School (1980). He was named the first Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (2003-2004), having previously served there as Bennet Boskey Distinguished Visiting Lecturer of Law. He is the author of The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest (1990), which received the Gustavus Meyers Human Rights Center Award as one of the outstanding books published in 1990 on the subject of prejudice in the United States. He has also written Linking Arms Together: American Indian Treaty Visions of Law and Peace, 1600-1800 (1997), and is co-author of Federal Indian Law: Cases and Materials (5th ed., with David Getches and Charles Wilkinson) (2004). His most recent book is entitled Like a Loaded Weapon: The Rehnquist Court, Indian Rights and the Legal History of Racism in America, (2005). The 2006 recipient of the University of Arizona Henry and Phyllis Koffler Prize for Outstanding Accomplishments in Public Service, Professor Williams has received major grants and awards from the Soros Senior Justice Fellowship Program of the Open Society Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the National Institute of Justice. He has represented tribal groups before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, and served as co-counsel for Floyd Hicks in the United States Supreme Court case, Nevada v. Hicks (2001 term). Professor Williams has served as Chief Justice for the Court of Appeals, Pascua Yaqui Indian Reservation, and as Justice for the Court of Appeals and trial judge pro tem for the Tohono O’odham Nation.
