Loyola International College and the Simone de Beauvoir Institute in collaboration with Inanna Press, the Concordia University Bookstore, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Business and Professional Women of Montreal, and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture
WELCOME YOU
To the book launch of an ecomythological international anthology
Wo(men) and Bears: The gifts of nature, culture and gender revisited. Inanna Press and Education Inc. York University.
Edited by KAARINA KAILO
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
5:00 PM
Room AD-307, Loyola International College
Concordia University, Loyola campus
7141 Sherbrooke Street W., Montreal
There will be food, music and performances
Signing session
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
2:00-4:00 PM
Coop-Bookstore
Recitals by some of the contributors to the anthology and a brief talk by Dr. Kaarina Kailo, Oulu University, Finland, called “Ecomythologies in the service of a more ecologically and socially sustainable future” will precede the book launch. In her talk, Dr. Kailo will address the need for alternatives to the heroic and androcentric white mythologies given the pressures of the global climate change, the financial downturn and the serious species- and nature-related crises. Kaarina Kailo brings attention with her international anthology to the fact that we need to replace the master narratives with Indigenous and alternative narratives of regeneration, life-oriented values promoting an ethic of care and ecosocial responsibility. The narratives of women marrying bears are the shared ecospiritual mother tongue of numerous Native and non-Native peoples in the North for all their differences. They even suggest the existence of a Bear Religion preceding patriarchal religions and offer traces of a worldview that was relatively gender-balanced, even matricentric in parts of the world, and based on a greater interspecies interconnectedness than is the case with the neo-conservative epitomy of capitalist patriarchy.
Kaarina Kailo was a former principal and associate professor of Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University. She has a Doctorate from the University of Toronto in comparative literature and has held numerous positions in women’s studies. Kailo was the first professor of women’s studies and multiculturalism at Oulu University, Finland. She has published over 70 articles and has edited or co-edited numerous books on issues ranging from gendered violence, ecofeminism, spirituality, Indigenous women’s issues in North America and Finland, to the gift economy and globalization, feminist politics of peace and healing, green postcolonial theory and the literature of Northern women.
Please call to confirm your presence at: 514-848-2424 ext. 2125
Please note that the Nov. 19 launch of Kaarina’s book will be held at AD 307 at 5PM.
Thank you,
sima