More pictures to come!

The 9th Annual Critical Race Conference
Compassion, Complicity and Conciliation
The Politics, Cultures and Economies of ‘Doing Good’
Montreal, June 5-7 2009
Concordia and McGill Universities
CALL FOR PAPERS
Global political activism, official apologies, charity, advocacy and solidarity campaigns, ‘rescue’ missions, truth
and reconciliation hearings, private philanthropy, ‘humanitarian’ interventions…. The politics, cultures and
economies of doing good seem to have gained a redemptive, sanctioned and empowering status, which has
elevated actions and actors above critical scrutiny. This conference is aimed at interrogating the politics and
practice(s) of ‘doing good’. It asks: What is defined as ‘doing good’ and how is it tied to constructions of
benevolent others? Who is positioned and empowered to ‘do good’? How is ‘doing good’ historically embedded
and what are some of its foreseen and unforeseen consequences? What does an anti-racist and anti-colonial lens
reveal about past and present humanitarian actions and interventions, and how might it inform present and future
practice(s)? What are the relations between humanitarianism and imperialism? How can these relations be
exposed and meaningfully addressed?
We invite panels and papers from scholars, activists, and researchers whose work engages an antiracist, anticolonial
and anti-imperialist framework. We welcome papers in French.
Topics can include, but are not limited to:
• Truth and reconciliation commissions
• The discourses and politics of apologies
• Dynamics and representations of benevolence
• The politics of humanitarianism
• Geopolitics and ethics in the context of empire, colonial relations and histories of citizenship
• NGOs and the politics of ‘doing good’
• Cultural activism, coalitions and collaborations
• Environmental justice vs conservation
• Hierarchies of ‘doing good’
• Reproducing colonial hierarchies through “change agents”
• Racialized and gendered dynamics of compassion
• Cause-related marketing
• Working across lines of power in solidarity/coalitions
• Problematizing Aid (health, medical, food)
• Exaltations of ‘civil society’
• Academic-activist research partnerships and interventions
• Militarization, occupation and humanitarianism
Deadline for abstracts is March 9th, 2009. Please send a 250-500 word abstract with title, keywords and
institutional affiliation to RACE.Montreal [at] gmail [dot] com, or to Gada Mahrouse, Simone de Beauvoir
Institute, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd West, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8, or Aziz
Choudry, Dept. of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, 3700 McTavish Street, Montreal,
QC, H3A 1Y2.

Award-winning Palestinian American poet and activist Suheir Hammad will be performing in Montreal March 30^th 2009 at 8 p.m. in Club Lambi. Born in Amman, Jordan, in October 1973, Suheir is the daughter of Palestinian refugees. Suheir immigrated to American at the age of five and settled with her family in Brooklyn, NY.

Her publications include the collections “Born Palestinian, Born Black” (1996), “Drops of this Story” (1996), “ZataarDiva” (2006), and, most recently, “Breaking Poems” (2008). Suheir has won numerous awards, including a TONY Award for her performance on Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway (2003), the Van Lier Fellowship (1999), the New York Mills Artists’ Residency (1998), the Morris Center for Healing Poetry (1996), and the Audre Lorde Writing Award from Hunter College (1995, 2000). Her work has been included in numerous anthologies such as “Word: On Being a (Woman) Writer” (2004), “The Poetry of Arab Women” (2000), “Post-Gibran: An Anthology of New Arab-American Writing” (2000), and “The Space Between Our Footsteps” (1998).

Reflecting the ethnically diverse community in which was raised, Suheir poetry weaves together the narratives of Native Americans, Arab/ Arab-Americans, Hispanic Americans and African-Americans. In doing so, Suheir redefines identity as a category unbounded by ethnicity, language or descent. Infusing her poetry with hip-hop beats, Hammad deconstructs the structures of patriarchy and oppression that have relegated visible minorities to the margins of the North American socio-cultural sphere.

Her most recent collection, “Breaking Poems,” was published by Cypher Books and can be purchased through its website: http://www.cypherbooks.org/.

Club Lambi is located at 4465 St-Laurent. Doors open at 7 p.m. The performance is free.

Media contacts:

Deborah Guterman (English): mcgillmessa [at] gmail [dot] com

Rachel Berger (English): rberger [at] alcor [dot] concordia [dot] ca

Yasmine Amor (French): y_amor [at] alcor [dot] concordia [dot] ca

Fabienne Presentey, Meg Leitold, Dolores Chew, Rafeef Ziadeh

Photos: Courtesy of Nahed Mansour

The event FEMINIST RESISTANCE TO ISRAELI APARTHEID : the legacy of Lillian Robinson on Thursday, March 5th  at the Atwater Library was a really powerful panel discussion around the feminist and the palestinian struggle. thanks to Aaron who took the time to record the discussion. you can listen to the Panel and if you would like to hear the questions and the comments that followed the presentations please contact me at  y_amor [at]alcor[dot]concordia[dot]ca and we will upload them for you to listen. Enjoy and thanks again to all the speakers, the organizers, to the public and to the Atwater Library.

Please note that the lecture has been postponed for 6 p.m. – Thanks.

In this lecture, Yvette Taylor will draw upon two research projects Working-class Lesbian Lives: Classes Outsiders, Taylor 2007 and Lesbian and Gay Parents: Securing Social and Educational Capital, Taylor, 2009 to highlight the ways that sexual lives and experiences inevitably intersect with class (dis)advantages.

While much has been written of the dangers of ignoring class in researching and theorizing sexuality, it remains somewhat sidelined and absent in contemporary work on sexualities, having weighty consequences for the understandings and knowledge produced. The academy tends to reproduce a middle-class LGBT experience as universal, negating the ‘queerness’ of working class experience.

Yvette Taylor is a lecturer in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University,

UK. Her publications include Taylor, Y. (2007) Working-class lesbian life: Classed Outsiders. Palgrave Macmillan, Taylor, Y. (2009) Lesbian and Gay Parenting: securing Social and Educational Capital. Palgrave Macmillan and Taylor, Y. (2008) “That’s not really my scene: working-class lesbians in (and out of) place” sexualities11 (5), 523-546. She is currently working on an edited collection (2010) Our Working-Class Lives. Ashgate, and an ESRC funded project “From the Coal Face to the car Park: Intersections of class and gender” (2007-2009).

For more information contact Yasmine Amor :  y_amor[at]alcor[dot]concordia[dot]ca

Barbara Meadowcroft will give a talk on Gwethalyn Graham (1913-65): A Liberated Woman in a Conventional Age

Place:  Westmount Library

4574 Sherbooke St West

Time:   Wednesday February 25

7:00 pm

Gwethalyn Graham was a passionate, socially engaged, and seriously underrated Canadian writer. Her masterpiece Earth and  High Heaven is a romance between a Protestant girl and a Jewish man, which subtly reveals the anti-Semitism in war time Montreal. It was an unexpected bestseller in 1944 and was reprinted to great acclaim in 2005. Gwethalyn, who spent her life fighting for tolerance and racial equality, was passionate about Montreal, her adopted city, and the rights of the Québécois.

Barbara Meadowcroft holds a PhD in Canadian Literature from McGill University. Since 1988 she has been a research associate at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute of Concordia. University. She is the author of Painting Friends: The Beaver Hall Women Painters (1999).

Friday, March 13th 2009

1 p.m.

The Simone de Beauvoir Institute

Concordia University

MU-101

2170 Bishop st. (metro Guy)

Dolores Chew

“Feminism and Multiculturalism in Quebec – an/Other perspective”

Dolores Chew is an historian and teacher. She is a Research Associate at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Chair of the Liberal & Creative Arts Department, Marianopolis College , and a founding member of the South Asian Women’s Community Centre (SAWCC) in Montréal. She will narrate lessons learned from experiences of organizing and the struggle to claim space, legitimacy and challenge dominant constructs of multiculturalism.

For more information:

About the film

Yasmine Amor

514-848-2424 x 2373

y_amor (at) alcor (dot) concordia (dot) ca