Seminar
Challenging the Stereotypes, Changing the Statistics
For March, Anti-Racism Lab speaker series welcomes Dr Carl James, Jean Augustine chair in Education, Community and Diaspora in the Faculty of Education. Dr James' talk will take place online on March 21, 2023, from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM MST (GMT -7).
To sign up for the event, please use this link.
Abstract
Data of OECD countries – including Canada – indicate that first-generation students are increasingly the ones entering today’s postsecondary institutions. With reference to the stories of some first-generation students who attended York University in 2004 where they participated in an access program that Leanne Taylor and I administrated, this presentation will discuss their stories of what university education meant for them, their struggles and strategies accessing and navigating university, their lives since university (we did follow-up interviews with 9 of them in 2020), and how their university experiences inform the legacy they are passing onto their children. I will also reflect on how the stories of these first-generation students are being engaged by readers such as teachers and graduate students with whom I am working.
Full Bio
Carl James holds the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora in the Faculty of Education; and is also the Senior Advisor on Equity and Representation in the Office of the Vice President of Equity, People and Culture at York University. His research interests include examination of the educational, social, and occupational experiences, opportunities and achievements of Black and other racialized Canadians – noting the ways in which societal and institutional structures mediate their lived realities. He is the 2022 Killam Laureate for Social Sciences awarded by Canada Council for the Arts. His most recent publications include: “Colour Matters”: Essays on the Experiences, Education and Pursuits of Black Youth and First Generation Student Experiences in Higher Education: Counterstories coauthored with Leanne Taylor (Fall 2022).
Call for Papers
Dialogues on decolonizing the university: Racialized gender transnational learning
Calls to decolonize the university have become commonplace in the academy over the last decade. There is now a substantial body of literature discussing the concept and we see the business of decolonization explored in different areas and capacities including, in knowledge production, across disciplines, curriculum, methodologies, teaching/learning and language etc. Still there remains room for more diverse and divergent opportunities for exploring gender as a critical category of decolonial thought. This transnational edited collection seeks to encourage a global discussion of the role that gender, race and intersectionality broadly, can play in strengthening the decolonization project within universities. While each chapter will focus on decolonization, racialization and gender in situ, the collection as a whole will also look at decolonization in universities as a global project to draw out its enduring racialised gender entanglements, complexities and contradictions. The overall aim of the edited collection is to engage transnational learning on how, to/with who and why decolonizing the university matters and the necessity to think through racialized gender in decolonization efforts in terms of knowledge, policy and practical interventions.
Abstracts may be submitted on any topic related to this theme. These topics include (but are not limited to) the following:
Feminism and decoloniality
Unpacking intersectionality in decolonial research
Inclusive, anti-racist, and anti-colonial education
Students’ role in decolonizing
Social movements/social justice/activism
Restraints and opportunities in institutional contexts
Decolonizing gender
The role social identities play in decolonizing
Interactions between decolonial and feminist thought
Black feminism
Black Consciousness/Pan Africanism
Strategies or praxes for decolonizing
Defining decolonization in different contexts
Racism, gender and violence
We invite submissions of articles of 6000-7000 words (including references) on any aspect of the topics outlined above. We welcome varied and even conflicting gendered decolonial perspectives expressed through a range of theoretical, empirical, methodological, activist, artistic, pedagogical interventions, auto-ethnographic reflections or experiments of decolonization as offerings. We encourage contributions from scholars at all levels (from early career to senior).
The book will be edited by: Dr Alude Mahali (Chief Research Specialist, Inclusive Economic Development, Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa) and Professor Shirley Anne Tate (Professor and Canada Research Chair Tier 1 in Feminism and Intersectionality, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, Canada)
Abstracts of no more than 250 words and a short biographical note (not more than 100 words) should be sent to the editors directly at: amahali@hsrc.ac.za and shirleya@ualberta.ca
Submission deadline for abstracts: 30 April 2023
Decisions regarding acceptance: 31 May 2023
Submission deadline for manuscripts: 1 November 2023
Peer review feedback: 29 February 2024
Revised manuscript submission: 31 July 2024
Edited volume submission: 30 September 2024