FACULTY OF HUMANITIES

Gender & Social Justice

Students in a lecture hall listening to a lecturer who is slightly out of focus. Students in a lecture hall listening to a lecturer who is slightly out of focus.

Research Symposium

The GSJ program supports a robust series of visiting speakers, community events, panels, and workshops. We sponsor guests from other universities, activist organizations, and community groups, as well as scholars from McMaster, to present their research. In addition to public lectures, GSJ students often have opportunities to meet with symposium guests in a seminar setting for deeper conversation. Each of our Ph.D. diploma students presents their thesis as research-in-progress in the series.

Check the events calendar for listings of our upcoming events and symposium presentations.

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Past Symposium Guests

In the last decade, we have been honoured to host many brilliant Symposium guests, including:

 

 

2018 – 2019

  • Qwo-Li Driskill (Oregon State University): “The Curious Case of Blanket: Cherokee Gender, Sexuality and Missionizing Rhetoric in Cephas, Washburn’s Reminiscences of the Indians”, “Indiginizing Disability Justice, Cripping Anti-Colonial Struggles”
  • Ardath Whynacht (Mount Allison University): “Post-carceral justice in a post-#metoo world? Exploring tensions in community-based rehabilitation and accountability movements”
  • Hannah McGregor (Simon Fraser University): “Feminist Podcasting as Public Scholarship”
  • Tina Wilson, Alise de Bie, Amber Dean (Faculty and Graduate Student Panel): “Rethinking Experience, Community, and Social Justice in Gender Studies, Mad Studies, and Social Work”

 

 

2017 – 2018

  • Rinaldo Walcott (University of Toronto) “Queer Returns: Reflections on Racial Queer Justice and the University”
  • Dylan Robinson (Stó:lo Scholar, Queen’s University): “gather: Decolonizing Writing Forms”, “shxwelítemelh totí:lt: Hungry States of Perception”
  • Alexis Shotwell (Carelton University): “Claiming Bad Kin: Responsibility For a Suffering World”

 

 

2016 – 2017

  • Mel Y. Chen (University of California, Berkeley): “Thinking About Race and Education in a Time of Toxicity”, “A Fraught History of Slowness”
  • Virginia Eubanks (University of New York, Albany): “The Digital Poorhouse: Regulating the Poor in the 21st Century”, “Beyond Big Brother: Data, Discrimination, and Surveillance in our Neighborhoods”
  • Zethu Metabani (University of Cape Town): “RISING in the #Fall: Black Women’s Activism and the Quest for a Decolonized University”
  • Janice Hladki, Jake Pyne, Will Gooding (Faculty and Graduate Student Panel): “RISING in the #Fall: Black Women’s Activism and the Quest for a Decolonized University”
  • Curran Egan, Nisrine Rahal, Sean Kinnear (Faculty and Graduate Student Panel): “Learning Gender in Modern Europe”

 

 

2015 – 2016

  • Maroussia Ahmed (McMaster University): “The Long Road Towards Equity for Women Faculty at McMaster:  A Personal Journey”
  • Eli Claire (Vermont): “The Politics of Story”
  • Christina Baade, Susan Fast, Craig Jennex (Faculty and Graduate Student Panel): “Hearing the Political”
  • National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women
  • Virginia Eubanks (University of New York, Albany)
  • Roshaya Redness, Christien Garcia, Eugenia Zuroski-Jenkins (Faculty and Graduate Student Panel): “QUEER (IN)DIFFERENCES, THEORY, FILM, FICTION DOMESTICITIES AND COSMOPOLITANISMS”
  • Naisargi N. Dave (University of Toronto): “VIBRANT MORPHOLOGIES”
  • Sarah Hunt (Kwagiulth Scholar): “Through the Eyes of Dzunukwa; stories of law and violence”

 

 

2014 – 2015

  • Tavia Nyong’o (New York University): “Accelerating Queerness: New Media, Hypersensitivity, and the Future of Autopoesis”
  • Nancy Worth (McMaster University): “Who We Are at Work: Millenial Women, Identity and the Workplace”
  • Audra Simpson (Columbia University): “The State is a Man: Theresa Spence, Loretta Saunders and the Gendered Costs of Settler Sovereignty in Canada”
  • Cecily Devereux (University of Alberta): “Reproduction Fetishism: Salome, the Maternal Body, and Early Twentieth-Century Erotic Dance”
  • Nancy Fraser (The New School): “Democracy’s Crisis: An Overview”, “Democracy’s Crisis as Capitalist Crisis: On the Political Contradictions of Neoliberalism”
  • Liss Platt (McMaster University): DARK HORSE CANDIDATE (documentary film screening)

 

 

2013 – 2014

  • Becki Ross (University of British Columbia): ”Interrogating Sexual Commerce, Sexual Shame, and Neo-Colonial Tule in Vancouver, 1975-1985”, “Prisoners’ Records from the Colonial Archive and Sex Worker’s Resilience in Vancouver, 1898-1907”
  • Kent Monkman (Cree Artist): Artist Talk
  • Rae Spoon and Ivan Coyote: “Gender Failure”
  • Ann Braithwaite (University of Prince Edward Island): “(Re)Imagining A Field or What I Learned About WGS on the Way to Writing an ‘Intro’ Book”

 

2012 – 2013

  • Jessica Yee (Native Youth Sexual Health): “What is Feminism, For Real?”
  • Nathan Rambukkana, Julie Gouweloos, Melanie Heath (Research Symposium: Faculty/Student Research Panel): “Studying Sexual Minorities:  Some Provocations”
  • Adele Perry ( University of Manitoba): “Moving Targets: Colonial Lives and Canadian Histories”, “Colonial Archives, National Histories and Feminist Research”
  • Jasbir Puar (Rutgers University): “Ecologies: Sex and Disability in the Israeli Occupation of Palestine”, “Post-Intersectional Queer: New Methods for No Future”
  • Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Syracuse University): “Neoliberal Academies and Radical Critique: Reflections on Transnational, Ati-Racist Feminist Practice”

 

 

2011 – 2012

  • Jose Esteban Munoz (New York University): “The Sense of Brown: Ana Mendiete and Vitalism’s After Burn”
  • Grace Fong (McGill University): “Life and Afterlife in Para/texts: Constructing Ling Zhiyuan (1831-52) and her Poetry Collection”
  • Pamela Cross (Lawyer): “Post 2011 Feminist: What Will it Look Like”
  • Chantelle Thauvette, Melinda Gough, Stephanie Balkwill (Research Symposium: Faculty/Student Panel): “Histories of Gender and Literary Production”
  • “Miss Representation” film screening with the YWCA, The Women’s Centre of Hamilton and SACHA
  • Nadine Attewell, Jessie Forsyth, Jennifer Adese (Research Symposium: Faculty/Student Panel): “Spaces Between Us: Gender, Sexuality, Indigeneity”
  • Angela McRobbie (Goldsmiths, University of London): “Feminist, Neoliberalism and Family: Human Capital at Home”
  • Michele Landsberg (Journalist & Social Justice Activist): “Feminism Forward”
  • Cressida Heyes (University of Alberta): “Child, Birth: Representing Pain”
  • Elisabeth Gedge, Lucy Langston, Devon Stilwell (Research Symposium: Faculty/Student Panel): “Feminist (Dis)ability Studies: Genetics and Bioethics”

 

 

2010 – 2011

  • Judith Halberstam (University of Southern California): “From Shadow Feminisms to Gaga Femininities”
  • Veronic Strong-Boag (University of British Colombia): “Negotiating Surrogacy: the Dilemma of Foster Parents”
  • Wendy Brown ( University of California, Berkeley): “Is Equality Secular?”
  • Sara Ahmed (Goldsmith’s, University of London): “Will and WIllfulness; A Cultural Study”, “Diversity Work in Educational Institutions”
  • Sex Workers Event 2 (with Big Susie’s, The Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, Hamilton Artists and Dungeon Divas): “Challenging Our Assumptions”