We are thrilled to share that , co-edited by Fady Shanouda, Chelsea Temple Jones, and Lisanne Binhammer, is officially out today through Athabasca University Press! Published as part of the Issues in Distance Education series, this collection brings together scholars, educators, poets, and activists who explore how ableism persists in online learning spaces鈥攁nd how we can do better.

Often framed as a tool for inclusion, online education is too frequently designed without the leadership or experiences of disabled, sick, mad, and crip educators and students. This timely volume challenges that gap. Through essays, conversations, interviews, and poetry, contributors reimagine what access could look like when rooted in justice, not just compliance.

In Fady Shanouda鈥檚 own chapter, “Caring Online: A Justice-Oriented Approach to Online Pedagogy” (co-authored with Jenna Reid), we鈥檙e invited to rethink care and connection in virtual classrooms. Rather than positioning access as a checklist or afterthought, the chapter鈥攁nd the book as a whole鈥攑ushes us to center accessibility as a collective and political commitment.

In a time when digital learning is rapidly expanding, is an essential intervention. It expands our collective thinking about disability, design, and education鈥攅specially in spaces where the harms of inaccessibility are too easily hidden behind screens.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Fady Shanouda and the entire editorial team on this powerful and much-needed publication. We look forward to seeing how it informs teaching, organizing, and advocacy in and beyond the academy.

The post Prof. Fady Shanouda’s New Release: Troubles Online: Ableism and Access in Higher Education appeared first on Feminist Institute of Social Transformation.

We are excited to share the launch of , edited by Christina R. Clark-Kazak from the University of Ottawa. Hosted by 杏吧原创 University’s Migration and Diaspora Studies program and the Local Engagement Refugee Research Network (LERRN), this event provides a platform to explore critical new perspectives on forced migration in Canada. This discussion will take place on October 28, 2024 at 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM at 2420R Richcraft Hall, 杏吧原创 University.

The book examines Canada鈥檚 history as a settler state shaped by forced migration and addresses contemporary issues like refugee resettlement, trafficking, and environmental displacement. Contributors, including Amrita Hari, Director of the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation, offer insights into migration policies and lived experiences through diverse disciplinary lenses, with a special focus on intersecting identities such as disability, race, gender, and social class.

Attendees will have the chance to participate in discussions with the editor and contributors and enjoy light refreshments. This comprehensive resource is essential for researchers, practitioners, and anyone interested in understanding Canada’s role in global migration trends. Event discussions will feature Christina R. Clark-Kazak, Amrita Hari, and other notable contributors, with Laura Madokoro serving as discussant.

Registration for this event is limited to 25 attendees. To learn more about the event, please visit: www.carleton.ca/mds/cu_event/book-launch-forced-migration-in-to-canada-from-colonization-to-refugee-resettlement

The post Book Launch Featuring Critical Perspectives on Migration and Contributions from FIST Director Amrita Hari appeared first on Feminist Institute of Social Transformation.

FIST Assistant Professor and Critical Disability Studies scholar, Dr. Fady Shanouda, has a new book chapter titled “” in the Handbook of Disability. Check it out!

Abstract:

The post New Book Chapter by Dr. Shanouda! appeared first on Feminist Institute of Social Transformation.

On March 31, CBC Radio鈥檚 The Secret Life of Canada featured research originally published in The Canadian War on Queers (UBC Press, 2010), the book Patrizia Gentile, Associate Professor in PJIWGS and Human Rights and Social Justice, co-authored with .  

The post Patrizia Gentile鈥檚 Research Featured on CBC Radio appeared first on Feminist Institute of Social Transformation.

Associate Professor, Dr. Xuan Thuy Nguyen has contributed to a new publication entitled “” with her chapter entitled “Critical Disability Studies at the Edge of Global Development: Why Do We Need to Engage with Southern Theory?”

!

“More than a decade after the publication of Living the Edges: A Disabled Woman鈥檚 Reader, the lives of women with disabilities have not changed much. Still Living the Edges provides a timely follow-up that traces the ways disabled women are still on the edges, whether that be on the cutting edge, being pushed to the edges of society, or challenging the edges鈥攖he barriers in their way. This collection brings together the diverse voices of women with various disabilities, both physical and mental, from nations such as Canada, the United States, Australia, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe. Through articles, poetry, essays, and visual art, disabled women share their experiences with employment, relationships, body image, sexuality and family life, society鈥檚 attitudes, and physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. In their own voices, they explore their identity as women with disabilities, showcasing how they continue to challenge the physical and attitudinal barriers that force them to the edges of society and instead place themselves at the centre of new and emerging narratives about disability” (inanna.ca)

The post Prof. Xuan Thuy Nguyen – Chapter in new dis/ability studies book! appeared first on Feminist Institute of Social Transformation.

Ryan Conrad is participating in a book launch event for a new anthology of queer writing about growing up with the AIDS crisis that just came out from .

His contribution is about growing up outside the metropolises and the role film/video/tv played in teaching me about queer HIV/AIDS histories, politics, and survival in the ’80s and ’90s.

There’s an event on Monday November 1st Event details below!

Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing up with the AIDS Crisis

*Ottawa Writers Fest Book Launch!*

Speakers: Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Ryan Conrad, Alexander McClelland, Kate Doyle Griffiths, & Eddie Walker

Date:  Monday November 1, 2021  |  7:30 PM ET

Location: Zoom

Event link:

The post Ryan Conrad book launch – Between Certain Death and Possible Future! appeared first on Feminist Institute of Social Transformation.

Cross-appointment professor, Kelly Fritsch has co-authored “We Move Together”, a new children’s book that “chronicles the experiences of a diverse group of characters as they cleverly negotiate barriers and conflicts that impede their ability to move together. But more than that, We Move Together is a celebration of disability culture, community, and friendship, showing disability as a desirable part of our communities and world”.

Read more about this amazing work here: /fass/story/the-transformative-power-of-moving-together/

The post Dr. Kelly Fritsch co-authors new children’s book about dis/ability justice! appeared first on Feminist Institute of Social Transformation.

Congratulations to our colleague Pat Gentile on the publication of her book “Queen of the Maple Leaf Beauty Contests and Settler Femininity”!  You can order your copy !

Book Description:

As modern versions of the settler nation took root in twentieth-century Canada, beauty became a business. But beauty pageants were more than just frivolous spectacles. Queen of the Maple Leaf deftly uncovers how colonial power operated within the pageant circuit.

In this astute critical investigation, Patrizia Gentile examines the interplay between local or community-based pageants and more prestigious provincial or national ones. Contests such as Miss War Worker, Miss Black Ontario, and Miss Civil Service often functioned as stepping stones to competitions such as Miss Canada. At all levels, pageants exemplified codes of femininity, class, sexuality, and race that shaped the narratives of the settler nation. A union-organized pageant such as Queen of the Dressmakers, for example, might uplift working-class women but immigrant women need not apply. Not unlike sports leagues linked from minor to major, pageants from local to national formed a network that entrenched white settler nationalism in the context of the beauty industrial complex.

Queen of the Maple Leaf demonstrates that these contests are designed to connect female bodies to white, middle-class, respectable femininity and wholesomeness, and that their longevity lies squarely in their capacity to reassert the white heteropatriarchy at the heart of settler societies.

Students, scholars, and researchers will want to add this significant contribution to gender and sexuality studies to their bookshelves, particularly for its insights into settler femininity.(UBC Press)

The post Dr. Patrizia Gentile’s new book is out TODAY! appeared first on Feminist Institute of Social Transformation.

Join us in congratulating our colleague Dr. Katharine Bausch on her new book 鈥淗e Thinks He鈥檚 Down: White Appropriations of Black Masculinities in the Civil Rights Era!  We’re hosting a book launch for her so be sure to Register Here so you don’t miss it!

The end of the Second World War saw a 鈥渃risis of white masculinity鈥� brought on by social change. As a result, several prominent white male pop culture figures sought out and appropriated African American cultural trappings to benefit from what they believed were powerful black masculinities.

In He Thinks He鈥檚 Down, Katharine Bausch reveals the intricate relationships between racialized gender identities, cultural appropriation, and popular culture during the Civil Rights Era. Drawing on case studies from three genres of popular culture 鈥� literature, fashion, and film 鈥� Bausch untangles the ways in which white male artists took on imagined black masculinities in their work in order to negotiate what it meant to be a man in America at this time. Through this negotiation, the power and privilege of whiteness and of masculinity was reinforced. (UBC Press)

The post Katharine Bausch Book Launch! appeared first on Feminist Institute of Social Transformation.

Costa Rica Tourist Brochure

by Nick Ward

The term 鈥減ura vida鈥� is a colloquialism unique to Costa Rica.

The direct translation of pura vida is 鈥減ure life,鈥� and it is meant to express a national ethos of eternal optimism. Costa Ricans use pura vida as a means to say hello, goodbye, thank you and you鈥檙e welcome 鈥� really, it is a sort of phrasing catch-all used for almost any situation. Pura vida is a persistent reminder that no matter the circumstances, life is beautiful and we鈥檙e all fortunate to be enjoying the ride. In fact, uttering pura vida is such a prevalent Costa Rican trait, that most would affirm that the adage is less of a slogan and more of a lifestyle.

This perception of Costa Rica as a laissez-faire, friendly, and optimistic nation certainly bolsters its conventional reputation as a picture-perfect tourist destination. Combine this dispositional repute with the country鈥檚 flush but traversable rain forest, its beautiful beaches on both the Pacific and Caribbean coastline, and its proximity to North America, and it is easy to understand Costa Rica鈥檚 magnetism. Unsurprisingly, the promise of the pure life and beautiful landscape attracts nearly three million cautiously-intrepid pasty-skinned, cargo short wearing tourists annually. Most of whom are quick (again unsurprisingly) to adopt and make liberal use of the aforementioned phrase 鈥減ura vida.鈥�

With all that stated, it is important to remember that pura vida is a contextually pliable term.

In fact, for a significant portion of the many pasty-skinned tourists visiting Costa Rica each year, they are more likely to use the maxim to describe the country鈥檚 vibrant sex industry than to refer to the country鈥檚 beach culture.

Photo Caption: Hotel Del Rey 鈥� The most popular sex tourism hotel in the Gringo Gulch neighbourhood.

In her newly released book, , Women鈥檚 and Gender Studies professor, Dr. Megan Rivers-Moore presents her extensive ethnographic research on the vast and complex sex industry that exists within the neighbourhood known as Gringo Gulch in Costa Rica鈥檚 capital city, San Jose.

鈥淭here are a lot of places in the world viewed as sex tourism hubs, but Costa Rica is unique for many reasons. For example, it鈥檚 proximity to the U.S. and the way the country has been marketed as safe, familiar, and affordable for travelers but also as 鈥渆xotic鈥� and different has made it especially appealing to many middle class and working class men from North America interested in participating in the sex industry,鈥� said Rivers-Moore.

Professor Rivers-Moore attributes a number of factors to the booming market of sex tourism in Costa Rica. For one, the state does not regulate the exchange of money between sex worker and purchaser (though third party involvement such as managers or brothel administrators is illegal). While this lack of state intervention on the industry undeniably plays a massive role as to why sex tourists come to Costa Rica, Rivers-Moore鈥檚 research ascertains that, paramount to attracting sex migrants and tourists is the broad-minded social disposition towards the scene.

鈥淔rom the perspective of the tourists, the state, and the sex-workers themselves, there exists an understanding as to why everybody is there and playing the role they are playing. Each of these players is profiting from the industry in one way or another, they are all using their participation to get ahead. And the stigma that surrounds sex-work in North America, particularly the turn toward criminalizing the sale of sex in many places, including in Canada most recently, is a major motivator for sex tourists who travel to Costa Rica. They are able to participate in the industry without risk of arrest and public shaming. Stigma for them isn鈥檛 a serious issue in Costa Rica, although it certainly is an issue for Costa Rican sex workers, who struggle to hide the source of their income from their families and communities.鈥�

Dr. Megan Rivers-Moore

Rivers-Moore鈥檚 book actively challenges the narrative that most of us reflexively construct in our minds when presented with such a scenario 鈥� that the local sex workers of a Third World, Latin American country are being exploited and taken advantage of by privileged white, North American men.

Instead, Rivers Moore tells a more composite story of the Costa Rican sex tourism scene. 鈥淵ou quickly learn that we can鈥檛 presume to know what exactly is being bought and what is being sold. Often the exchanges have a lot more depth than the transaction of sex for money.鈥�

鈥淢any of the sex workers I interviewed articulated the idea that they viewed themselves also as care workers; believing they were providing a service to humbled white men who had run out of relationship options in their homeland. They took great pride in making these men feel good about themselves, and considered the caring aspects of their work (listening to men talk about their problems, making them feel attractive) was as important, if not more important, than the sex. Similarly, many of the men I met articulated that they view themselves as progressive and take a great deal of pride in treating the women they meet with respect in a culture they view as inherently misogynistic. This is a massive generalization about Costa Rican culture, of course, and one that is based on problematic assumptions and generalizations that are often pretty racist. But it鈥檚 significant that sex tourists want to think about themselves as enlightened and progressive, and some of them are well versed in feminism. Barry, a tourist from Virginia who took on a second job in order to fund periodic trips to Costa Rica, found it important to emphasize 鈥業 really appreciate them. I鈥檓 really glad they鈥檙e here, for me they鈥檙e a godsend. I鈥檓 sure lots of men treat them badly, but I make sure to be kind, to be respectful.鈥欌��

鈥淕iven the nature of sex tourism, there was a lot of talk from both sex workers and their clients about getting the 鈥榞irlfriend experience,鈥� an experience that involves longer periods of time together, talking, listening, and sharing interests. This work involves quite a lot of skill, requiring patience, compassion, and empathy. For example, Virginia, a mother of two who attends secondary school at night, told me 鈥榮ome of them just look for company, they pay for company. I鈥檓 very happy to listen, as long as they pay. I鈥檒l listen to it all. Cry, whatever, as long as you pay.鈥� It is so much more complicated than just sex.鈥�

Rivers-Moore has a long standing academic relationship with Costa Rica. Prof. Rivers-Moore became interested in the country when she moved there after completing high school to spend a year learning Spanish and she was quickly enchanted with the nation鈥檚 considerable charm.

It was during this time in Costa Rica that she first noticed the prevalence of male tourists, but due to the subtle nature of the sex industry, it took her some time to recognize the dynamic at play. Once she understood what was occurring, she became fascinated, and focused much of her post-secondary education and early academic career on this phenomenon. Rivers-Moore completed her PhD at the and upon completion of her degree, she went on to work at the , where she continued her research on a more long term basis before accepting a job at .

This thorough Costa Rican research journey has ultimately led to the release of Gringo Gulch: Sex, Tourism, and Social Mobility in Costa Rica, an ethnographic work that analyzes and decodes the mosaic of race, gender, class, government, and human need and desire in our increasingly borderless world. For Gringo Gulch, Rivers-Moore spent over a year in San Jos茅鈥檚 sex tourism neighbourhood, interviewing tourists, actors of the state, and sex workers to achieve a vivid depiction of what being a player in this game is comprised of. The reader is introduced to a variety of characters from all sides who give their honest account as to why and/or how they participate in the Gringo Gulch scene, and what is taken away from it. 鈥淧eople sometimes assume that sex work is about villains and victims, and I think my work demonstrates that nothing could be further from the truth. It is so important to actually do empirical research and talk to people about their lives, because when we do, we find out that the sex industry is so many things simultaneously: it can be fun, it can be boring. Some people have harrowing experiences, and some find it utterly mundane. I really can鈥檛 emphasize enough how important it is to listen to people鈥檚 own interpretations of their lives and their experiences, without judgment.鈥�

What Rivers-Moore is able to conclude from these characters is that most involved 鈥� the sex workers, the sex tourists and workers of the state 鈥� embrace the industry for their own sake, and use it to climb a social and/or monetary ladder that likely wouldn鈥檛 have been accessible to them without the existence of sex tourism.

By setting the scene in the culture of pura vida and telling us these distinctive stories of individuals (which are sometimes tragic, sometimes empowering and sometimes both), Gringo Gulch: Sex, Tourism, and Social Mobility in Costa Rica is an account of a nuanced social manifestation that helps us to understand the transnational ramifications of sex tourism. On an even broader scale, Gringo Gulch is the analysis of human beings making the most of their own disparate realities in a neoliberal state.

The post appeared first on .

The post Gringo Gulch: Sex, Tourism, and Social Mobility in Costa Rica appeared first on Feminist Institute of Social Transformation.