Monday, January 14, 2019 10:00am – 11:30am

Dunton 1811

A Family Matter: Citizenship, Conjugal Relationships, and Canadian Immigration Policy offers an interdisciplinary examination of the role family formation plays in both the granting and refusal of Canadian citizenship. In analyzing three different areas of Canada’s immigration law and policy, Gaucher argues that governments have adopted a strict definition of family not only to protect our borders from external threat, but also to reinforce gendered, racialized and sexualized assumptions about the ideal “Canadian family”. In doing so, migrant families are limited in their ability to develop chosen familial networks, a privilege enjoyed by most Canadian-born citizens.

Megan Gaucher is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies at 杏吧原创 University. She has a PhD from Queen’s in Political Studies and prior to coming to 杏吧原创, Megan was an instructor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at Trent University. Her interdisciplinary research interests focus on the intersections between citizenship, family, gender, sexuality and race in Canadian immigration and refugee law and policy. Her current research projects include an analysis of these intersections as they relate to Canada鈥檚 temporary foreign worker programs, an examination of the Canadian state鈥檚 treatment of single male migrants, and an investigation into legislative 鈥渃rackdowns鈥� on birth tourism.

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Date: Monday, November 19 2018

Time: 10:00am – 11:30am

Venue: Dunton 1811

Queer comics readers have always known that the euphoric freedom of the superbody and the suggestive homosociality of superhero friendships furnish abundant raw materials for queer worldbuilding and the pleasures of self-recognition. We just have to squint at them properly. But why do these willful allegorical readings sometimes fail? Why is it that some objects attract, while other repel, the reparative hunger of a queer gaze? What are the limits of the queer reader鈥檚 transformative powers?

This paper revisits the scene of childhood comic reading in a melancholy mood in order to ask how queer theory鈥檚 reparative hermeneutic is complicated by juvenile readers whose sense of their own queerness is precarious or disavowed and by comics whose tacit licensing of queer allegory is confounded by the industry鈥檚 structural homophobia.

Focusing on Marvel鈥檚 Uncanny X-Men and Dazzler series of the early eighties, two series whose 鈥渕utant鈥� metaphor most self-consciously reworked the superhero conceit into an allegory for minoritarian radicalism, it argues that superhero comics of this period are difficult to separate from an affective economy of gay shame. Read in situ, and contra the current vogue for reparative reading, they are as likely to furnish a repressive sexual pedagogy on the virtues of closetedness as to produce a superhero allegory of gay self-acceptance and queer liberation.

Dr. Johnson鈥檚 work focuses on the convergence of serial melodramatic forms with psychoanalysis and queer theory. Dr. Johnson is interested in the affective economies of superhero comics and soap operas, particularly with respect to their perception by queer readers and audiences. Currently Dr. Johnson is the co-investigator on a SSHRC-funded project entitled 鈥淐omic-Cons: An Emerging Urban Media Industry.鈥�

The post November 19th Lecture, Dr. Brian Johnson – Dazzler, Allegory, and Shame: Notes from the Mutant Closet, 1980-1986. appeared first on Feminist Institute of Social Transformation.

On state violence and Black feminist resistance

Robyn Maynard is a Black feminist author, community organizer and public intellectual based in Montr茅al. She has been a part of movements against racial profiling, police violence, detention and deportation for over a decade and has an extensive background in community work. Robyn will be discussing her recent bestselling book Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present (Fernwood 2017).

When: Friday, September 21, 2018 2:30 pm-4:30 pm
Where: Room 2017, Dunton Tower

Free Event, Everyone Welcome Refreshments to follow.
For additional information,  please contact Lana Keon 613-520-6645 or lana.keon@carleton.ca

The post Florence Bird Lecture 2018: Policing Black Lives – Sept. 21st appeared first on Feminist Institute of Social Transformation.