Congratulations to Professor Philip Kaisary on the release of his new book, From Havana to Hollywood: Slave Resistance in the Cinematic Imaginary.

Professor Kaisary’s book critically examines how Black agency has been portrayed in cinema, focusing on the stark differences between Hollywood and Cuban cinema. In Hollywood, the representation of Black resistance has often been sidelined, while Cuban filmmakers have placed Black agency at the forefront, challenging dominant narratives of slavery in North America and Europe.

The launch event featured a lively conversation between Philip and special guests Adrian Harewood, Stacy Douglas, and Aubrey Anable, where they delved into the themes of the book and the broader implications of cinematic portrayals of slavery and resistance.

We would also like to extend a special thank you to the wonderful staff at @wisetowncafe for hosting this memorable event!

Philip Kaisary is currently the Ruth and Mark Phillips Professor of Cultural Mediations and an Associate Professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies, the Department of English Language and Literature, and the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art, and Culture at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University. He is also the author of The Haitian Revolution in the Literary Imagination: Radical Horizons, Conservative Constraints.

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In his March 2021 blog post for Verfassungsblog, , Department of Law and Legal Studies Professor Ratna Rueban Balasubramaniam probes the ways in which Covid-19 is perhaps the first ever uniform test for constitutional democracies world-wide.

Balasubramaniam posits that the test implicates difficult questions about how far constitutional democracy can deliver on a very basic human good — survival and health. Beyond this, Balasubramaniam suggests that  the test also reveals that a focus on this human good brings into play wider questions about rule of law, democracy, social justice, and human rights.

Balasubramaniam suggests that this blog post and the other posts about Covid-19 on Verfassungsblog are worth considering as scholars around the world work out patterns about the character and resilience of constitutional democracies in light of this first-of-a-kind test.

Read Professor Ratna Rueban Balasubramaniam’s complete blog post, , to learn more.

Learn more about Professor Ratna Rueban Balasubramaniam’s research.

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The new article, by Garrett Lecoq (Department of Law and Legal Studies, ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University) Dr. Dale Ballucci (Department of Sociology, University of Western Ontario) and Dr. Dale Spencer (Department of Law and Legal Studies, ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University) was recently published in in The British Journal of Criminology.

This paper examines decision-making practices and monitoring techniques of Canadian Intensive Supervision Units (ISUs) managing high-risk individuals in the community and argues that ISU subjects are hyper-individualized through their unique conditions of release, contesting notions that actuarial risk assessments have eclipsed individual understandings of dangerousness in risk, correctional and policing literature. Using Foucault’s disciplinary, pastoral and confessional dispositifs, this paper highlights how ISU agents make subjects active participants in their own punishment, and additionally illustrates how dispositifs not only allow ISU agents to understand, select and govern subjects but also, more problematically, transform subjects into ostensibly dangerous entities reifying and necessitating escalating criminal justice interventions under auspices of protecting the community from potential—not guaranteed—harm.

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Dr. William HĂ©bert’s latest article, “” was published in the December 2020 special issue

In this paper, Dr. HĂ©bert analyses policy documents and interviews conducted in federal prisons to trace the emergence and early effects of Canada’s recent wave of groundbreaking trans correctional reforms. Dr. HĂ©bert argues that through their implementation, trans correctional reforms reveal that rights and risks are caught in an ambivalent and co-constitutive relationship in Canada’s regime of prison governance. Read Dr. HĂ©bert’s article to learn about how the policies were implemented, and how the correctional administrators, staff and trans prisoners experienced the risks and uncertainties of the reforms.

The post Read Dr. William HĂ©bert’s new article in the December 2020 special issue of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society appeared first on Department of Law and Legal Studies.

Congratulations to Professor Megan Gaucher whose book, A Family Matter: Citizenship, Conjugal Relationships, and Canadian Immigration Policy (2018, ), received an Honourable Mention distinction form The American Political Science Association’s Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award for 2020.

A Family Matter analyzes the inconsistent treatment of conjugality in Canadian immigration law and policy, contending that pathways for family reunification are premised on heteropatriarchal understandings of care and interdependency, ultimately privileging family form over function.

The Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award  honours significant contemporary contribution to the scholarship on Canadian politics, or Canada in a comparative perspective, or a comparative analysis of Canada with other countries, particularly the United States. The American Political Science Association (APSA) is a leading professional organization for the study of political science.

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Professor Sebastien Malette has focused on unrecognized MĂ©tis and non-status Indigenous communities in the Eastern provinces of Canada. He is the co-author of three books on the subject, including his latest, entitled Bois-BrulĂ©s: The untold story of the MĂ©tis of Western QuĂ©bec (UBC, 2020).

His latest project, funded by a $203,999 SSHRC Insight Grant, is entitled “Métis Acadians? An investigation into the legal arguments of the Kouchibouguac families against her Majesty the Queen.” It considers how one hundred Acadian MĂ©tis families who were expropriated when Kouchibouguac Park was created are now deploying a new legal strategy. They are demanding compensation from Canada under an alleged ancestral title under the protection of Hereditary Mi’kmaq chief Stephen Augustine.

“This innovative argument allows us to move beyond accusations that the Eastern Métis would necessarily pose an existential threat to Indigenous sovereignties,” explains Malette. “Rather, by accommodating those Acadian Métis willing to adhere to and assume their responsibilities vis-Ă -vis Indigenous laws and institutions to ensure their recognition as championed by Chief Augustine, the Acadian Métis diaspora could very well be in a position to side-step the Canadian legal mechanism of recognition derived by section 35 altogether in favour of Indigenous legal norms. In such a radical anti-colonial scenario, the Acadian Métis would thus reinforce existing Mi’kmaq political and legal institutions rather than competing against them.”

In collaboration with anthropologists, Drs. Michel Bouchard (UNBC), Siomonn Pulla (Royal Roads University) and Denis Gagnon (University of Saint-Boniface), this project will explore the historical and ethnographic evidence associated with the Acadian MĂ©tis diaspora, as well as the legal implications associated with this novel argument articulated by the families of Kouchibouguac.

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Professor Sebastien Malette, and his co-authors, have been awarded the  Prix du Canada en sciences humaines et sociales 2020 by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences his book Les Bois-BrĂ»lĂ©s de l’Outaouais – Une Ă©tude ethnoculturelle des MĂ©tis de la Gatineau.

The prize is awarded annually to the best scholarly book written in French that has received funding from the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program. Recently, his book was translated into English and is available through UBC Press.

The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences promotes research and teaching for the advancement of an inclusive, democratic and prosperous society. With a membership now comprising over 160 universities, colleges and scholarly associations, the federation represents a diverse community of 91,000 researchers and graduate students across Canada. The federation organizes Canada’s largest academic gathering, the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, bringing together more than 8,000 participants each year.

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Unbound in War? International Law and Britain’s Participation in the Korean War, written by Prof. Sean Richmond was published in the Asian Journal of International Law (Cambridge University Press).

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Prof. Sebastien Malette has co-authored a new book, Bois-BrulĂ©s. The Untold Story of the MĂ©tis of Western QuĂ©bec released by 

“Bois-BrĂ»lĂ©s, previously available only in French, examines the archival and ethnographic evidence for a historical MĂ©tis community in the larger Outaouais region, piecing together a riveting and previously untold history.”

Faculty and Staff who are interested in purchasing a copy, kindly email law@carleton.ca.

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“In the age of global supply chains which employs over 450 million people, the burden of COVID-19 continues to be borne by workers at the bottom of the chain who have no savings to survive on during such times.”

PhD candidate, Jay Ramasubramaniam, wrote a piece for Open Democracy on the matter.

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