Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies Transnationally: A Caribbean-Canadian Dialogue will bring together a large network of Caribbean and feminist scholars, educators and activists at York University, from July 23 to 25.
Hosted by York’s School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, the focus of the dialogue is to share current knowledge about teaching and research with the aim of enhancing work being done in Caribbean women’s, gender and sexuality studies.
Organized through York’s Centre for Feminist Research and the Centre for Research in Latin America and the Caribbean, the event will host 10 participants arriving from Suriname and Guyana to continue conversations that began with Professor Kamala Kempadoo of York University in 2012. About 25 York faculty and graduate students will participate in the dialogue, as well as faculty from Ryerson University and the University of Toronto.
Recognizing that the development of women’s and gender studies is uneven and that programs sometimes remain fledgling or are threatened by neo-liberal restructurings of the academy, the closed event addresses the capacity in the three countries to teach and carry out sound analysis, research, and community and policy work.
As an international leader in women’s gender and sexuality studies with a wealth of expertise amongst its faculty and students in the field of Caribbean studies, York was a natural choice as the site for this meeting.
The three-day meeting focuses on topics such as curriculum and course design, the documentation of program histories, links between the academy and community, and gender-sensitive policy and programming. It will also include sessions on blogging and library research, and importantly, will explore ways to sustain a vibrant faculty-student exchange between York and the universities in Guyana and Suriname.
The event is supported by the International Development Research Centre, the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies Office of the Dean, the Department of Social Science, the Office of the Vice-President Research and Innovation, and Caribbean studies at the University of Toronto.