YCISS guest speaker looks at feminist ethical perspective on WMD

Is there a feminist perspective on ‘WMD’? Author Carol Cohn will present one at the York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS) 12th annual conference on Thursday. The conference brings together experts in international security, political science, ethics and human rights from York and from leading universities across Canada and the United States.

Cohn, a member of the Boston Consortium on Gender, Security, and Human Rights at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, will deliver her talk, titled “A Feminist Ethical Perspective on Weapons of Mass Destruction”, beginning at 1:30pm in 305 York Lanes, followed by a roundtable discussion.

The conference, which opens Thursday at 9am and runs until Friday afternoon, includes numerous panels looking at “The Ethics of Building Peace in International Relations.”

Among the scheduled presentations by YCISS researchers, two touch on the content of popular entertainment in the form of film and video games:

Carmen Sanchez from York’s Department of Political Science, looks at how recent movies depicting ancient wars fuel the belief that modern peace can only be achieved by today’s Western powers continuing to wage wars of imperial domination.

Abhinava Kumar explores whether the juxtaposition of “fun” and “war” in popular video games actually inhibits the imaginative possibilities for producing peace.

There will be a roundtable discussion on Ethics and International Intervention featuring York Professors David Dewitt, director of YCISS, Peter Penz, Faculty of Environmental Studies, David Shugarman, director of the Centre for Practical Ethics, and Nergis Canefe, Department of Political Science.

Supplementary funding for this conference has been provided by: York’s Office of the Vice-President Academic, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation and the Faculty of Arts.

For a complete conference program visit the YCISS Web site.