A symposium at York University will explore how contemporary practices of governmentality shape Islamophobia by bringing together international and Canadian scholars, activists and emerging scholars on Dec. 5.
The Centre for Feminist Research, in collaboration with The Graduate Program in Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies, presents “State Surveillance, Muslim Subjects and Islamophobia symposium” which will run from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
The symposium explores the implications of British and Canadian state national security strategies for the civil liberties of Muslim subjects, and the ways these regulations shape and reinforces the discourses of Islamophobia.
Speaker Nisha Kapoor, assistant professor of sociology at University of Warwick, will present the first talk from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. with “‘Meek’, ‘Mother’, ‘Monster’: Sur(veil)ling Muslim Women.”
Kapoor is the author of Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism (2018, Verso) and prior to joining the University of Warwick., she held appointments at the University of York (U.K.) and Duke University, where she was 2012-13 Samuel DuBois Cook Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences (REGSS) and at Manchester Metropolitan University. She was awarded an ESRC Future Research Leaders Award, 2015-18 entitled “Race, Citizenship and the State in the Context of the War on Terror.”
A catered lunch follows from 12 to 1 p.m., and a panel discussion, and Q-and-A, will run from 1 to 3:30 p.m. featuring Jasmin Zine, Khadija Cajee and Hawa Mire.
Khadija Caree is an entrepreneur and the co-founder of No Fly List Kids (@noflylistkids), a grassroots advocacy group whose work compelled the Federal Government to legislate changes to Canada’s Secure Air Travel Act after she discovered her infant son had been falsely flagged as a security risk. She will discuss “Deemed High Profile: Kids on the No Fly List.”
Jasmin Zine (Wilfrid Laurier University) has developed award-winning curriculum on Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism and worked with the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe the Council of Europe, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on guidelines for educators and policy-makers on combating Islamophobia. She will present “Islamophobia and the Security Industrial Complex.” She has completed a SSHRC-funded national study on the impact of 9/11, the ‘war on terror’ and domestic security discourses and policies on Canadian Muslim youth and is finishing a book manuscript based on this study tentatively titled Under Siege: Islamophobia and the 9/11 Generation. She is currently working on a SSHRC-funded research project mapping the Canadian Islamophobia industry in partnership with the National Council of Canadian Muslims.
Hawa Y. Mire is a diasporic Somali storyteller, writer and strategist with more than a decade of experience in high-impact community-based initiatives, as well as the co-editor of MAANDEEQ, a collective of young Somali-demics from diverse fields who write about the Somali territories and the Somali diaspora. She holds a master’s degree in environmental studies from York University, where her research was preoccupied with storytelling as a site of social-boundary making, and is currently completing her PhD in anthropology at Carleton University.
Graduate Program in Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies Annual Lecture and Q&A takes place at 109 Atkinson College (Harry Crowe Room). It is co-sponsored by YUGSA. For more on the event, visit the Facebook event page; to RSVP, fill out this form.