Between 2009 and 2014, an anti-homosexuality law circulating in the Ugandan parliament came to be the focus of a global conversation about queer rights. The law attracted attention for the draconian nature of its provisions and for the involvement of US evangelical Christian activists who were said to have lobbied for its passage. Focusing on the Ugandan case, this book seeks to understand the encounters and entanglements across geopolitical divides that produce and contest contemporary queerphobias. It investigates the impact and memory of the colonial encounter on the politics of sexuality, the politics of religiosity of different Christian denominations, and the political economy of contemporary homophobic moral panics.
56
4/29/2021
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the racial and class inequalities of social structures at a global scale. While Sinophobic discourses are on the rise and the Asian body becomes synonymous to “the China virus,” new waves of transnational Asian activism are on the rise, addressing the interconnected fights against the militarized police state, neoliberal capitalist order, Han supremacy, and the continued impacts of Euro-American coloniality. From the solidarity actions with #BlackLivesMatter to the anti-authoritarian and democratic movements in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Thailand under a social media phenomena “#MilkTeaAlliance,” the talk will highlight the a new form of internationalism against the rapid right-wing turn of global hegemonies that resist the simple binaries of “East vs West” or “White vs. Black.”
74
4/29/2021
The university and academics’ central knowledge production role is under threat. Most knowledge consumed by the general public is consumed online. Whether neatly packaged as TED Talks, “Big Ideas,” explainer articles and videos or livestream “debates” and “seminars” on a loop, that’s how most people learn about the world of ideas. It has also sadly resulted in “my truth,” particularisms and the move away from universal struggles for a better world. The university is increasingly privatized and knowledge has to be “practical.” Journals are behind paywalls with the contents and politics increasingly obscured. Africa and scholarship about Africa are not exempt: they have been ground zero for some of these calamities. What can we learn from the African case and what futures beckon?
287
3/12/2021
One of the most striking developments in Latin American societies since the 1990s has been the newfound visibility of Indigenous peoples. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the plurinational Andean state of Bolivia, which in 2006 saw the election of its first Indigenous president, Evo Morales. Throughout the twentieth century, Bolivia experienced rebellions from an array of social groups which sought to negotiate and at times, radically contest the (post)colonial underpinnings of the nation state. This seminar will invite attendees to reflect upon the historical, ecological and epistemological significance of Indigenous movements in Bolivia.
37
3/11/2021
Ours is the age of borders and walls. The government of mobility has become the central problem of the 21st century, as states develop new and terrifying ways to fix and manage unequal populations in space and in law. This lecture examines our global present through the lens of uneven human mobilities, engaging with several empirical examples that help problematise not migration and movement, but bordering and nativist closure.
91
3/1/2021
With the intensification of popular debates, discussions as well as knowledge production in the form of books and articles on the subject of decolonization, it is imperative to ask what the term has come to signify today. Ngugi wa Thiongo's landmark publication Decolonising the Mind in the late eighties shifted the term's scope into social and psychological terrain rather than simply indicating a transition of political power from the hands of the colonizer into those of the formerly colonized. Today, the verb "to decolonize" evokes curricula, syllabi, wellness, beauty, fashion and food. In this talk, we will engage the various new registers of decolonization and ask what counts as real and fake decolonization today.
75
2/11/2021
Based on past and current ethnographic research in the Parisian metropolitan region, Dr Beaman discussed how racial and ethnic minorities understand and respond to their racialization in a context in which race and ethnicity are not legitimate or acknowledged, and how a suspect citizenship is created. She discussed how racial and ethnic minorities are “citizen outsiders” as evident of France’s “racial project” (Omi and Winant 1994), which marks distinctions outside of explicit state-level categorization. Dr Beaman explored not only how race marks individuals outside of formal categories, but also how people respond to these distinctions in terms of a racism-related issue, here, police violence and brutality against racial and ethnic minorities.
168
2/9/2021
Dr Harris presented psychological and neuroscience evidence for dehumanized perception—a failure to consider another person’s mind, and for racism—displaying a social bias based on perceived racial/ethnic groups. He explored how these phenomena impact legal decision-making, and their role in human rights abuses. Finally, he discussed strategies for leveraging dehumanized perception in legal proceedings to benefit the defense, and ways of mitigating the impact of racial bias in legal and policy decisions.
256
2/8/2021