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Changing Institutions: Common Sense, Complaint and Other Lessons in Legacy
November 20 at 9:00 am - 10:45 am
The IBRac Women Mentoring Collective, funded by the Equity and Inclusion Office (Equity Enhancement Fund) is proud to present an online webinar entitled Changing Institutions: Common Sense, Complaint and Other Lessons in Legacy featuring guest speaker Sara Ahmed.
In her talk, Dr. Ahmed explores how diversity is increasingly framed as forced change, an ideological imposition, or as compelled speech. Given these attacks on diversity and equality initiatives, it might seem that it is time to abandon critiques of what diversity is not doing. The aim of Dr. Ahmed’s lecture is to show how these critiques provide the tools to explain and challenge what is going on.
Dr. Ahmed will draw on two projects: the first on complaint; the second on common sense. For the former, she uses research from her newest book A Complainer’s Handbook: A Guide to Building Less Hostile Institutions for an understanding of institutional power and institutional change. She will also draw on a new project on common sense. Common sense is increasingly appealed to as a legacy, an alternative to “wokeism,” and as an argument against institutional change.
About the Speaker
Sara Ahmed is an independent queer feminist scholar of colour. Her work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures. She has just published her first trade book, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook with Allen Lane. Previous books (all published by Duke University Press) include Complaint! (2021), What’s The Use? On the Uses of Use (2019), Living a Feminist Life (2017), Willful Subjects (2014), On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012), The Promise of Happiness (2010) and Queer Phenomenology: Objects, Orientations, Others (2006). She blogs at feministkilljoys.com. You can find her on twitter @SaraNAhmed and Instagram @SaraNoAhmed.
This lecture was made possible by The UBC Equity Enhancement Fund Awarded Project: “Mentoring and leadership training by, with, and alongside Indigenous, Black, Asian, and Racialized women faculty.”
