Fall 2024 Colloquium Series

Abstract:
For Audre Lorde (1984) anti-Black woman racism - ‘misogynoir' (Bailey and Trudy, 2018) -, and its affective life can erase Black women as bodies, human, through un-metabolized suffering. Un-metabolized suffering reproduces Black women as the mere ‘flesh’ of the Middle Passage (Spillers, 1987). However, it can also construct intersectional communities of antiracist struggle for equity if the suffering produced by misogynoir is worked through. These divergent political outcomes are the focus as I think through the invisibilized racial spatialization of white supremacy within concrete, air, bodies and psyches in university spaces. 

About the Speaker:
Dr. Shirley Anne Tate is the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Feminism and Intersectionality and a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her area of research is Black Diaspora Studies broadly and her research interests are institutional racism, the body, affect, beauty, hybridity, 'race' performativity and Caribbean decolonial studies, paying attention to the intersections of 'race' and gender. Her current CRC research project is on antiracism and decolonization in universities. She is also an Honorary Professor at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa, affiliated to CriSHET, and a Visiting Professor in CRED, Leeds Beckett University, UK.

Abstract:
Arctic and northern journalism provides us with insight into how the North represents itself, serves its own diverse audiences, and responds to global attentions. Crucially, it’s not only climate change or curiosity that draws audiences beyond the local or regional. The war in the Ukraine is having enormous impacts on Arctic states who share borders with Russia, the Arctic Council and other forms of cooperation, Arctic scientific research, and the ability of journalists to report on communities and industries formerly in era of “deep peace” and cooperation that spanned the last 30 years. Drawing on a multi-year research project spanning a decade that includes ethnographic fieldwork with journalists in Alaska, the Canadian territories, and Norway, this talk offers insight into how Arctic and sub-Arctic journalists are envisioning their roles and their audiences, integrating digital and social media into journalistic norms and practices, and facilitating local and global public discussion related to massive environmental, economic, and social changes. Understanding these challenges and transformations in a region whose population is a high percentage or majority Indigenous in varying relations with their lands, waters, states and media also provides insight into how media might become more responsive to Indigenous publics.

Bio:
Candis Callison is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Journalism, Media, and Public Discourse and an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, jointly appointed in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. She is the author of How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts (Duke U Press, 2014) and the co-author of Reckoning: Journalism’s Limits and Possibilities (Oxford U Press, 2020). Candis is currently working on a long term research project about the role of journalism and media in Arctic and northern regions. She is a member of the Tāłtān Nation and a regular contributor to the podcast, Media Indigena.