Celebrate International Women's Day with us on March 8th from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm EST at our virtual event titled "At the Intersections: Confronting Misogyny, Racism and Islamophobia in 2023". We will explore the ways in which these issues intersect and affect women's lives, particularly those of women from marginalized communities.
Panelists:
Dr. Afua Cooper is a celebrated poet, spoken word icon, author, scholar, and historian. Her many books range across such genres as poetry, history, fiction, and children’s literature. She served as the Poet Laureate of Halifax Regional Municipality for the 2018-2020 term. She is a founder of the Canadian Dub Poetry Movement, and a recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the Portia White Prize (Nova Scotia’s most distinguished artistic award), the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry prize, the Bob Marley Award, and was a finalist for the Governor General’s literary Prize. Her poems have been included in numerous literary anthologies and on studio recordings.
Afua Cooper holds a Ph.D. in history and is the foremost expert on Black Canadian history, including slavery. She has put the issue of slavery in Canada in popular consciousness, and her work on that topic has been mobilized across several platforms. She is a full professor at Dalhousie University where she holds a Killam Research Chair. Further, Dr. Cooper is the Principal Investigator for A Black People’s History of Canada, a project that engages in new research on Black history, accompanied by a new Black history curricula. Recently, for her work on Black Canadian history, Dr. Cooper was awarded the Royal Society of Canada’s J.B. Tyrrell Historical Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Canadian history. Additionally, this trail-blazing scholar was honoured by Maclean’sMagazine as one of the 50 most influential Canadians, and by Simon Fraser University with an honorary doctorate (Doctor of Letters). Her latest book of poetry, The Halifax Explosion, is set to be released by PlumLeaf press in 2023.
Sana Patel is a Post-Doctorate Research Fellow at the Insitute of Islamic Studies at University of Toronto. She is completing her PhD at University of Ottawa on the topic of intersections of online and offline Islam. Her research interests include online Islam, Islamophobia, religious authority, nonreligion, and immigration.
Dr. Sunera Thobani is Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her scholarship focuses on critical race, postcolonial and transnational feminist theory and politics; intersectionality and social movements; colonialism, Indigeneity and racial violence; globalization, citizenship and migration; Islam, Gender and Muslims in South Asian and Western media; South Asian Diaspora; and South Asian Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her publications include Contesting Islam, Constructing Race and Sexuality: The Inordinate Desire of the West(Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) and Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada, (2007). She is co/editor of Asian Women: Interconnections, (2005); States of Race: Critical Race Feminist Theory for the 21stCentury (2010); Coloniality and Racial (In)Justice in the University: Counting For Nothing? (2021); and The Deadly Intersections of COVID-19: Race, States, Inequalities and Global Society (2022). Her research is also published in numerous edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals.
Dr. Thobani has served as Ruth Wynn Woodward Endowed Chair in Women's Studies at Simon Fraser University and as the President of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. She is a founding member of the Cross-Canada network, Researchers and Academics of Colour for Equity (RACE); the recipient of the Sarah Shorten Award of the Canadian Association of University Teachers; the Dean's Award for Excellence at UBC; and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Moderator:
Nuzhat Jafri is Executive Director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW) and has been a long-time national board member and volunteer with the Council. She also serves on the board of directors of the pluralist foundation and has served as chair and member of several other non-profit boards, including the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, ACCES Employment, and South Asian Family Support Services. She is multilingual and holds a BA in French language and literature from the University of Toronto and an MLS from the University of Western Ontario.
International Women's Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Significant activity is witnessed worldwide as groups come together to celebrate women's achievements or rally for women's equality.