Thinking beyond the Nation-state: A Symposium on Empires, Diasporas, and Indigeneity

Friday, November 20, 2009
8:30 AM – 5:30 PM
509 O’Brian Hall, UB North Campus

Even in the wake of the global movements toward decolonization and civil rights, at a moment when many politicians and legislators have declared the dawn of a “colorblind” and “multicultural” era, racial inequality and the dispossession of indigenous peoples remain defining features of the contemporary world. Today’s most powerful engines of global economic integration – multinational corporations, transnational financial institutions, and trade alliances – pursue a multiplicity of agendas that involve both discrimination and displacement on a grand scale.  At the same time, the transnational trade in racial ideologies, political practices, and institutional forms has helped to spawn inequities in a variety of realms including job and housing markets, welfare and educational organizations, legal and criminal justice systems, immigration policies, the state management of indigenous peoples, and environmental regulations. Yet, despite these realities, mainstream discussions of the global have tended to overlook questions of racial and indigenous rights.

“Thinking beyond the Nation-state” brings together faculty and graduate students from Western New York and Southern Ontario to address this gap in the scholarship. In many respects, the University at Buffalo is the perfect location for comparing Indigenous, African American, and Ethnic Studies approaches to the global. After all, the university sits on land formerly held by the Haudenosaunee people (Six Nations). Its two campuses are also in the midst of a metropolitan area that is profoundly segregated along racial lines. Furthermore, the university is located just minutes from the United States-Canada border – a border that crosscuts a region in which Western notions of nation-building, citizenship, and economic development have long collided with the interests of people of color.

This symposium provides a forum for faculty and graduate students to discuss groundbreaking research in three intersecting and overlapping fields: 1) imperial and colonial history, policy, and practice; 2) the global migrations of people of color and their attendant transnational political, cultural, and social movements; and 3) indigenous peoples’ history and culture, along with their varied responses to dispossession and discrimination. Thus, the symposium endeavors to spark conversations and build relationships between scholars who have been traditionally separated by national borders and disciplinary/topical boundaries.

SPONSORS:

• Buffalo Seminar on Racial Justice (Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy)
• Haudenosaunee-Native American Research Workshop (Humanities Institute)
• Canadian-American Studies Committee

SCHEDULE:
Friday, November 20, 2009
509 O’Brian Hall

8:45, Welcome and Opening Remarks

Theresa McCarthy and Theresa Runstedtler, Assistant Professors of American Studies, University at Buffalo

9:00-10:30, Alternative Geographies and Communities beyond the Nation
Moderator: Katie McMahon, American Studies, University at Buffalo

Presentations:

• A Nation against a Nation: W.E.B. Du Bois and Intellectual Legacy of David Walker’s Appeal
  Marta Cieslak, American Studies, University at Buffalo
• Locating Diaspora: Afro-Caribbean Narratives of Migration and Settlement in Toronto, 1914-1929
  Jared Toney, Department of History, University of Toronto
• Project for the Establishment of the Congress of Caribbean Cities (CCC)
  Jose Buscaglia, Associate Professor of American Studies, Director of Caribbean Studies, University at Buffalo
• Flying while Brown/Muslim: Exploring the Relationship between Race and Space beyond the Nation
  Nafisa Tanjeem, Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto                      

10:45-12:15, Rethinking Citizenship and Nation for Indigenous Peoples

Moderator: Rick Monture, Acting Academic Director of Indigenous Studies, McMaster University

Presentations:

• Haudenosaunee Nation-building and Decolonization
  Bob Antone, American Studies, University at Buffalo
• Let us Put our Minds Together as One: To be a Citizen of the Haudenosaunee
  Aaron Van Every, American Studies, University at Buffalo
• Haudenosaunee and Palestinian Resistance to Capitalist-imperialist Articulations of ‘Nation’ and ‘Citizen’
  Rachel Gorman, Undergraduate Coordinator, Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto
• Re-reclaiming our Culture and Spirituality:  Responding to the Transnational Assail of Non-Indigenous Ethnic Frauds
  Joe Candillo and Steve Demchak, American Studies, University at Buffalo

Commentators:

Richard W. Hill, Associate Director, First Nations Technical Institute

Rinaldo Walcott, Canada Research Chair, Associate Professor of Social Justice and Cultural Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto

1:00-2:15, Creating Ideal Subjects at Home and Abroad
Moderator: Jeff Iovanonne, American Studies, University at Buffalo

Presentations:

• White Gazes, Brown Breasts: Desire, Anxiety, and Regulation in the Colonial Tropics
  Roland Sintos Coloma, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, OISE, University of Toronto
• Anthropology and Imperial Knowledge Construction in St. Louis in 1904 and Toronto in 2008: Analogies between First Nations Groups and Filipinos
  Bonnie McElhinny, Professor and Director of the Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto
• Salvaging Human Wastage for the Great Industrial Army: Race, Rehabilitation and the Federal Board for Vocational Education, 1917-1924
  Paul Lawrie, Department of History, University of Toronto

2:30-3:45, Immigrant Women and Belonging, within and beyond the Nation

Modertator: Tara Viceconte, Global Gender Studies, University at Buffalo

Presentations:

• From Youthful Sexuality to Chaste Tradition: The Politics of Ethnic Authenticity among Indian Immigrants in the United States
  Kritika Agarwal, American Studies, University at Buffalo
• Remembering ‘Iraq’: Indigeneity, Identity, and Difference in Diasporic Narratives of Iraqi Women in Toronto
  Nadia Lewis, Department of History, University of Toronto
• Negotiating Precariousness: The Effects of the Racialized and Gendered Labor Market on Immigrant Women of Color in Canada
  Nel Coloma-Moya, Department of Geography, York University
  Srabani Maitra, Department of Adult Education, OISE, University of Toronto

4:00-5:30, Indigenizing Settler Relations.

Moderator: Nancy Napierala, American Studies, University at Buffalo

Presentations:

• “It would be most unfair and un-British to dismiss a good teacher on account of his colour”: African Canadian Teachers at Grand River
  Alison Norman, History of Education, OISE, University of Toronto
• Thinking beyond Worms, Weeds and Water: Reconnecting Family and Culture through Indigenous Gardening Practices
  Sierra Adare-Tasiwoopa api, American Studies, University at Buffalo
• Carolyn Stirling, Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education, American Studies, University at Buffalo
• ‘Reconciliation’ in the Aftermath of Anishinaabec-Settler Conflict: Theatre in re-membering Indigenous Claims to Land in Canada
  Margot Francis, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Sociology, Brock University