CANCELLED -- Arresting Violence | Reconceptualizing Justice

Thank you very much for your interest in the 2015-16 WGS/ Mahindra Center for the Humanities Symposium for "Arresting Violence/ Reconceptualizing Justice” scheduled for Friday, April 1^st.

We are sorry to announce that, due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had to cancel the symposium this year. This is a loss, but we are pleased that we presented four intellectually exciting and politically provocative seminars these last several months. We want to deeply thank all of you for attended the seminars – as well as the presenters: Andrea Ritchie, Chase Strangio, Joy James, and Kristin Nicole Dukes – for the collective, very productive synergy that was generated in them.

We were pleased to present these seminar talks, humbled by the response they generated, and energized by the conversations they produced. We urge all of you to continue these conversations with friends, in the classrooms, in your organizations, and in everyday life.

Thank you again for your support of the series and for your energy.

In this time of militarized policing, racially targeted state violence, and mass incarceration how do we envision queer and feminist justice?

This year’s Gender and Sexuality Seminar will pursue this question through a variety of lenses: scholarly, archival, legal, and activist. We will examine how race, gender, and sexuality intersect in the criminal legal system, and discuss how they shape the possibilities for—and the risks involved in—intervention and dissent.

Given social media’s vital role in enabling unprecedented forms of political organization, and news media’s often problematic role in perpetuating the biases at hand, we hope the seminar series will be a forum for thinking strategically about cultural engagement in the academy, the classroom, and on local and national levels.

A day-long Symposium on April 1, 2016 will bring all four seminar speakers back for a culminating panel and will feature a keynote by writer/activist Reina Gossett.

Sponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard and the Committee on Degrees in Studies 
of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.