Events
Previously
Feb. 18th, 2008
"Being Explicit about Culture: Maori in the Neoliberal New Zealand Parliament"
Ilana Gershon from Indiana University
Assistant Professor of Communication and Culture
How do law makers use the concept of "culture" to understand the people they legislate for and about? In this talk, Professor Ilana Gershon will focus on recent debates within the New Zealand parliament about whether the indigenous Maori are a "cultural" group or a "racial group." A Westminister-style parliament, and legislators' neoliberal assumptions about identity, enable debates in which political parties argue that Maori are either cultural or racial but not both. For the ruling Labour Party and its allies, the Maori are a cultural group. For their opposition, the National Party and its allies, Maori are a racial group. Māori MPs currently belong to parties from all parts of the political spectrum, and their effectiveness as culture-bearers in a parliamentary context can disrupt the terms of this debate and complicate these political divisions. Event Poster
Oct. 15th, 2007
"Feminism as Traveling Theory: the Case of Our Bodies, Ourselves"
Kathy Davis from Utrecht University (Netherlands)
Senior Researcher at The Research Institute of History and Culture, Utrecht University
Kathy Davis, Feminism as Traveling Theory: The Case of Our Bodies, Ourselves lecture and book signing. Davis is on a national tour to promote her new book, The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels Across Borders (Duke University Presss, 2007). Event Poster