The Consortium's Speaker Series brings an international roster of frontline practitioners, reflective activists and engaged scholars to University of Massachusetts Boston's campus. Their talks address the complex realities of women’s and men’s lives and livelihoods in conflict-affected areas, the challenges of trying to bring feminist commitments into security policy and humanitarian practice, and the ways in which gender analysis can and must transform resolutely “gender-blind” paradigms of conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Information about Upcoming Speaker Events, Events Earlier This Year, and Past Speaker Events is available here. You can find videos or transcripts of these events, when available, under Consortium Lectures.
March 28, 2024
12:30pm - 1:45pm
Description: In this talk, Shehla Arif will critically examine techno-fixes to climate change; “fixes” which are being proposed by the same entities that caused the climate crisis in the first place. She will demonstrate how these techno-fixes, which continue to prioritize growth and profit, constitute false solutions to the climate crisis. Considering the climate crisis’ disproportionate, gendered adverse impact on the poor and the marginalized of the globe, Dr. Arif will show how the violence against the planet is inextricably linked with the violence against the people and is conducted through epistemic violence that erases Indigenous and ancestral knowledges. However, by relearning how ancient civilizations such as the Indus Valley civilization lived in harmony with nature, and by attending to knowledge generated by social movements across the globe, it is possible to chart a path toward solutions that support people, planet and life.
Register here for the Zoom webinar (registration required).
April 11, 2024
12:30pm - 1:45pm
Description: Increasing climate catastrophes and attacks on Global South environmental activists, land defenders and Indigenous land rematriation movements: all of these have exposed the limits of the paradigms of modernity and progress derived from the settler colonial system. Abigail Perez Aguilera will show how Global South struggles against nature depredation and forced displacement challenge the dominant conception of the relationships between humans and nature that are found in Anthropocentric approaches. She argues that ecofeminist approaches from the Global South offer alternative ways of living and being, by aiming to overcome capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism through a reconfiguration of the concept of the human, and our (multiple) relations to nature. She presents these approaches as testimonies of the multiple ways to fight against climate injustice, survive the Anthropocene and create a long-term alternative for a human-nature relationship beyond domination.
Register here for the Zoom webinar (registration required).
February 22, 2024
Description: In this interactive talk, K. Melchor Quick Hall discussed her ongoing scholar-activism related to food sovereignty and solidarity. In 2022, Hall facilitated a transnational Black women’s food sovereignty project, funded by Institute of International Education (IIE), that connected two women’s groups—Lucha y Esperanza in Punta Piedra, Honduras and Tabasamu in Mwanza, Tanzania. Although the two groups are separated by geography and language, they share a common commitment to feeding their communities. Lucha y Esperanza (translated from Spanish as Hope and Struggle) grows cassava, making the traditional ereba (or cassava bread) food staple of the Garifuna people. Tabasamu (translated from Swahili as Smile) supports women’s family gardens, in the midst of drought. In a photographic essay, Hall connected this recent project to her ongoing farmer education work at Global Village Farms in Grafton, MA, which supports Black women’s growing initiatives in the region.
November 15, 2023
Description: When we describe wars, we often use ungendered words such as “soldiers,” “children,” “refugees,” “wounded,” and “war criminals.” But, in reality, the politics of marriage, education, caring, and heroism play out dramatically differently for girls and boys and for women and men, no matter how they themselves identify their gender. In this talk, Cynthia Enloe explored how we can use our feminist curiosities to show why those differences matter.
October 24, 2023
Description: Curious about why many on the U.S. political right are now increasingly supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? How does this group, historically so anti-Russian (remember the Cold War?), come to support Putin’s regime, even as Russia perpetrates what Human Rights Watch suggests are documented “crimes against humanity"?
October 18, 2023
The U.S. Department of Defense has described climate change as a “threat multiplier” for nearly a decade. Is that so? If not, what is the relationship between climate change and conflict? In this talk, Prof. Crawford highlighted the role of the U.S. Military, the world’s single largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter, in exploring the connection between climate change and national security. She examined the cycle of economic growth, fossil fuel use, and dependency that has driven American military missions abroad, including to protect access to Persian Gulf oil.
You can find further information about this event here.
March 30, 2023
Description:
What are the rights of nature? What does it mean to recognize nature as a victim of conflict? How does international law protect the environment in times of armed conflict and how does gender come into play.
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