School of GSWS 20th Anniversary: The Problem with Work? Strategies for Decommodifying Everyday Life

The School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies invites you to Feminist Times, Feminist Futures: A series of events celebrating its 20th Anniversary.
The Problem with Work? Strategies for Decommodifying Everyday Life
This is a free event. Everyone is welcome. Lunch is provided. Founders College is wheelchair-accessible. Gender-neutral bathroom on first floor. Single-stall, accessible bathroom on third floor. Wayfinding signs will be posted.
RSVP with dietary needs to cirvin@yorku.ca.
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9:30 a.m.: Registration, introductions and land acknowledgement
10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.: “Income Security and the Materiality of Precarious Life” panel
Panel Chair: Kiké Roach (Ryerson University)
Panellists:
Dr. Ruth Koleszar-Green (York University)
AJ Withers (York University)
Pierre-Luc Junet (Concordia University)
12:30 to 2 p.m.: Lunch
2 to 4 p.m.: “Unconditional Basic Income” lecture by Dr. Kathi Weeks (Duke University), as developed in Dr. Weeks’ book, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics and Postwork Imaginaries (Duke University Press). Copies of the book will be available for purchase
Discussants:
Dr. Sedef Arat-Koç (Ryerson University)
Dr. Ethel Tungohan (York University)
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Participant bios:
Dr. Sedef Arat-Koç (Ryerson) teaches in the Department of Politics and Public Administration and in the graduate program in Immigration and Settlement Studies. In the Canadian context, her work has focused on social reproduction, gender, racialization, immigration and citizenship. In relation to the Middle East, she has written on the politics of imperialism and Turkish society and politics in the context of neoliberalism and post-Cold War geopolitics.
Dr. Ruth Koleszar-Green (York) is a citizen of the Mohawk Nation from the Haudenosaunee confederacy. She is Turtle clan. She was a member of the Income Security Working Group of the Ministry of Community and Social Services. The Working Group developed “Income Security: Roadmap for Change.”
Pierre-Luc Junet (Concordia) has a BFA in Film Studies and is now concluding his studies in Film Production. He is a member of the student organization, Student Work Unitary Committees (SWUC), currently organizing the first interns’ strike in Quebec. Fighting not only unpaid internships, SWUCs are also defending the idea of wages for students.
Kiké Roach (Ryerson) currently holds the UNIFOR National Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University. A practicing lawyer, Kiké is a long-time advocate and community organizer for racial, gender and economic justice.
Dr. Ethel Tungohan (York) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and the Canada Research Chair in Canadian Migration Policy, Impacts and Activism. Her book manuscript, From the Politics of Everyday Resistance to the Politics from Below: the Migrant Domestic Workers Movement in Canada, won the 2014 National Women’s Studies Association First Book Prize. Ethel is a strong proponent of socially-engaged research and has developed research partnerships with Gabriela-Ontario, Migrante-Alberta, and other migrants advocacy organizations.
Dr. Kathi Weeks (Duke) is a Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies. Her primary interests are in the fields of political theory, feminist theory, Marxist thought, utopian studies, and the critical study of work. She is currently working on a genealogy of U.S. Marxist feminist thought. She is the author of Constituting Feminist Subjects (Cornell UP, 1998) and The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics and Postwork Imaginaries (Duke UP, 2011).
A.J. Withers (York) is an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and a PhD candidate at York University School of Social Work. They are the author of Disability Politics and Theory (Fernwood, 2012), A Violent History of Benevolence: Interlocking Oppressions in the Moral Economies of Social Working (co-authored with Chris Chapman, U of T Press, forthcoming) and stillmyrevolution.org.
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Co-Sponsors: The Office of the College Head-Founders College, the Office of the Vice President Research and Innovation, the Office of the Vice-Provost Academic, LA&PS Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, the Office of the Principal of Glendon; the Departments of Humanities, Social Science, Sociology, Politics, Equity Studies, and Gender and Women’s Studies, Glendon College; the Global Labour Research Centre, the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, and the Centre for Feminist Research.
This event is organized and presented by Dr. Cynthia Wright and Dr. Jacinthe Michaud.