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About Amina Mire:
Amina Mire was born and raised in Somalia, and has been living in Canada since 1983. She has a pharmacy Diploma from Somalia, a B.Sc. in Chemistry and B.A. in Philosophy (University of Winnipeg); and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto, with strong emphasis in the philosophy of Science and political theory. She is concurrently a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education (OISE) and in the Women's Studies in the Institute for Women's Studies and Gender Studies of the University of Toronto. Amina's many publications include: "Skin-Bleaching: Poison, Beauty, Power, and the Politics of the Colour Line" in the Canadian based feminist journal Resources for Feminist Research (RFR)Vol.28. No.3/4 (2001/winter/spring issue). Amina has also published a critically researched essay online at Counterpunch.org "Pigmentation and Empire", which has been picked up around world since it is publication, including by 'Political Theory Daily Review.’

Her doctoral dissertation “Soaping the Cells: Poison, Beauty and Skin-Whitening Biotechnology” examines the social, political and the economic implications of the practice of skin-whitening, and will be defended in the fall of 2006.

NB ALTERNATE LOCATION: Kingston Hall room 101 Campus map building #2

About Amrit Wilson
Dr. Amrit Wilson is a writer and activist on issues of gender, race and South Asian politics in Britain. Her books include: Finding a Voice: Asian women in Britain, which won the Martin Luther King award, and Dreams, Questions and Struggles: South Asian Women In Britain, published by Pluto Press

She has conducted research on the perceptions of patriarchy and women’s oppression among Asian girls between 14 and 18 in two London schools. This material was later used in a booklet, We are making changes.

Amrit was also the lead researcher on a project to study domestic violence and the immigration of women from South Asia. These research findings were presented to the British Home Office representatives in February 2003.

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Assistant Professor Wilson Chacko Jacob obtained his Ph.D. from the departments of History and Middle East and Islamic Studies at New York University 2005. He completed a B.S. in Foreign Service and an M.A. in Arab Studies at Georgetown University. His dissertation is entitled, "Working Out Egypt: Masculinity and Subject Formation between Colonial Modernity and Nationalism, 1870-1940."

Thursday Oct. 19th, 1-2:30pm
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For more information and sound files, see also
Department of English
Dub Poets Collective
Griots.net

ALSO ON THURSDAY, IN THE EVENING

Thursday Oct. 19th, 7:30 pm
Policy Studies Building, Room 202.

Dr. Preger, the "Street Doctor of Calcutta", is renowned around the world for his humanitarian work. In 1979 Dr. Preger set up a clinic on the pavement of Kolkata to provide medical services to the poor and homeless, and founded Calcutta Rescue. Through his selflessness, dogged determination, and creative solutions to complex problems, and with the help of his team, the lives of over a hundred thousand destitute and dispossessed have had some of their dignity restored. In 1993, for his continued perseverance and selflessness, Dr. Preger was named a Member of the British Empire and he has been twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Calcutta Rescue's philosophy is to fight poverty, ignorance and apathy, offering free holistic health care and education for all who need it, regardless of race, class, culture or religion. A support chapter in Canada has recently been formed and is based in Kingston. Calcutta Rescue Canada President, Tim Sugrue, hopes the public will take the opportunity to hear Dr. Preger speak and learn more about the work of this exemplary man.

Dr. Preger will also be speaking at a SNID seminar next week (see October 26th, 1:00pm).

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Dr. Preger, the "Street Doctor of Calcutta", is renowned around the world for his humanitarian work. In 1979 Dr. Preger set up a clinic on the pavement of Kolkata to provide medical services to the poor and homeless, and founded Calcutta Rescue. Through his selflessness, dogged determination, and creative solutions to complex problems, and with the help of his team, the lives of over a hundred thousand destitute and dispossessed have had some of their dignity restored. In 1993, for his continued perseverance and selflessness, Dr. Preger was named a Member of the British Empire and he has been twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Calcutta Rescue's philosophy is to fight poverty, ignorance and apathy, offering free holistic health care and education for all who need it, regardless of race, class, culture or religion. A support chapter in Canada has recently been formed and is based in Kingston. Calcutta Rescue Canada President, Tim Sugrue, hopes the public will take the opportunity to hear Dr. Preger speak and learn more about the work of this exemplary man.

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Varda Burstyn will address what's happening to water under the impact of human use, climate change, free-trade regimes and the absence of political leadership to meet the developing crisis.

Varda Burstyn is an award-winning author, political writer, cultural critic, and public policy consultant. Her first work of fiction, Water Inc., a political-environmental thriller, has been translated into French, German and Korean, and was released in paperback by McArthur & Co. in August, 2006. Her second in this series, Double Blind, which takes the politics and economics of persistent organic pollutants for its material, is forthcoming in 2007.

For more information see also
Home Page of Varda Burstyn

ALT. room: Ellis Hall Room 226

Dr. John Kirk is an academic who has done most of his research in Cuba and Mexico, where he travels to frequently. He has published several books on Cuban international relations, history and culture. His most recent was Culture and the Cuban Revolution: Conversations in Havana (University Press of Florida, 2001). He has also worked as a consultant for various NGOs, government programmes, and investors in Cuba.

Jeffery Hall 101

Dr. Samantha King is an Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Studies, Queen's University. Her current research explores the cultural history of breast cancer in the United States from 1970 to the present. In a book-length manuscript (University of Minnesota Press, 2006), Pink Ribbons Inc: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy, she traces how breast cancer has been transformed in the public eye from a stigmatized affliction and individual tragedy best dealt with privately and in isolation, to an enriching and affirming experience during which women with breast cancer are rarely "patients" and mostly "survivors."

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Jean-Philippe Warren is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal, where he holds a Concordia Research Chair in Quebec Society. Prof. Warren has worked on various fields of interest in the perspective of social change, including, Canadian Aboriginal society, the Roman Catholic Church, the History of Ideologies and Ideas, the History of Social Sciences. His recent books include a history of the commodification of Christmas in Quebec.

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Dr. Ariel Salzmann is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, Queen's University. She studies the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean past, with a particular interest in comparative early modern history. She currently teaches World History and a seminar on "Gender and the Politics of the Middle East Past." She has published articles and chapters, including "The Age of Tulips: Confluence and Conflict in Early Modern Consumer Culture (1500-1730)" in Consumption in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Donald Quataert (2000), on the subject of political economy, consumption and governance. Her book Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern State, (forthcoming) explores the Ottoman old regime from a comparative perspective.

Thursday Nov. 30
Please note time 3:30pm

and location Ellis Hall Room 226

Sutherland Room, JDUC

Confirmed speakers include:
Trevor Hill
Department of Geography
University of KwaZulu-Natal

Allison Goebel
Environmental Studies and Women's Studies
Queen's University

Peter Henshaw
Privy Council Office
Ottawa

Rob Fincham
Centre for Environment,
Agriculture and Development
University of KwaZulu-Natal

David McDonald
Development Studies
Queen's University

John Shram
Former Canadian High Commissioner to Zimbabwe

Mac-Corry Hall Room E229

The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG) is a pan-Canadian coalition of civil society organizations that was established in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in the United States. The coalition brings together 34 international development and humanitarian NGOs, unions, professional associations, faith groups, environmental organizations, human rights and civil liberties advocates, as well as groups representing immigrant and refugee communities in Canada. These organizations, active in the promotion and defense of rights within their own respective sector of Canadian society, came together to share their concerns about the impact of new anti-terrorism legislation and other counter terror measures with regards to civil liberties, human rights, refugee protection, racism, political dissent, and governance. The ICLMG was formalized in May, 2002, to serve as a roundtable for discussion and exchange, and to provide a point of reflection and cooperative action.

Etherington Auditorium (94 Stuart Street)

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is ostensibly a portrait of Edward Burtynsky, the celebrated Canadian photographer who specializes in large-scale studies of industrial vistas. The film follows Burtynsky's trips to China where most of the world's raw materials - and much of its waste - wind up, and a related trip to Bangladesh.

Burtynsky's photographs tend to emphasize the aesthetic dimension of overhauled landscapes, stressing the lurid and curious beauty of these metamorphoses where human are either lone figures or found in massive choreographed groups. In contrast, Baichwal sheds a light on the tedium and monotony suffered by workers who are assigned small components of huge manufacturing processes, and must endure the repetitive work that it entails.

“Beautifully shot and edited, and conceived with a startlingly exhaustive awareness of the repercussions of our mania to control and repackage our environment, MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is a truly unsettling look at contemporary existence.” (Steve Gravestock, Toronto International Film Festival)

Tickets are $8 at the door, with season passes available for $40 (for 6 of the 9 screenings) - $30 for students/seniors.

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Dr. Jonathan Crush is the director of Southern African Research Centre at Queen’s University. His current areas of interest include South African immigration policy, international migration and transnationalism, and HIV/AIDS and migrancy. He is responsible for setting and directing the regional research agenda of the Southern African Migration Project. He also edits SAMP's influential Migration Policy Series. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Metropolis Project and is on the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Southern African Studies and the Journal of Contemporary African Studies. He is a past winner of the Joel Gregory Prize of the Canadian Association of African Studies for his 1989 book on Swaziland. He is a candidate for a Canada Research Chair (CRC) in International Development Studies.

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Dr. Dia Da Costa is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. For more information please visit her Home Page.

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Dr. Bruce Berman is professor emeritus of political studies at Queen’s University. He has served as the president of the Canadian Association of African Studies in 1990-91 and of the African Studies Association in the US in 2004-05. He is currently past-president of the ASA and its representative on the American Council of Learned Societies. Berman is the author, co-author and co-editor of six books and more than forty published papers. His early work focused on the political economy of the colonial state in Africa and its impact on African societies, including Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya: the Dialectic of Domination (James Currey/Ohio University Press, 1990), which won the Joel Gregory Prize from the Canadian Association of African Studies in 1991; and, with John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (James Currey/Ohio University Press, 1992), which received the Trevor Reese Memorial Prize in Imperial and Commonwealth History in 1995.

Ellis Hall Auditorium

Dr. Sherene Razack is a Professor at Department of Sociology and Equity Studies and the Centre for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) as a 2007 Chancellor Dunning Trust visitor.

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Dr Kee Howe Yong's work in Sarawak touches on the story of a group of people who by intention or accident became involved in a struggle for national liberation, as did millions of others throughout the Third World during the Cold War. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of rural Chinese Hakkas in Sarawak were targeted as communists. In much of his work with these Hakkas, he chooses not only to describe their experience during the Cold War but also their reluctance in talking about it. His research also touches on how the ideological battle between so-called democracy versus communism was superimposed over race and developmental politics; indeed, how they feed off each other. In many ways, his current research in southern Thailand is a continuation of his earlier work insofar as he focuses on violence and memory, nation building and development politics. In both projects, he concentrates on a minority group, the way they preserve their identity in threatening circumstances.

Friday Feb. 1, 3-4:30pm

MC D209

Wes G. Darou is senior risk management analyst for the Canadian International Development Agency. Previously, he was an education specialist in the Africa and Middle East Branch. He holds a D.Ed. in educational counselling from McGill University and an M.A.Sc. in environmental engineering from the University of Waterloo. Dr. Darou has 25 years experience in counselling, psycho-education and training. His other interests include vocational training in Africa, gender equity and organizational counselling. Recent articles concern Ibrahima Sow's African personality model and violence against girls in southern African schools.

McLaughlin Room (JDUC)

Chris Teske is a former US combat soldier, a machine gunner, who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan before refusing to deploy to Iraq. Chris is now AWOL and living in Toronto with his wife Stephanie, and they are applying to stay in Canada. They have been supported by the War Resisters Support Campaign.
Hear Chris describe first-hand his experience of military occupation in Afghanistan, and how he decided to abandon his life as a soldier and come to Canada in opposition to Bush's "war on terror." And hear Stephanie describe the experiences of being an army wife, and how she came to question her life in the military.
Also, Lee Zaslofsky, organizer for the Toronto War Resisters Support Campaign, will be present to discuss the campaign and what can be done to build support.

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Jamie Kneen has been Communications and Outreach Coordinator for MiningWatch Canada since 1999. His responsibilities also include the organization's research and advocacy in Latin America and Africa as well as on uranium mining and environmental assessment policy in Canada. With a degree in Biology (ecology) from McGill University, Mr. Kneen has been involved with environmental and resource management issues -including mining and frequently related to indigenous land rights - for many years. This has included: representing Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) on the Minister's Regulatory Advisory Committee on the Environmental Assessment Act; advising the Hatchet Lake Denesuliné Nation (Wollaston Lake, Saskatchewan) and the Prince Albert Grand Council on resource management, wildlife, mining, and environmental health; coordinating a training and research program on mining, biodiversity, natural resource management, and development issues for CODEBRIWAK (the Commission for Defence of Indigenous Rights in Talamanca, Costa Rica) as a CUSO cooperant; research and advocacy on environment and wildlife policy for the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (now Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami); participating in the Saskatchewan Round Table on Environment and Economy's Mining Advisory Group on behalf of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations; and participating in the Assembly of First Nations Chiefs' Environment Committee on behalf of the Hatchet Lake Denesuliné Nation.

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Since the early 1980s China has undergone a series of dramatic social and economic changes. Unparalleled levels of economic growth over the last decade have attracted considerable international acclaim, with China widely heralded as an economic ‘juggernaut’ that may challenge for regional and potentially global dominance. However, this transformation has raised significant internal challenges, ranging from new social inequalities, tensions within the political system, the relationships between different ethnic groups within China, and questions concerning environmental sustainability. In 2005 President Hu Jintao suggested that, in order to build a ‘harmonious society’ that was strong and stable the focus of policy needed to be moved from promoting economic growth to tackling difficult social issues. This roundtable discusses what might be involved in a transition to a ‘harmonious society’ and what barriers might exist to this project.

Panelists:
Dr. Emily M. Hill is an Associate Professor of Department of History at Queen's University. She has been teaching at Queen's since 1999, covering all periods of Chinese history. Her research interests concern China's economic development during the early twentieth century and the origins of the 1937-1945 war between China and Japan. Her book “Smokeless sugar in southern China” is forthcoming from UBC Press. She will present an overview of the issue of income inequality in China since 1949.

Dr. Bruce Gilley is an Assistant Professor of Department of Political Studies at Queen's University. He is a specialist on the politics of China and Asia, and has related general interests in topics of democracy, legitimacy, comparative development, and global politics. His talk will be on "Democratization in China".

Dr. Chang Yongcai is from College of Education, Central University for Nationalities (CUN), Beijing. He is currently a visiting professor at UoT.

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Dr. Bruce Anderson is a Professor of Civil Engineering at Queen’s Univercity. His research program focuses on the use of natural and engineered biological systems for environmental control and source water protection, with application to the problems of urban and semi-urban stormwater runoff, and the treatment and discharge of wastewater from small-scale unserviced areas and industries. These activities are all part of a new research focus on the creation of integrated green and sustainable urban and semi-urban areas, for the protectionof human health and environmental health in Canadian and internationl settings. Dr. Anderson has published more than 120 technical journal articles, conference proceedings papers and presentations in these research areas, and has supervised to completion more than 25 graduate research theses and reports, and numerous undergraduate and summer research projects. He is a memberof a number of national and international associations and organizations dedicated to water pollution control, and he actively consults to industry in this area. He is also involved in a number of service activities in local and regional environmental issues.

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A Professor of Geography in the Department of Environmental Psychology at City University of New York, Cindi Katz is an internationally acclaimed scholar on economic development and environmental issues. Her work focuses on the intersection of globalization, war, and environmental degradation, with particular emphasis on the conditions of women and children at risk. She has worked in the southern Sudan for more than twenty years, and her most recent fieldwork is in post-Katrina New Orleans. She has held visiting professorships at a number of universities internationally, including Rutgers, Helsinki University of Technology, Columbia, and the University of Khartoum. Her books include Life's Work: Social Reproduction and the Transnational Imaginery (2004), Globalización, Transformaciones Urbanas, Precarización Social y Discriminación De Genéro (2000), Full Circles: Geographies of Women Over the Life Course (1993), Life’s Work: Social Reproduction and the Transnational Imaginary edited with Sallie A. Marston and Katharyne Mitchell. Blackwell (2004), and, most recently, Growing Up Global: Economic Restructuring and Children's Everyday Lives (2004), which was awarded the Association of American Geographers' Meridian Award for Outstanding Work in Geography.

The topic of the roundtable discussion will be two of Dr Katz’ publications:
1) Vagabond Capitalism and the Necessity of Social Reproduction. Antipode 33(4) (2001): 708-727. [Reprinted in S. Aronowitz and H. Gautney (Eds.) Implicating Empire: Globalization and Resistance in the 21st Century World Order. New York: Basic Books. (2002)]
2) On the Grounds of Globalization: A Topography for Feminist Political Engagement. SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 26(4) (2001): 1213-1234.

To obtain .pdf copies of these articles please write to:
4ml27@qlink.queensu.ca

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After over 20 years as an educator in Zimbabwe, Mr. Jumbe has, in recent years, coordinated national-level programs in Zimbabwe on HIV/AIDS & Life Skills Education, and Vocational Education and Training.
Mr Jumbe’s accomplishments also include establishing a coalition of regional HIV/ AIDS Service Organizations and attending the 2006 International AIDS Conference as delegate of the University of Toronto.

TALK SYNOPSIS: Southern Africa is identified as the epicenter for the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. The systematic review of the literature suggests that the high incidence of STD and HIV/AIDS in the region is closely linked to migration. Southern African populations are highly mobile with many countries and communities integrated into local and regional systems of cross-border and internal migration. Communities that oscillate across borders are experiencing rapid growth of HIV/AIDS infection. The particular vulnerability associated with the cross-border migration patterns and their interactions with HIV/AIDS infection transmission may help to explain variances in HIV infection rates among the different states in the region. A systematic study of the great freedom of population movement may also help countries to make a realistic assessment of the consequences of this phenomenon to their countries.

Dunning Hall 14

with
Ken Forth, Chairman of the Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Service which operates the program in Canada.
Stan Raper, from the United Food and Commercial Workers union which is attempting to unionize the migrant workers.
Dr. Leigh Binford (Universidad Autonoma de Puebla, Mexico), author of Rumbo A Canada, a study of Mexican migrants in the program.

   The Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) is a managed migration program that brings foreign workers from Mexico and the Caribbean to work in agricultural occupations across Canada.
According to its proponents, the program offers mutual benefits for all participants. It helps bolster the competitiveness of Canadian agriculture while providing migrants with hard currency that can contribute to local development in the home countries.
For its critics, the program creates a precarious and exploited migrant workforce and offers only limited and temporary developmental potential in the partner countries.
To discuss these and other issues, SNID has brought together three speakers who will present different perspectives on the program, to be followed by an open discussion.

  Tasty treats, featuring local ingredients, will be served. Donations will be gratefully accepted.

For additional information, please link to NFU Ontario, or contact:

Andrew McCann
Co-coordinator: Food Down the Road
mccann17@yahoo.com

ALSO ON WEDNESDAY

please note time 6:30pm
at Council On Aging, 230 Brock Street

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Miguel Gonzalez is a leading expert on indigenous rights, local development, and regional autonomy in the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and is a consultant for local, national and international organizations on these issues. From 1996-2000 Miguel worked as Vice Rector of the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua (URACCAN) and he continues to teach and consult for the institution. He is the author of Pluriethnic Governments: The Constitution of Autonomous Regions in Nicaragua, 1997, and Human Development in the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, (UNDP), 2001. Miguel's interests are rooted in his observation of the tensions between the Sandinista revolution and the historic claims of indigenous people that he experienced first hand as a member of the Sandinista Youth and Military in the late 1980s. This experience raised questions for Miguel related to democracy, emancipation, and the possibilities of multi-ethnic democracy in the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua that he now works to contextualize in the contradictions and challenges posed by the neoliberal state. Miguel is currently a PhD Candidate in the department of Political Science at York University.

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Satinath Sarangi, popularly known as Sathyu, received his Masters in Technology degree (Metallurgical Engineering) from the Institute of Technology, Varanasi in 1980. He was an outstanding student and received many awards and medals from Banaras Hindu University. While working on his doctoral research, the Union Carbide accident occurred in Bhopal in 1984; he dropped everything and rushed to help the people of Bhopal. He has lived there ever since! He worked tirelessly in the relief work and founded the Zahareeli Gas Kand Sangharsh Morcha [Poisonous Gas Episode Struggle Front]. In 1986 he helped set up the Bhopal Group for Information and Action (BGIA) in order to collect and disseminate information on the disaster, provide support to different survivor organizations, initiate national and international campaigns. BGIA has documented the quality of medical care available to the survivors in government hospitals and problems in the distribution of compensation; they organized a tour of USA, England, Ireland and The Netherlands by survivors to draw attention to the unjust settlement between Union Carbide and the Government of India and for a more just compensation package for the survivors.
Sathyu helped organize the Bhopal session of Permanent Peoples Tribunal on Industrial and Environmental Hazards and Human Rights in Bhopal, and the International Medical Commission on Bhopal in 1992. BGIA along with survivor organizations has called for improvement of medical care, disposal of toxic waste and stoppage of demolition of the factory by the management. BGIA has provided legal assistance to survivor claimants who have been wrongfully denied compensation or have been paid inadequate sums.
Recognizing that medical care for the survivors of the Union Carbide accident was very poor, he was instrumental in the setting up of the Sambhavna (Possibilities) Trust and the Sambhavna Medical Clinic in 1995. The clinic is run through donations made nationally and internationally. From its modest beginnings the clinic has grown into a modern facility with two general physicians, a gynaecologist and three consultants in psychiatry, ophthalmic care and pathology. Sambhavna has a modern laboratory with facilities for biochemical, cytological and microbilogical investigations.
The clinic also offers Ayurveda, the indigenous system of health care that uses herbal medicines. Two Ayurveda physicians and two Panchakarma therapists provide treatment through herbal medicines and through procedures of detoxification such as medicated oil massage, steam bath, medicinal oil stream and medicinal enema. More than 100 species of medicinal plants are grown in the one acre garden next to the clinic building. As well, more than forty different kinds of Ayurvedic powders, oils, decoctions and pills are manufactured at the medicine making unit at the clinic. Sambhavna Trust was awarded the Japanese,Tajiri Muneaki prize in July 1999, the "Inner Flame Award "by the Governor of Madhya Pradesh for outstanding humanitarian work in 2001 and the MEAD 2001 Award by the Margaret Mead Centennial Committee of the Institute for Intercultural Studies.
Sambhavna has made significant contributions to the scientific knowledge on the long-term health consequences of the disaster and medical interventions to ameliorate these consequences. Several of the research studies conducted at Sambhavna Clinic have been published in national and international journals including the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Sathyu has collaborated with Canadian researchers (Dr. Daya Ram Varma and Shree Mulay) on a CIHR-funded research project on the long-term consequences of exposure the industrial pollutants in utero. Sathyu’s visit to Canada is the culmination of this research. .

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