Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University

Join us for the 2024 Hari Sharma Memorial Lecture with P(Palagummi) Sainath | Saturday, October 5 at 1:30 p.m | Surrey Public Library, City Centre Branch (B.R Ambedkar Room)

Governance by Gagging
What is the state of media in Modi's India? How free is the Indian press? Does it help citizens make responsible, informed choices or does it act now as an ideological cheerleader of the state? What are the different ways of gagging free speech and dissent now in play? P. Sainath will discuss these and other questions in his lecture. There will be a question-and-answer session after the lecture

About the Speaker
P. (Palagummi) Sainath is an award-winning writer, journalist, and activist based in Mumbai, India, who serves as founder and editor of People's Archive of Rural India (PARI), an independent

multimedia digital platform showcasing the stories of rural people and everyday life to bear on contemporary Indian politics. As an investigative reporter, teacher, and advocate for rural issues, Sainath has won over 70 national and international reporting awards and fellowships, including the Fukuoka Grand Prize (2021), World Media Summit award (2014), and Amnesty lnternational's Inaugural Global Human Rights Reporting Prize (2000), as well as the Ramon Magsaysay Award (2007), Asia's most prestigious prize, often referred to as the 'Asian Nobel.' Demonstrating an expansive range on politics, public archives, and storytelling, Sainath's prize-winning book Everybody Loves a Good Drought (1996) - now in its 61st printing - exploring 1990s-era liberalization through rural lives and work, has remained a non-fiction bestseller by an Indian author for years and was declared a Penguin Classic in 2012. His more recent book The Last Heroes Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom (Penguin Nov 2022) - on India's last living freedom fighters is headed for its 6th edition and is already out in 8 languages including Punjabi. Sainath has taught journalism at the Sophia Polytechnic in Mumbai for 37 years and has held visiting appointments at various institutions including UC Berkeley and Princeton University.

https://ow.ly/Zi7U50TeP03

Join us for this exciting upcoming talk with Bassam Abun-Nadi!

Wednesday, August 21
Doors Open at 6:15 PM
Surrey Campus, SFU | Galleria 5000 Lecture Theatre

Register via https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/palestines-rebel-republic-1936-1939-a-talk-by-bassam-abun-nadi-tickets-972673932917?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

The Great Revolt of Palestine (1936-1939) stands as the greatest challenge to British imperial rule in the interwar period. This is a story of how the peasants of the Palestinian countryside, in partnership with urban radicals, overcame insurmountable obstacles in their struggle to drive out the British Empire from their land. While most accounts of the revolt place it as a stop on the Palestinian people’s linear march toward the Nakba, this talk will instead focus on the innovative modes of resistance that the revolutionaries deployed in their struggle for liberation.

Catering and childcare are included. Doors open at 6:15; the event begins at 6:30. The room is Galleria 5000 Lecture Theatre (SRYC, Central City main campus).

Join us on Sept 18 | 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM | Harbour Centre SFU Vancouver | Speaker Dr. Ajay Bhardwaj, the Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities. This event is a run-up event to the Institute for the Humanities upcoming October 2024 Neo-Liberal Fascism and the Future of Radical Democracy Conference. (Details to be announced soon).

Co-sponsored by The Hari Sharma Foundation, Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies and Rungh Magazine, and UBC CISAR (Centre for India and South Asia Research).

Global legacies of the “spring thunder”: Indian People’s Association in North America (IPANA), 1975-1987.
The Indian People’s Association in North America (IPANA) was an anti-imperialist organization of immigrants from India living in the United States and Canada. These Left radicals identified themselves as a stream of global Maoism. Its founding in June 1975 in Montreal happened to coincide with the declaration of Emergency in India, which IPANA strongly opposed as an anti-democratic act in its founding statement. It had 14 city chapters at its height, including Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and New York. Its founders were highly educated professionals working in universities and research institutions. The organization soon expanded by bringing students and working-class immigrants into its fold. Initially, its main objective was to generate support for the communist revolutionaries, popularly called the Naxalites in India, who were facing severe state repression. However, it soon embraced the issues faced by the South Asian diasporic communities and initiated anti-racist and working-class organizing by forging intercommunity alliances, like the work done by BC Organization to Fight Racism (BCOFR) and the Canadian Farmworkers Union (CFU), both formed by IPANA activists. IPANA’s political ideology was informed by the Three Worlds Theory, and it established close contacts with Third World revolutionary and anti-colonial struggles locally and globally, contributing immensely to social transformation and institution- and community-building during this period. This presentation illustrates IPANA’s legacy and brings to the fore the diverse ways this radical past speaks to the present.

Speaker Bio
Dr Ajay Bhardwaj is a research scholar and documentary filmmaker. He has engaged with memory, social movements, and popular culture in South Asia and its diasporas for over three decades. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities, SFU. For his doctoral research at the Dept of Asian Studies, UBC, he examined the Left-wing cultural activism of the South Asian diaspora, especially the role of progressive Punjabi writers and literary societies in British Columbia. The dissertation was accompanied by a feature-length documentary, When the Tide Goes Out, which interrogates the absence of Punjabi women farmworkers’ voices and subjectivity in the multimedia archive and memory culture of the farmworkers’ movement. His first independent documentary, A Minute of Silence, chronicled the nationwide protests by the left activists and students against the killing of student leader Chandrashekhar Prasad of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1997. In his long stint as a documentary filmmaker, he examined the impact of India’s partition on the Northwestern state of Punjab. This decade-long inquiry resulted in his Punjab trilogy – a set of documentaries, namely Where the Twain Shall Meet, Thus Departed Our Neighbours and Let’s Meet at Baba Ratan’s Fair, located at the intersection of Dalit religiosity, performance traditions, and memories of the partition. Dr. Bhardwaj’s research interests include the long sixties, South Asian diaspora, social movements, memory, archives, oral history, post-partition Punjabs and documentary film.

Link: https://ow.ly/aR9450SSrPI

Simon Fraser University's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) has just released its announcement of the winners of this year's Cormack Teaching Awards. The winners were chosen for having demonstrated exceptional commitment to student learning, pedagogical engagement, and teaching innovation throughout their career at FASS. See the story here: https://www.sfu.ca/fass/news/all.html

One of our own, Dr. Margaret Grant, is among the winners!

As part of this recognition, the six award winners will present a brief talk on their pedagogy and teaching philosophy at the annual Cormack Teaching Symposium, which will take place on September 24. The symposium is open to all FASS faculty and staff, with lunch catered for all attendees who register by September 16.

Dr. Margaret Grant is a lecturer at the Department of Linguistics and the Cognitive Science Program. Her research focuses on experimental investigations of sentence comprehension, including semantic processing and ambiguity resolution. Grant is also interested in the relationship between psycholinguistics and linguistic theory, and how these two fields may inform one another. On top of her research activities, Grant has taken an active role in developing blended courses that are challenging and engaging for students. Praised for her compassionate approach to teaching, Grant takes the lead in the department’s equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts, both in her courses and her involvement with the linguistics and cognitive science communities. Her teaching philosophy centers on fostering engagement and belonging in her students by creating active learning opportunities, improving course accessibility and equitability, and promoting personal connection between students’ lived experiences and course concepts.

HUM 375 - THE WOODSWORTH SEMINAR
HUM 375 B200, Adrian Ivakhiv | Sep 4 – Dec 3, 2024: Tue, 11:30 a.m.–2:20 p.m. , Vancouver

Existing and impending climate change is one of many pressures contributing to an anxiety-ridden sense of an unstable world ahead, leaving many people wondering what to make of the years and decades to come. In Feverish World: Climate, Decoloniality, Ecotopia,

you’ll explore the relationship between climate change, colonialism and decolonial critiques, and the possibilities of developing more socially just, ecologically sustainable, multispecies ‘ecotopian’ alternatives to present societal trajectories. Enroll in HUM 375 – The Woodsworth Seminar this Fall to become better equipped with working knowledge and critical analysis methods around contemporary environment.

https://ow.ly/sQ4C50SHtLr

"On behalf of the Institute for the Humanities, I want to express my excitement at the imminent arrival of Adrian at SFU. He not only exemplifies J.S. Woodsworth's passion for social (and environmental) justice grounded in rigorous scholarship and teaching, he also has a truly outstanding record of public engagement. We look forward to doing great things together with him in the future!" - Samir Gandesha, Institute for the Humanities Director

Global Humanities Welcomes Adrian Ivakhiv as the incoming J. S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities The Department of Global Humanities welcomes Adrian Ivakhiv as the new J.S Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities in June 2024. Adrian's presence not only signifies a significant addition to SFU's intellectual landscape but also heralds a renewed commitment to the values of social and environmental just...

🌟 AWARD FOR COMMUNITY SERVICE - APPLY NOW! 🌟

The Mahatma Gandhi Annual Student Award is open for applications! Established in 2007, this award honours SFU students who embody Gandhi's spirit through voluntary community service.

🏆 Award Details:
Deadline: August 31, 2024
Award: $3,500

📧 How to Apply:
Submit a 1-page description of your volunteer work
Include a reference letter from your volunteer organization
Attach your resume and university transcript

📩 Email your application to [email protected].

Don't miss this chance to be recognized for your community contributions!



for more details, please visit: https://ow.ly/iJfg50Sxv1G

Thrilled to announce that Dr. Ian Angus, Institute for the Humanities steering committee member and SFU Professor Emeritus in the Global Humanities, joined Below the Radar - Episode 244 - to talk about his book, ‘Groundwork of Phenomenological Marxism’. Listen here: https://ow.ly/EVe050StW5U

Book talk by our newest Associate Valentina Antoniol!

Giovedì 6 giugno, ore 17 e 30 a PARVA presentazione del libro
di Valentina Antoniol
"FOUCAULT CRITICO DI SCHMITT"
Genealogie e guerra
(Rubettino editore 2024)

Ne parleranno con l’Autrice Stefano Berni e Ubaldo Fadini

A classic “found in the wild” follower submission.

New Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Dalit Studies with the Department of History at UBC!
The Department of History at the University of British Columbia invites applications for a one-
year postdoctoral position in Dalit Studies, to begin 1 October 2024. The successful candidate
will be appointed as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Application Deadline: July 15
For more information visit: https://ow.ly/wfNo50RxEfF