Symposia and Events
SYMPOSIA
The Empire Within: A Symposium on the Racialization of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians in the United States
SUNAINA MAIRA, Department of Asian American Studies, University of California, Davis: "The Enigma of 'Racial Profiling' of Muslim and Arab Americans"
The "racial profiling" of Arab and Muslim American communities after 9/11 has generated questions about a new racial politics and new alliances. This profiling is not exceptional, however. It can be situated in the longer history of U.S. empire and also linked to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. The analysis of racial formation, nationalisms, multiculturalism, and state repression suggests directions for comparative racial and ethnic studies and for the emergence of Arab American studies that highlight the need to grapple with questions of late imperialism and Orientalism.
KEITH FELDMAN, Department of English, University of Washington: "Tijuana’s Rockets: Arab Racialization, Exceptional Comparisons, and the Frontiers of Analogy"
The cultural legitimacy of United States imperialism rests at least in part on the comparative racialization of Arabs, Muslims, and the question of Palestine. The continued reliance on old-school comparative frameworks like Orientalism, "the clash of civilizations," and the supposed unity of "the West," reveals not only the weakness of its analysis but also the weakness of its political position. This talk addresses an archive of contemporary culture work linking the U.S. and the Middle East in radically other ways, revealing a contestatory comparative analytic adequate to our political present.
Respondents: PAUL AMAR and KATHLEEN MOORE, both of the Law and Society program, UCSB
Thursday, February 26, 2009, 3:00PM
Alumni Hall, 2nd Floor
Mosher Alumni House
Co-sponsor: Research Focus Group in "Citizenship and Democracy in the 21st Century," Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, UCSB
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May 18-19, 2006
Race, Crime, and Citizenship in the 21st Century United States
MutiCultural Center, UCEN
During this symposium, we considered the contemporary criminal "justice" crisis as a racial phenomenon. Our goal is always to reassert the importance of democracy, equality, and human rights in the organization and operation of the system. To that end, this symposium brought together scholars, students, activists, and grass-roots organizers, including formerly incarcerated persons, whose work helps us to better understand the macro-and micro-dimensions of the crisis and how best to challenge and change the contradictory nature of the American criminal "justice" system.
Sponsors: Ford Foundation, The Hull Chair in Women's Studies, UCSB MultiCultural Center, UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, and Dean Of Social Sciences Melvin Oliver.
Photos from the "Race, Crime, and Citizenship in the 21st Century" symposium
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January 19-20, 2006
This symposium was organized in order to engage crucial questions of the contemporary crisis of immigration. We examined the interrelationship of racial, ethnic, and class hierarchies in the dynamics of immigration, and we looked at the complex labor relations that often shape immigrant identities in social and political conflicts. We also sought to explore U.S. immigration not only as a large-scale issue of politics and policy, but as pragmatic action, self-reflective action, being undertaken by millions of people under varied circumstances. We suggest that it is vital to understand immigration both as a state policy and a popular practice.
Sponsors: Ford Foundation, UCSB MultiCultural Center, UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center
Immigration Symposium Schedule of Events
Photos from the "Dimensions of Immigration" symposium
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EVENTS
DOCUMENTARY FILM
February 21, 2006, 4:00PM
Multicultural Center
Sponsors: Department of Black Studies, Center for Black Studies, New Racial Studies Project, Women's Studies, The Hull Chair in Women's Studies, Department of Sociology, MultiCultural Center
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