“Decolonization: Myth and Reality” by Uchenna Okeja
Theories and practices of decolonization vary across the world. The meaning of the concept is also a matter of contestation. To get to the core of the phenomenon, I propose to consider it as both myth and reality. In this lecture, I examine the ways theories and practices of decolonization across the world are both myth and reality. The argument I make is that the theories and practices of decolonization must cut through their myth to get to the reality they seek. Drawing on the example of South Africa, I conclude with a brief reflection on how this goal can be achieved.
Watch the Symposium: Decolonize This! International Theorizing and Praxis of Decolonization
The Centre for Culture, Identity and Education, in collaboration with the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC, organized a symposium on decolonizing approaches to culture and education, at the Peter Wall Institute on November 26th, 2018.
Watch: “Escape from Tibet” Book Discussion
Each year, thousands of Tibetan refugees, many of them children, risk death from exposure and frostbite to escape political oppression by climbing over the highest mountain range in the world, the Himalayas. Nick Gray, an author and television producer who has been making award-winning documentaries for more than 30 years, captured this journey in his risky 1997 film Escape from Tibet. Among the group of refugees he followed were Pasang and Tenzin, young brothers who became the focus of the film that Gray has now turned into a book: an “astonishing true record of endurance, of the triumph of the human spirit, told as a real-life adventure story.” Tenzin joins Gray to talk about their collaboration, their journey and where the brothers are today.
Canadian Multicultural Education After the Death of Multiculturalism by Handel Wright
This session presents two tales of Canadian multiculturalism in general and multicultural education in particular. The invitation is for us to consider what the future of diversity education ought to be locally and nationally given the contradictory state of affairs of complacently hegemonic Canadian multiculturalism and multicultural education on the one hand and passé, challenged and undermined multiculturalism and multicultural education on the other.
Women and Higher Education in Iran: Negotiating Between Modernity and Tradition
Professor Goli Rezai-Rashti provides an analysis of women’s access to higher education in Iran, which has varied over the last 30 years, and their continuously limited participation in the job market.
The Freire Project talks to Handel Wright
Interview with Handel Wright –CCIE Director, Handel Wright talks to the Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy about interculturalism versus multiculturalism, youth in Canada, USA and Europe, his relationship with Project founder Joe Kincheloe and critical pedagogy’s influence on his own work. (10 June, 2009)
Watch: “Creating a Multicultural Nation: The Educational Role of Media” by Professor Ien Ang
The featured speaker is Professor Ien Ang, University of Western Sydney. In this presentation, Professor Ang explores the constructive role that media can play in promoting the creation of a multicultural nation.
Watch: “Clear words from a Lion” by Ms. Motseoa Senyane
The featured speaker is the Lesotho High Commissioner to Canada, Ms. Motseoa Senyane. In this video-stream, High Commissioner Senyane welcomes symposium delegates and speaks to the pressing need for a clearer and much more unbiased image of Africa. The Video-stream published on YouTube from the HIV/AIDS Grassroots Initiative Symposium. (Oct. 24, 2006).
Watch: “Changing Nature of Australian Multiculturalism” by Dr. Siri Gamage
The featured speaker is Dr. Siri Gamage, University of New England, Australia. In this lecture, Dr. Gamage focuses on how Australian multiculturalism and associated political discourses and policies have undergone substantial changes in emphasis and direction in the last decade compared to the previous decades under the liberal-nation federal government.
Cultural Studies as Praxis by Dr. Handel Wright, an H.M. Tory Chair in Cultural Studies Invited Lecture Presentation
In this lecture, entitled “Cultural Studies as Praxis,” Dr. Handel Wright ‘takes cultural studies personally’, drawing on experience, identity and the personal to indicate how and why the author is proponent of and is working on developing a model of cultural studies as social justice praxis despite the constraints academia in general and of the university as an institution in particular. While this account acts in its own way as an argument for conceptualizing cultural studies as praxis, the primary focus is more modestly on my own autobiographical account as a specific case. In fact, an autobiographical approach is employed precisely to be specific and in the attempt to avoid the pitfalls of over generalization and the authority of authenticity.