Event

"Complaint as a Queer Method," a Lecture by Sara Ahmed at McGill

Friday, October 4, 2019 18:00to19:30
McIntyre Medical Building Room 522, 3655 promenade Sir William Osler, Montreal, QC, H3G 1Y6, CA

The Climate Change Lecture series and Queer History Month are proud to be hosting scholar and author Dr. Sara Ahmed to speak on her work.

Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sara-ahmed-lecture-stewart-bio-oct-4th-2019...

Dr. Sara Ahmed is a world renowned writer and scholar working at the intersection of feminist, queer and race studies. Join us on Oct 4 as Dr. Ahmed delivers a powerful lecture on Complaint as a Queer Method, exploring the gap between how complaints are represented by organizations and how they are experienced by those making the complaint. These events are given as part of IGSF’s Climate Change: Institutionality, Equity, and Activism Now Lecture series and McGill’s 2nd Annual Queer History Month.

This event will offer ASL and English to French, whisper translation. If you require either of these services, or have any specific access needs, please email: access.qhm [at] mcgill.ca ">access.qhm [at] mcgill.ca 

Until 2016, Dr. Sara Ahmed was a Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London having been previously based in Women’s Studies at Lancaster University. She is a feminist writer and independent scholar. She works at the intersection of feminist, queer and race studies. Her research is concerned with how bodies and worlds take shape; and how power is secured and challenged in everyday life worlds as well as institutional cultures.

“This lecture explores complaint as non-reproductive labour, as the work you have to do not to reproduce an inheritance. The lecture explores the gap between how complaints are represented by organisations (often through flow charts, as being clear, linear and progressive) and how they are experienced by those who make complaints (as being messy and circular). Those who make complaints often know about organisations given what complaints do not bring about. The lecture considers stories of how complaint “come out” as queer stories, reflects on filing cabinets as institutional closets and explores institutional and queer uses of doors. The lecture reflects on complaints in relation to queer use, as the political work of opening up spaces to enable them to be used by those for whom they were not intended.”

Back to top