Event Date
"Complaint: Diversity Work, Feminism and Institutions”
A Lecture by Sarah Ahmed as part of the
UC Davis Forums on the Public University and the Social Good and Cultural Studies Colloquium Series
Reception to follow
The lecture will draw on interviews with students and staff who have made (or have considered making) complaints about abuses of power within universities. The lecture shows how feminist complaint can be a form of diversity work: as the work you would have to do before some populations can be included within institutions. We learn about the institutional (as usual) from those who are trying to transform institutions. The lecture will discuss how identifying and challenging abuses of power teaches us about the mechanics of power.
Sara Ahmed is an independent feminist scholar and writer. She has held academic appointments at Lancaster University and Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures. She is currently completing a book What's the Use? On the Uses of Use and has begun a new research project on complaint. Her previous publications include Living a Feminist Life (2017), Willful Subjects (2014), On Being Included (2012), The Promise of Happiness (2010), Queer Phenomenology (2006), The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2014, 2004), Strange Encounters (2000) and Differences that Matter (1998).
This event is sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor, Feminist Research Institute, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Cultural Studies Graduate Group, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Campus Diversity, College of Biological Sciences, School of Law, School of Medicine Office of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, Institute for Social Sciences, Community and Regional Development Program, Center for Regional Change, Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies Department, American Studies Department, English Department, Critical Theory Designated Emphasis, Performative Studies Graduate Group, Comparative Literature Department, and the Anthropology Department.