Wednesday WIF: “Towards La Familia Diversa: Resignifying the Family in Ecuador”

Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies World Issues Forum 

Noon on Wednesday, Oct. 12 in the Fairhaven Auditorium; free and open to the public 

“Towards La Familia Diversa: Resignifying the Family in Ecuador”

Presented by Christine “Cricket” Keating, associate professor, University of Washington

Cricket Keating is an associate professor of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She is the author of Decolonizing Democracy: The Social Contract in Transition in India. Her articles have been published in Signs, Political Theory, International Journal of Feminist Politics, Hypatia, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and New Political Science as well as in several edited volumes. She is also a co-director of la Escuela Popular Norteña, a popular education collective based in New Mexico.

“Towards La Familia Diversa: Resignifying the Family in Ecuador” examines the reconceptualization of key elements of political, economic, and social life in the 2008 Ecuadorian Constitution. In particular, the paper focuses on the linked struggles to rethink the nation as a “plurination,” and to expand the definition of the family from one based on blood or marital kinship to one that includes familias diversas or familias alternativas (diverse families or alternative families). The paper analyzes the development of these concepts in contemporary Ecuadorian politics, as well as ways that their implementation has been limited, compromised, and forestalled.

This presentation is co-sponsored by Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department, Diversity Fund, FIG Program

For more information, call (360) 650-6680 or visit www.fairhaven.wwu.edu.