WWU’s Fairhaven College Announces Winter World Issues Forum Slate

Winter quarter’s World Issues Forum lecture series, held by Western Washington University’s Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies, will expand upon global ideas of the influence of media and film, modern poetry, gender, globalization, migration, climate change and the growing refugee crisis.

Open to the public, these forums are free and feature renowned poets, authors and researchers. The forums will be held Jan. 16 to March 6, every other Wednesday from 4 to 5:20 p.m. in the Fairhaven College Auditorium, unless otherwise noted.

 

Wednesday, Jan. 30

“Antigona Gonzalez: Thinking through language, the body, writing and translation in the present”

Presenters: Sara Urbe, is a poet who has published multiple volumes of work and is the recipient of 2004 Carmen Alardin Regional Poetry Prize, 2005 Tijuana National Poetry Prize and the Clemente López Trujillo Poetry Prize.

John Pluecker, is a published author, interpreter, translator and co-founder of the language justice and literary experimentation collaboration “Antena” His work has appeared in journals across the U.S. and Mexico.

 

Wednesday, Feb. 6

“Human Mobility/ Human Dignity: Ethics in the act of representing migration and detention”

Presenter: Lois Klansen, coordinator of the Emily Carr University Research Ethics Board, artist, writer and researcher based out of Vancouver, Canada with a master’s degree in Applied Art.

Topic: This presentation will look at the way migration is pictured and heard as an ethical inquiry. Klansen will discuss the representation of refugee migration and situations of forced detention, and the ethical dilemma that hostile state policies form through their treatment of refugees.

 

Wednesday, Feb. 20

“Bollywood Makes Men: Gender, Globalization and Nation in India”

Presenter: Sikata Banerjee, published author and professor of Gender Studies at the University of Victoria, Canada.

Topic: This presentation will draw on Bollywood film to demonstrate the popular circulation of masculinity as it relates to India’s growing middle class and Hindu nationalism. This talk will analyze the presence of a version of an imagined India that Banerjee describes as “muscular nationalism,” the intersection of armed masculinity and the political doctrine of nationalism.

 

Wednesday, Feb. 27

“Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration and Homeland Security”

Presenter: Todd Miller, researcher and writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, TomDispatch, Mother Jones and many other publications. Miller’s work has focused on the immigration and border issues from both sides of the U.S. Mexico border. He has worked in Tucson, Arizona and Oaxaca, Mexico for BorderLinks, Witness for Peace and the NACLA and other similar focused organizations.

 

Wednesday, March 6

“Towards a Palestinian Third Cinema”

Presenter: Nadia Yaqub, professor of Arabic language and culture in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Topic: This lecture will focus on the politically charged 1969 and 1970 films that covered the Palestinian revolution. Yaqub will examine lesser known works of produced by Palestinian and Arab filmmakers of the time and compare them to the critically acclaimed works of Jean-Luc Godard and Masao Adachi.

 

For more information about the World Issues Forum, contact Western's Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at (360) 650-6680.