On the Im/possibilities of decolonizing knowledge and power

Thursday, October 13 • 4:45-6:00pm • Plenary Session Two

Marisa Ruiz Trejo is a feminist anthropologist, writer, journalist, and activist from Chiapas, Mexico. Full-time professor at the Universidad Autonoma de Chiapas (UNACH). She directed the Cultural Diversity Studies and Social Spaces Master’s Program (2017-2019) at UNACH. She got a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Latin American Studies, at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and was a visiting scholar at the Anthropology Department of New York University (2014 and 2019) and the Ethnic Studies Department of California, Berkeley (2012). In 2016, she contributed to the reports on racism, genocide, and sexual violence against q’eqchi’ Indigenous women in the Sepur Zarco case in Guatemala. This is the most significant legal case of sexual violence committed by the army during the genocide to be won in a domestic court in Guatemala.

Marisa Ruiz Trejo was also an ILAS Edmundo O’Gorman Fellow at Columbia University and a professor at the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO). Among her recent publications are Feminist Anthropologies in Mexico: epistemologies, ethics, practices, and diverse views (co-edited with Berrio, Castañeda, Goldsmith, Salas, and Valladares) (UNAM, UAM-I, UAM-X, and Editorial Bonilla, 2020), Decolonize and depatriarchalize the Social Sciences, memory, and life in Chiapas, Central America, and the Caribbean(2020, UNACH), and Make a body pa we Uwach Ulew u b’iam América Latina (AVANCSO, Guatemala, 2021).

Thursday, October 13 • 8:00-9:00pm • Plenary Session Three

Adam Khalil, a member of the Ojibway tribe, is a filmmaker and artist from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, whose practice attempts to subvert traditional forms of image-making through humor, relation, and transgression. Khalil is a core contributor to New Red Order and a co-founder of COUSINS Collective. Khalil’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Sundance Film Festival, Walker Art Center, Lincoln Center, Tate Modern, HKW, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Toronto Biennial 2019 and Whitney Biennial 2019, among other institutions. Recent exhibitions have been held at  Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen and Spike Island in Bristol. Khalil is the recipient of various fellowships and grants, including but not limited to a 2021 Creative Capital Award, 2021 Herb Alpert Award, Sundance Art of Nonfiction, Jerome Artist Fellowship, Cinereach and the Gates Millennium Scholarship.

Friday, October 14 • 11:30am-1:00pm • Plenary Session Four

Carole Boyce-Davies the H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters and Professor of Africana Studies and Literatures in English at Cornell University is the author of the prize-wining Left of Karl Marx. The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (2008); Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (1994); Caribbean Spaces. Escape Routes from Twilight Zones (2013) and a bi-lingual children’s story Walking/An Avan (2016/2017) in Haitian Kreyol and English. In addition to over a hundred essays, articles and book chapters, Dr. Boyce-Davies has also published thirteen critical editions on African, African Diaspora and Caribbean literature and culture such as the two-volume collection of critical and creative writing Moving Beyond Boundaries (1995): International Dimensions of Black Women’s Writing (volume 1), Black Women’s Diasporas (volume 2); the 3-volume Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora (Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2008) and Claudia Jones Beyond Containment: Autobiographical Reflections, Poetry, Essays (2011) and Pan-African Connections (2021).  Her forthcoming book is titled Black Women’s Rights.  Leadership and the Circularities of Power”(Rowman & Littlefield, Lexington Books 2022). Her popular essays and reviews  have appeared in The Guardian (London), The Washington Post, The Crisis, Ms Magazine, Ithaca Journal, The Black Scholar, Miami Herald, Trinidad Express, Trinidad Guardian, Caribbean Today, Caribbean Contact, Newsweek.