This recent lecture by Professor Rachad Antonius of the Université de Québec à Montréal provides an insightful overview of Syria’s history as it relates to present events. The Jesuit Refugee Service in Canada and St. Monica’s Parish in Montreal organized this lecture to raise awareness among sponsorship groups about the geopolitical forces at work in the Middle-East from the beginning of the 20th century until today which created the circumstances that led to war and forced many Syrians to flee their homeland since 2011.
Cette conférence récente du Professeur Rachad Antonius de l’Université de Québec à Montréal apporte un survol éclairé de l’histoire de la Syrie en lien avec les événements présents. Le Service jésuite des réfugiés au Canada et la paroisse St. Monica’s à Montréal ont organisé cette conférence pour sensibiliser les groupes parrains aux forces géopolitiques dans le Moyen-Orient du début du 20e siècle à nos jours créant les circonstances qui ont conduit à la guerre et qui ont forcé plusieurs Syriens à fuir leur patrie depuis 2011. (La vidéo est en anglais seulement)
Averting Violent Extremism
The Carleton Centre for the Study of Islam, the Intercultural Dialogue Institute of Ottawa and the Canadian Council of Muslim Women organized an international workshop on Feb. 4-5, 2016 with support from MDS.
The overall goal of the interdisciplinary workshop was to assess the viability of the religious literacy approach in ameliorating the attractiveness of violent extremism for vulnerable youth.
Podcasts and videos from the workshop are available here and here
#BlackLivesMatter, #OscarsSoWhite, and the politics and poetics of diasporic communities
29 February 2016. CKCU interview with Daniel McNeil, Associate Professor of History and Carleton University’s strategic hire in Migration and Diaspora Studies.
Remaking the Middle East: The Long Arab 19th Century (Part 1) (Part 2)
The Current events stirring the Middle East can be discerned most easily as a matter of politics, economic, or culture, but steeped in complexity they are much more. In order to explain the rise of ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), the Syrian refugee question, the Palestinian Uprising, and the failure of the Arab Uprisings, this lecture reconstructs the regional history. It traces the roots of these events to the early 19th century (with emphasis on specific significant historical moments throughout since 1811 e.g, 1948 Palestinian Nakba, the late 1970s expansion of neoliberalism). It argues that the existing accounts of the regional historical accounts do not explain the political present or the unfolding geopolitical regional order. As such, and in order to explain the current geopolitical conditions, identify the root causes of the current events and their possible outcomes, a reconstruction of the regional history is essential.
The lecture on 19 November 2015 addressed the following interrelated topics:
The Rise of ISIL: Why ISIS?
The Syrian Refugee Question.
The Palestinian Question and Colonial Zionism.
Emma Bider: History of Black Freedom
Emma Bider is a Journalism and African studies student at Carleton University. Here’s what she had to say about her intriguing Podcast:
“This podcast was an attempt to use my journalism training in an academic setting and a challenge to myself to explain complex ideas through a medium that often relies on simplicity to gets a point across. What made the combination successful was my decision to find a more playful way of explaining my thesis while still exploring issues in-depth. In essence, I decided to produce a “story about a story.” I presented the national identity of Canada as a historical narrative that excludes the stories of Black people. The audio medium allowed me to take listeners on a journey through space and time in a way that was a little more engaging than your everyday essay.”
Dr. James Milner at the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford
- “Power and Influence in the Global Refugee Regime” – 5 May 2015 (Podcast)
- “Understanding Global Refugee Policy” – 29 April 2015 (Podcast)
Stuart Hall Day (9 April 2015)
Stuart Hall was a Jamaican-born cultural theorist and sociologist and one of the founders of Cultural Studies and the “New Left Review” in Britain. He left a lasting international legacy on discourses on culture, race, identity and media.