Simone de Beauvoir Summer Institute 2019

WSDB 398 GA

FEMINIST ACTIVISM AND

THE HEALTH INDUSTRIES 

The Summer Institute is a week-long feminist course approached from a multi-disciplinary perspective (humanities, social sciences, visual and performing arts). Undergraduate and graduate students, as well as community members are welcome to attend, either for credit or as a conference. The Summer Institute consists of workshops, panels and discussions led by a diversity of instructors and speakers from within and outside Concordia.

2019 THEME

For 2019, the Summer Institute’s theme is “Feminist Activism and Health Industries.”Over the past four decades, feminists have addressed theories and practices on gender, embodiment, illness and health. Despite important advancements in knowledge and activism, we sorely need feminist, intersectional, postcolonial, poststructural, trans and queer examinations of the complex cultural politics that tend to legitimize medicalization and existing power relations in health care, health research and ‘health’ industries. The 2019 Summer Institute willbring together scholars, activists, artists, and students from a broad range of disciplines and fields to explore and critique the pharmaceutical, medical, healthcare and “health” industries, as well as the ways in which they (re)construct subjects/patients while consolidating their biopolitical and colonizing processes. The Summer Institute will encourage conversations, activism, art, and the consideration of subjugated knowledges from a broad spectrum of disciplines and practices.

The Summer Institute will take place on the main campus of Concordia University, in downtown Montreal. Lectures and workshops will take place in accessible spaces.