Feminist Interventions: Reading Social Justice and Human Rights Through Art with Dr. Asma Sayed

Centre for Feminist Legal Studies (Rm 104), Allard Law, UBC or on Zoom

Friday, October 4 at 12:30pm-1:30pm

What do literature and art have in common with human rights and law? Can feminist fictional narratives contribute to social and legal change? How might we not only establish but enact historically marginalized knowledge and creativity to envision transformative pathways to support, uphold, and expand community knowledge and imagine ethically sustainable futures?

In this presentation, using South Asian Canadian literary and cultural texts as examples, Dr. Sayed will examine how artists forward social justice and human rights discourse, as a conscious or unconscious intent, through their creative output. Dr. Sayed will look at the ways in which we can critically interpret creative expressions as sites of socio-political change, activism, empowerment, and community-building.

Dr. Asma Sayed is the Canada Research Chair in South Asian Literary and Cultural Studies in the Department of English, and Vice-President, Equity and Inclusive Communities, at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. In 2020, she was inducted as a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists. She is a recipient of KPU’s Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) award for 2023 and Distinguished Scholarship Award for 2022.