The Spring 2022 Equity Matters Seminar featured Professor Carmen G. González:
Part A - Presumed Incompetent: Lessons from the Struggle and Victories of Racialized and Indigenous Women in Academia
Monday 9 May, 2022 (online)
Drawing upon the personal narratives and empirical studies in Presumed Incompetent II: Race, Class, Power, and Resistance of Women in Academia (2020), Professor Carmen G. González discussed the obstacles that racialized and Indigenous women encounter as scholars, teachers, and participants in faculty governance, and the strategies that can be deployed to remove these barriers. This presentation will be of interest to those who seek to achieve greater equity and inclusion in the academic workplace. Following the seminar, a discussion was facilitated by Professor Sharlene Mollett. If you would like to familiarize yourself with the Presumed Incompetent volumes, Professor González recommends the following from the 2012 edition. A recording of the seminar is also now available to view.
- Introduction, By Angela P. Harris and Carmen G. González
- Part I, Chapter 4, Black/Out: The White Face of Multiculturalism and the Violence of the Canadian Academic Imperial Project, By Delia D. Douglas
The first 20 registrants have been notified that they will be receiving a paper copy of the second edition. Both editions have been made available to read online through the U of T Library.
Part B - Presumed Incompetent, Continued Discussion with UTSC Racialized and Indigenous Women Faculty
Following the seminar on May 9, Professor González met with UTSC Racialized and Indigenous Women Faculty to continue the discussion of struggles and victories. Professor Sharlene Mollett (Distinguished Professor of Feminist Cultural Geography and Chair of Global Development Studies) facilitated the informal and closed discussion.
Monday 9 May, 2022 (online)
3:00 – 4:30 pm EST
Carmen G. González is the Morris I. Leibman Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Her scholarship focuses on international environmental law, environmental justice, human rights and the environment, and the global food system. She also writes on issues on race, gender, and class, and is co-editor of the critically acclaimed book, Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia (2012) and most recently Presumed Incompetent II: Race, Class, Power, and Resistance of Women in Academia (2020). Professor González is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. She practiced law in the private sector and in government for a decade before commencing her academic career. Professor González has served as a Fellow at the U.S. Supreme Court, a Fulbright scholar in Argentina, a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, and the George Soros Visiting Chair at the Central European University School of Public Policy. She has taught law in Latin America, China, and Europe, and has served as an advisor to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on environmental justice matters. Her latest book, The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021.
Professor Sharlene Mollett is an Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Global Development Studies with cross-appointments in the Departments of Human Geography (UTSC) and the Graduate Program in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. As a feminist political ecologist and cultural geographer, her work interrogates multiple forms of power shaping land conflicts in Latin America. Drawing insights from postcolonial, decolonial and critical feminist/racial studies in the Americas, Mollett examines the myriad ways race, gender and sexuality shape natural resource conflicts and land control embedded in a variety of international development projects, namely, protected area management, land registration and residential tourism development in Central America. Broadly, her interests include how place-specific representations and meanings of race, gender and sexuality shape the lives of Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, and campesinos and their relations with each other, the state and elites. Mollett has published widely in a variety of top-tier geography and regional journals such as the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Antipode, Latin American Research Review, Gender, Place and Culture and Cultural Geographies. She currently holds the award and corresponding title, Distinguished Professor in Feminist Cultural Geography, Nature and Society at the University of Toronto, 2020-2024, and finally, serves on the editorial team at Social and Cultural Geography.