The Montreal critical reading group is a group of users and producers of academic research which meets regularly to share ideas and challenge our assumptions, and those we find in academic literature, in order to become more responsible and effective allies in struggles for social justice.
Meetings are the first or second Sunday of each month at 6:00pm at one of our personal residences (in Mile End, Rosemont, Villeray, Parc Extension or the Plateau).
Readings are available in the shared Dropbox folder. Ask Andrew if you don't have the address.
Table of Contents
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Upcoming meetings
Topic TBA
2015 June. Facilitator: TBA.
Possible future themes: freedom of speech, power, non-binary gender, identity, epistemology, the nature of violence, embodiment, indigenous law, equality, hegemony (Gramsci)
Past meetings (2014-2015)
Mapping
2015 April 30. Host and facilitator: Stephanie S.
- James Corner (1999). "The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention." In: Mappings. Denis Cosgrove (ed). pp213-252.
Uncertainty
2015 March 10. Host and facilitator: Tarik.
- Charles Manski. Public Policy in an Uncertain World, Chapter 1: Introduction. Harvard University Press, 2013.
Surveillance
2015 January 11. Host and facilitator: Stephanie A.
- Torin Monahan. "Surveillance as Governance: Social Inequality and the Pursuit of Democratic Surveillance". In: Surveillance and Democracy, edited by K.D. Haggerty and M. Samatas. New York: Routledge, pp. 91-110, 2010.
- Glenn Greenwald. "How America's Surveillance State Breeds Conformity and Fear". Transcript of a speech given at the conference Socialism 2012.
- The Current. "Elf on the Shelf normalizes surveillance state for kids, says academic". CBC Radio, December 22, 2012.
Austerity
2014 November 2. Host and facilitator: Tarik.
- John Clarke, Janet Newman (2012). The Alchemy of Austerity. Critical Social Policy August 2012 32: 299-319. (link requires subscription)
- Paul Krugman (2012). Europe's Economic Suicide. The New York Times, April 15, 2012.
- Sanjay Basu, David Stuckler (2014). Quand l'austérité tue. Le Monde diplomatique, octobre 2014.
- Ivan Drury (2014). The Rise of Philanthro-capitalism. Briar Patch Magazine, September 1, 2014.
- Arthur Goldhammer, Thomas Piketty (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Harvard University Press. Reviewed here by Michael Marmot.
Biopolitics
2014 October 5. Host and facilitator: Andrew.
- Lisa Stevenson (2012). The psychic life of biopolitics: Survival, cooperation, and Inuit community. American Ethnologist 39(3):592-613.
- Biopower. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
- Michel Foucault (1974). "Naissance de la médecine sociale." Dits et écrits, pp207-228.
Safe spaces in education
2014 September 7. Host and facilitator: Stephanie S.
- Zeus Leonardo, Ronald Porter (2010). Pedagogy of fear: toward a Fanonian theory of 'safety' in race dialogue. Race Ethnicity and Education 13(2):139-157.
Past meetings (2013-2014)
White privilege
2014 April 27. Host and facilitator: Catherine.
- Alicia. White Privilege While Traveling and Teaching Abroad. Hue in the world. (Blog post)
- Simone Kirwan. An Analysis of "White Privilege and White Guilt".
- Fathali M. Moghaddam, Alison J. Stolkin, Lesley S. Hutcheson. A Generalized Personal/Group Discrepancy: Testing the Domain Specificity of a Perceived Higher Effect of Events on One's Group Than on Oneself. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
- Peggy McIntosh (1989). Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.
- Tim Wise (2007). The Pathology of White Privilege (lecture). See especially the section beginning at 13:22.
- Sarah Ahmed (2014). Walls of Whiteness.
- Houria Bouteldja (2014). Dieudonné through the prism of the white Left, or conceptualizing a domestic internationalism.
Secularism
2014 March 30. Host and facilitator: Stephanie S.
- Akeel Bilgrami (2011). Secularism: its content and context. (Click through to the full 35-page PDF version.)
- The Immanent Frame, Editors (2013). The Charter of Quebec Values. (Religious studies scholars comment on the Charte de la laicité.)
- The Hour (2007). Interview with Christopher Hitchens, author of "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything".
Sex work
2014 March 16. Host and facilitator: Ashley.
- Government of Canada Department of Justice (2014). Public consultation on prostitution-related offences in Canada.
- Prostitutes of Ottawa/Gatineau Work, Educate and Resist (POWER) (2014). Call to action: Sex workers need your support!
- Maria Nengeh Mensah and Chris Bruckert (2012). 10 raisons de lutter pour la décriminalisation du travail du sexe.
- Sandra Ka Hon Chu and Rebecca Glass (2013). Sex work law reform in Canada: Considering problems with the Nordic model. Alberta Law Review 51(1):101-124.
- Laura Agustin (2013). Prostitution Law and the Death of Whores. Jacobin Magazine.
- Empower (2012). Hit and Run: The impact of anti-trafficking policy and practice on sex workers' human rights in Thailand. (Discussed on Laura Agustin's blog.)
Vulnerability
2014 February 23. Host and facilitator: Tarik.
- F Delor, M Hubert. Revisiting the concept of 'vulnerability'. Social Science and Medicine 50 (2000) 1557-1570.
Decolonization
2014 February 2. Host and facilitator: Andrew.
- Chelsea Vowel (2013). Supporting indigenous sovereignty and self-determination (conference talk), November 23, 2013. Chelsea speaks from from 11:30 to 22:45.
- Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization, Education and Society 1(1). (The article that Chelsea recommends in that video)
Health and the social construction of gender
2014 January 12. Host and facilitator: Catherine.
- Courtenay, Will H. Constructions of masculinity and their influence on men's well-being: a theory of gender and health. Social Science & Medicine 50(10):1385-1401;16 May 2000.
Disagreeing
2013 December 15. Host and facilitator: Stephanie S.
- Said, Edward W., "Speaking Truth to Power." Representations of the Intellectual. New York: Vintage, 1993. 85-102.