Feminist Legal Studies Queen's - Winter Term 2024 Lectures
Monday, February 12, 2024
1-2:20 pm
Hybrid Event
In Person: Law Building, Room 201,
Register Here for both In-Person & Zoom
Ashwini Vasanthakumar | Associate Professor and Queen’s National Scholar in Legal and Political Philosophy, Queen’s Law
Topic: Victims' Duties and Victim-Blaming: agency and accountability in the context of oppression
Abstract:
Many feminists insist on women's moral agency in the midst of their structural subordination. Among other things, moral agency entails moral responsibility: if victims of oppression are agents, then they have moral duties; if they have moral duties, then they can also be held accountable, including by being blamed. As feminists have long pointed out, however, 'victim-blaming' often is a tool of oppression. In this talk, I explore how to resolve tensions between these two intuitions by examining agency and accountability in the context of oppression.
Bio:
Ashwini Vasanthakumar is a political and legal theorist with research interests in political obligation and authority, migration, and the ethics of resistance. Her first book, The Ethics of Exile, was published by Oxford in 2021.
Background readings:
Forthcoming
Monday, January 22, 2024
1-2:20 pm
Hybrid Event
In Person: Law Building, Room 201,
Register Here for both In-Person & Zoom
Lily Cho | Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President, International, and Professor, Dept English and Writing Studies, Western University
Topic: Becoming Chinese: White Women and the Chinese Immigration Act, 1885-1947
Abstract:
This talk tracks the curious way in which some white women in Canada became Chinese. They did not, of course, become racially or ethnically Chinese. However, I have found that women who married Chinese men during the period of the Chinese Immigration Act were issued head tax certificates that functioned like passports. These documents, known as “Chinese Immigration 9” or C.I. 9 certificates, were issued to Chinese migrants living in Canada so that they could leave the country for a period of up to two years. The bearer of the certificate was permitted to return to Canada, provided that they did so prior to the expiration of the certificate. Over the period of the Chinese Immigration Act, tens of thousands of these certificates were issued. While it is widely known that Chinese migrants to Canada paid a head tax and were the subject of a wide range of Chinese immigration certificates, my research has revealed that white women who married Chinese men were also subjected to the terms of the Chinese Immigration Act whenever they wished to depart and re-enter Canada. My talk will look at C.I. 9s issued to white women in Canada and discuss the implications of this finding for understanding the role of gender and race in the construction of white femininity during the period of this law.
Bio:
Lily Cho is Professor of English and Vice-Provost International at Western University. Her recent book, Mass Capture: Chinese Head Tax and the Making of Non-Citizens, was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2021. The book was awarded for Outstanding Achievement in the Multidisciplinary Category by the Association for Asian American Studies in 2023.
Background readings:
Constance Backhouse, “White Women’s Labour Laws.” (1996) 14(2)v Law and History Review, 315–68, doi:10.2307/743786.
Karen Dubinsky and Adam Givertz, “‘It Was Only a Matter of Passion’: Masculinity and Sexual Danger.” (2003) in Kathryn McPherson, Cecilia Morgan, and Nancy M. Forestell (eds) Gendered Pasts: Historical Essays in Femininity and Masculinity in Canada, (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 65-79.