Dear friends of the UMIH,
The UMIH is glad to present you an exciting line of events to keep you warm through January. Mark your calendars! We’ll start tomorrow with,
-Fighting Islamophobia, Colonizing Palestine: Canada’s Instrumentalization of Anti-Racism Strategies after October 7th, 2023-
Youcef Soufi (UMIH Research Affiliate)
Tuesday, January 13th at 2:30 pm, 335 Isbister
This presentation will explore how, in the wake of Hamas’ October 7th attacks in South-West Israel, the Trudeau government instrumentalized its recently adopted policy of fighting Islamophobia to shield its foreign policy from
critique and uphold a status quo—characterized by Canada’s support for Israel’s destruction of Gaza. It was a discursive shift that would soon be embraced among centrist politicians, media, and public institutions like universities across Canada. In exploring
this shift, the presentation raises questions regarding Canadian foreign and domestic policies in relation to the cooptation of progressive policies and discourses and the governmental use of anti-Islamophobia to silence criticism.
And then we continue with the following:
-Rethinking Empire: Sugar and Dispossession at Home and Abroad
Donica Belisle (University of Regina)
Tuesday, January 20th, at
2:30 pm, 335 Isbister
Today, 90% of the sugars that Canadians eat are made from cane. But where does our sugar come from? This presentation looks at the history of sugar in Canada, focusing on the case of B.C. Sugar. Taking advantage
of imperial trade networks and coerced labour in colonial sugarcane fields, this Vancouver company sourced sugars from around the world. Inquiring into the conditions that made western Canadian sugar possible, this talk suggests that it is time to revisit
Canada’s place in the British Empire. Doing so enables us to see how Empire enabled western Canadian development even while Canadian multinationals perpetuated colonial extraction and dispossession both at home and abroad.
This event is organized by the UMIH’s Food Matters Research Cluster.
-Faces of Palestine, 1972: From a Document in
The Manitoban to the Current Crisis
Rachad Antonius
January 22nd, 3:00-4:30 pm, 307 Tier
While an M.A. student in Mathematics at the University of Manitoba between 1970 and 1973, Rachad Antonius helped publish a fascinating yet almost completely unknown dossier of articles,
Faces of Palestine, in The Manitoban. This document was for him the beginning of a long-term engagement with the question of Palestine. He will present this archival document as an introduction to the problematics of campus activism on the question
of Palestine from the early 1970s to the present. As well, he will propose a critical reading of the current situation in Gaza based on a historical perspective of the processes that led to it.
Bio: Rachad Antonius, who until his retirement in 2021 was a Full Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal, is an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
contemporary Arab societies, Arab uprisings, political Islam, and Arab and Muslim minorities in Canada.
His recent books include La conquête de la Palestine. De Balfour à Gaza, une guerre de cent ans
(Écosociété, 2024) and Islam et Islamisme en Occident. Éléments pour un dialogue
(University of Montreal Press, 2023, co-authored with Ali Belaïdi). He is also a frequent commentator on events in the Middle East, appearing on networks such as CBC, BBC, France24, and Radio France International.
Sponsors: Faculty of Arts Endowment Fund; Centre for Human Rights Research; Institute for the Humanities
Tuesday, January 27th, 2:30, 307 Tier
This event is both a celebration of books published by Faculty of Arts’ scholars as well as an open discussion on the experience involved in the process of
publishing an academic book. It will count on the participation of two faculty members from Department of English, Theatre, Film, and Media, David Watt (author of
Laughter and Awkwardness in Late Medieval England: Social Discomfort in the Literature of the Middle Ages,
Bloomsbury 2023 ) and Vanessa Warne (author of
By Touch Alone; Blindness and Reading in Nineteenth-Century Culture, University of Michigan Press, 2025); and two from the Department of History, Roisin Cossar (co-author with Jason Brown of
Telling Tales: Clerics, Concubines, and an Inquisitor in Late Medieval Ferrara: A Primary Source Study, University of Toronto Press, 2025) and Jorge Nállim (co-editor with Sandra McGee Deutsch of
Antifascim(s) In Latin America and the Caribbean. From the Margins to the Centre, Cambridge University Press, 2025).
Please follow the QR in the posters or visit our website for more information, and do not forget to follow us in Facebook and Instagram.
Jorge A. Nállim
Director, Institute for the Humanities
Acting Head and Professor, Department of History
405 Fletcher Argue Bldg.
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, MB R3T 5V5
https://umanitoba.ca/arts/jorge-nallim
Sanda McGee Deutsch and Jorge A. Nállim (eds.),
Antifascism(s) in Latin America and the Caribbean: From the Margins to the Center (Cambridge University Press, 2025). For more information, visit our blog,