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Corcoran Commons, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467

With Urmi Dutta, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Massachusetts-Lowell; and Ronelle Carolissen, Professor of Community Psychology, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.

In this presentation, we focus on (counter)stories of people marginalized in Global South communities through histories of colonialism. We engage with how they re-narrate stories of (be)longing, reflecting desires to be human in their contemporary everyday experiences. We focus on coloniality of power that shapes how bodies, artefacts, texts and space are narrated into being in hegemonic narratives and material practices, most evident in dehumanizing identities and perpetuated through everyday practices that reinscribe (non)belonging. Carolissen’s work is located in South Africa, where national narratives script youth, born after 1994, as “the born-frees”; born free from the cudgels of slavery and oppression of colonialism and Apartheid. Her work with students (all born post 1994) at a historically white South African University lays bare the tensions and contradictions inherent in students’ everyday experiences on campus and the ways in which they resist coloniality of power in neoliberal institutions.  Her work also highlights the inherent violence of this epistemic injustice by their narration into roles as “born frees”. Dutta’s work takes place in solidarity with Miya communities in Northeast India facing the mass disenfranchisement, detention, and statelessness. Together they trouble majoritarian stories and dominant knowledges that dehumanize Miya people and justify/legitimize their persecution. Using multiple modalities, they seek to build an alternative archive or repository of knowledge that not only confronts historical and ongoing oppression, but also upholds Miya people’s desire – honoring rage, grief, pain, creativity, love, and communality. Across these locales with different iterations of othering, Carolissen and Dutta will highlight decolonial possibilities for rethinking citizenship and belonging.

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We are currently planning to offer this event virtually through Zoom as well as in person.  Masks will be required for attendance at the event, and a boxed lunch will be provided to attendees at the conclusion of th event to take to go.

Registration for either in person or Zoom option at: tinyurl.com/1208CHRIJ