On conferences: the discursive construction of ‘strangers’ @ Uni Birmingham

Ruth Wodak’s lecture on the discursive construction of ‘strangers’ during a conference held by the University of Birmingham on 5.11.15: Inclusion and exclusion of migrants and refugees are renegotiated in the European Union on almost a daily scale: ever new policies defining and restricting immigration are proposed by European member states. A return to more […]

On “the social construction of victimhood”

Steven Walt asks the question “Whose lives matter?” in Foreign Policy’s Voice blog — The world has no shortage of victims of terrible tragedies these days. Death tolls are rising in places from Syria to Sudan and some 60 million people have been displaced from their homes worldwide. But which of these people will get widespread support […]

On blindness

The NYT just posted a wide-ranging conversation between George Yancy and Seyla Benhabib in their The Stone blog — George Yancy.: We far too often fail to understand each other across racial divides. A “post-racial” discourse might even occlude the effort to do so. How do we create spaces for understanding the conditions of others, especially within […]

On intersectionality

Over at The Washington Post, Kimberlé Crenshaw discusses intersectionality and action — Intersectionality was a lived reality before it became a term. Today, nearly three decades after I first put a name to the concept, the term seems to be everywhere. But if women and girls of color continue to be left in the shadows, something […]