Revolutionary Visions and Practices of Care

“Revolutionary Visions and Practices of Care” brings together two scholar-activists on the politics, ethics, and practice of care in the contemporary. Dr. Maryam Aziz (Penn State) and Dr. Ren-yo Hwang (Mount Holyoke) will discuss their respective and intersecting visions for care in the contemporary spanning abolitionist politics, decarceration, queer and trans of color politics, self-defense, solidarity, and the collective empowerment of vulnerable communities.
Maryam Aziz (they/she):
Dr. Maryam Aziz is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Richards Center/Africana Research Center Postdoctoral Fellow at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Aziz’s research asks how folks who practiced unarmed self-defense contributed to Black Power organizing and shifting ideas about liberation and gender norms. As a scholar activist, Dr. Aziz regularly teaches radically inclusive self-defense classes in person and now virtually.
Ren-yo Hwang (they/them):
Ren-yo Hwang’s interdisciplinary teaching and research include courses and scholarship in queer- and transgender of-color critique, feminist-of-color anti-violence initiatives and genealogies, abolition, transformative justice and community accountability. Hwang’s first book offers a critical interdisciplinary study of anti-violence strategies against queer- and transgender of color survivor-based practices at the margins of mainstream politics in LA from the 1980s to 2000s. They have published in Transgender Studies Quarterly, Abolition Journal and Critical Ethnic Studies Journal.
Balbir K. Singh (she/hers) (moderator):
Balbir K. Singh is Assistant Professor of Cultural Theory in the Department of Religion and Culture, as well as Core Faculty in ASPECT, at Virginia Tech. She is at work on her first book “Militant Bodies: Racial/Religious Opacity and Minoritarian Self-Defense.” Her work has appeared recently in Surveillance and Society, Rhizomes, Journal of Asian American Studies, and the Fashion and Race Database.
The Department of Religion and Culture: liberalarts.vt...