Body Of
Work
Explore my publications, art-based and creative output, workshops, and invited keynote and guest lectures.
Publications
BOOK CHAPTERS
Race, Gender and Culture in International Relations
Aytak Akbari-Dibavar, “Race and Gender in IR,” in Alina Sajed and Randolph Persaud (eds), Race, Gender, and Culture in International Relations, (London: Routledge Publications, March 2018).
Excerpt:
This first chapter introduces readers to the main theoretical orientations within postcolonial studies, but also to the most prominent postcolonial theorists associated with these orientations. Additionally, it also discusses the relevance of race and gender to better understand past and contemporary world politics.
Bodies that Haunt: Rethinking the Political Economy
Aytak Akbari-Dibavar, “Embodied Memory: Sufism and Hauntology,” in Diyah Rachmi Larasati and Emily Mitamura (eds), Bodies that Haunt: Rethinking the Political Economy, (2022)
Excerpt:
This project convenes an interdisciplinary, transnational group of scholars, students, and artists to rethink how we study the political economy of death in and around the Global South.
This new research collaborative is thus dedicated to interrogating classic concerns of political economy in global flows of bodies, labor, and capital, as well as the emotional and aesthetic underbellies of these processes. In this way we bring questions of cultural value, visuality, art, and desire to bear on how death is represented and consumed in global society.
Centrally, our research asks: How do bodies transgress the frames that construe them as exchangeable objects in global economies and imaginaries (Hong and Ferguson 2011; Thi Nguyen 2012)? How can we critically reimagine bodies, particularly the excesses and hauntings which characterize racialized death, in order to understand, respect, and amplify these transgressions (Million 2013; Hartman 1997)? With what consequence for racialized life today?
JOURNAL ARTICLES
Stories from home for the classroom: Teach feminist decolonial theori(es)
Aytak Dibavar, “Stories from Home for the Classroom: Teaching Decolonial Feminist Theori(es),” Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research 9, no. 1 (2023): https://kohljournal.press/stories-home-classroom
Excerpt:
How do we attend to the delicate task of teaching and conceptualizing decolonial and transnational feminisms within institutions with colonial histories? How do we “decolonise” women, gender, and sexuality studies? How can we teach/learn gender and sexuality in or of the “Middle East”/ “West Asia”? What/whose knowledges are shared? What is or should be front staged in our classrooms and what should be kept silent or back staged?
These questions and sensations have been central to the development of my pedagogical practice; they inform the location from which I enter “our” classroom – a classroom that is constructed and framed to help me and my co-travelers/students find hope (or forcefully practice radical hope), in the present moment of utter defeat.
Responsibility to Nothingness
Aytak Dibavar, “Responsibility to Nothingness,” The Site Magazine, 1, no. 2 (2022): 1-10.
Excerpt:
In my work, I move through Islamic Sufism and a decolonial feminist reading of quantum physics to queer our understanding of concepts such as silence, absence, and nothingness. 1 In many ways, what has historically been deemed “nothing” (nothing important, nothing relevant, nothing significant) has either been erased, violated, or colonized. We can cull examples like terra nullius, the lands deemed empty and void by a European audience, thereby justifying their colonization. The people to whom these lands belonged were equally considered devoid of “meaning or value,” and therefore the massacre, displacement, and enslavement of those whose bodies, lives, and lifestyles were justified. Or we can consider the coloniality of knowledge. Bodies of knowledge produced outside of the colonial world have been historically treated as lesser than, offering no significant contribution, and therefore either erased or ignored. And, finally, we can think of the absences and the void that has been (and continues to be) created due to the violent process of colonial and imperial erasure. So, the question that I seek to answer is how can nothingness and void be reworked into a historical archive—one we cannot avoid, turn a blind eye to, or ignore?
A short reflection on the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement
Aytak Dibavar, "A Short Reflection on the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' Movement,” Kohl: A Journal for for Body and Gender Research 9, no.1 (2023): https://kohljournal.press/woman-life-freedom Aytak Dibavar, “(Re)Claiming Gender: A Case for Feminist Decolonial Social Reproduction Theory,” Global Constitutionalism 11, no. 3 (2022): 450–64. doi:10.1017/S2045381721000216
Excerpt:
This short reflection comes as a later addition to my article in light of the enfolding events in Iran. As this special issue focuses on “Anti-colonial Feminist Imaginaries,” I find it necessary to heed the current movement in Iran in my writing. I add this reflection, therefore, to address three important points that hold significance in our current juncture. As a feminist who researches and teaches from decolonial, queer, anti-racist, and anti-imperial perspectives, I think it is important to answer one of the most prominent questions about this uprising head on, which is whether the current movement in Iran is a feminist revolution or not. I think that this question in and of itself needs to be divided into two sections. First, what is a revolution? And second, what type of feminism is in question here? Oftentimes in colonial modernity, when we talk about revolution, we mean the sudden replacement of an elite group in a nation-state with another. I do have a hard time reconciling that notion of revolution with feminist ethics, or at least with what I define as feminism - a perspective that can help us see how race, gender, class, ability, and sexuality are historically located and co-constituted. Hence, a revolution that tends to replace a privileged elite group with another cannot be at its core a feminist revolution. However, if by revolution we mean a spontaneous surge that interrupts patriarchal discourse, gendered apartheid, and systematic control over female body in the name of religion and state, then my answer is yes. Yes, what is taking place in Iran, the “woman, life, freedom” movement, is indeed a feminist revolution.
(Re)Claiming Gender: A Case for Feminist Decolonial Social Reproduction Theory
Aytak Dibavar, “(Re)Claiming Gender: A Case for Feminist Decolonial Social Reproduction Theory,” Global Constitutionalism 11, no. 3 (2022): 450–64.
Accessing the Influence of Migration on Refugees
Jaswant Bajwa Kuar, Sean Kidd, Aytak Dibavar, and Mulugeta Abai, “Accessing the Influence of Migration on Refugees’ Education and Career Paths: An Intersectional Feminist Approach,” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugee, 34, no. 2 (2018): 113-123.
Psychological Capital and Life Satisfaction of Refugees in Canada: Evidence from a Community Based Education Support Program
Jaswant Bajwa Kuar, Sean Kidd, Aytak Dibavar, and Mulugeta Abai, “Psychological Capital and Life Satisfaction of Refugees in Canada: Evidence from a Community Based Education Support Program,” Journal of Community Psychology 47, no. 3 (2018). doi:10.1002/jcop.22134
Colonial time in tension: Decolonizing temporal imaginaries
Aytak Dibavar and Paul Emiljanowicz, “Colonial time in tension: Decolonizing temporal imaginaries,” Time & Society 28 (2017): 1221 - 1238.
Speaking trauma: silences and romanticization
Aytak Dibavar, “Speaking Trauma: Silences and Romanticization,” Critical Studies on Security 4, no. 01 (2016).
**Not all my journal article publications are listed here. For more information please request my C.V.
ART-BASED AND CREATIVE OUTPUT
Stories, Bodies, Archives
Producer, Stories, Bodies Archives, Script-reading performance of collectively written script by my graduate students at Hamilton Frost Bite Festival.
Synopsis: The colours Yellow, Red, Green, and Purple may seem different, but at the end of the day, they are nothing more than shadows, trying to make their way through dawn. Just like the rest of us!
Women, Life, Freedom: Iranian Art of Resistance
Curator and Organizer, Women, Life, Freedom: Iranian Art of Resistance, Art Exhibit and Visual Show Centre [3], Hamilton, ON, Oct 14 2022
Weightless Entities
Co-curator, Weightless Entities, Gallery Show, Centre[3], Hamilton, ON, August 12, 2022 Curator and Organizer, Poetic Justice: A Collective Journey, Art Exhibition, Centre[3], Hamilton, ON, Dec 10, 2021.
Excerpt:
Weightless Entities features work by Emma Enright, Natalie Hunter, Katherine Laird, Breanna Shanahan, Stephanie Sikma, Ryan Waldron, and Lana Yuan. As independent and interdependent entities, artists often express ideas framing their existence. These intuitions can be felt like a weightless presence in which the artists in this exhibition manifest through unique assemblages of material, texture, and form. Like floating daydreams, forming and reforming across different hands, they guide us to deeper reflections.
CONFERENCE PAPER PRESENTATIONS
Writing Saved Me: Re-textualizing Global Politics
“Writing Saved Me: Re-textualizing Global Politics”, International Studies Association 61th Annual Conference, Honolulu, USA (March 2020)
Embodied Memory: Sufism and Hauntology
“Embodied Memory: Sufism and Hauntology”, National Women’s Studies Association Conference, San Francisco, USA (November 2019).
Architectures of IR: Persian Mosques and Symbolization of Cultural Knowledge
“Architectures of IR: Persian Mosques and Symbolization of Cultural Knowledge” 2019 Millennium Conference, London, UK (October 2019)
Re-claiming Gender: A case for De-colonial Social Reproductive Theory
“Re-claiming Gender: A case for De-colonial Social Reproductive Theory” 2019 European Conference of Politics and Gender, Amsterdam, Netherlands (July 2019)
Teaching to Transgress: a Panel on Radical Pedagogy
“Teaching to Transgress: a Panel on Radical Pedagogy”, British International Studies Association, London, UK (June 2019)
Re-Claiming Gender: Self-reflexivity, Trans-disciplinarity, and Intersectionality
“Re-Claiming Gender: Self-reflexivity, Trans-disciplinarity, and Intersectionality" International Studies Association 60th Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada (March 2019)
Poetics of Silence
“Poetics of Silence” 2018 Millennium Conference, London, UK (October 2018)
We need to talk about Trauma: Re-examining the Place of Trauma and Silence in International Relations
“We need to talk about Trauma: Re-examining the Place of Trauma and Silence in International Relations” IAPSS World Congress 2018, Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris, France, (April 2018)
The Art of Silence
“The Art of Silence” Canadian Political Science Association, Toronto, Canada (June 2017)
Resiliency and the Promise of Security: A Double Reading of Arendt on the Power of Promise
“Resiliency and the Promise of Security: A Double Reading of Arendt on the Power of Promise” International Studies Association 57th Annual Conference, Atlanta, USA (March 2016)
From Bare Life to Bare Reality: Tracing the Place of Trauma in International Relations
“From Bare Life to Bare Reality: Tracing the Place of Trauma in International Relations” Concordia’s 3rd Annual Political Science Graduate Conference, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada (April, 2015)
Shattered Past and Precarious Future: Looking through the ambiguities of political trauma
“Shattered Past and Precarious Future: Looking through the ambiguities of political trauma,” International Studies Association 56th Annual Conference, New Orleans, USA (February, 2015)
Beneath the Surface: Micro Level Women’s Movement in Afghanistan: A Critical Feminist Analysis of RAWA
“Beneath the Surface: Micro Level Women’s Movement in Afghanistan: A Critical Feminist Analysis of RAWA,” Politics Honours Symposium at York University, Toronto, Canada (April, 2013)
CONFERENCE/WORKSHOP ORGANIZATIONS
Immigration and Belonging in Colonial Spaces: Race, Gender and Political-Economy
27 March 2019
Organizer, International Studies Association 60th Annual Conference, Roundtable on “Immigration and Belonging in Colonial Spaces: Race, Gender and Political-Economy”, Toronto, Canada
Bridging the Gap between Refugee and Indigenous Communities
2 November 2018
Co-leader and co-organizer, Centre for Refugee Studies 13th Annual Conference, “Bridging the Gap between Refugee and Indigenous Communities”, TD Centre, Toronto, Canada
De-mythifying Forced Migration: Place, Temporariness and Access in an Era of (Im)Mobility
24-25 September, 2015
Co-organizer, “De-mythifying Forced Migration: Place, Temporariness and Access in an Era of (Im)Mobility”, Centre for Refugee Studies 10th Annual Conference, Held at York University, Toronto, Canada
Bordering on Crisis: Citizenship, Borders and Forced Displacement
12-13 October, 2017
Co-organizer, “Bordering on Crisis: Citizenship, Borders and Forced Displacement”, Centre for Refugee Studies 12th Annual Conference, York University, Toronto, Canada
Workshop on Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and Humanities
15 November, 2017
Co-organizer, "Workshop on Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and Humanities", Omni Hotel, Montreal, Canada
INVITED PARTICIPATIONS
Politics of Survival: Trauma and Memory
March 2017
Guest Lecturer, “Politics of Survival: Trauma and Memory”, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Politics of Possible
May 2017
Invited Speaker, “Politics of Possible”, York University, Toronto, Canada
Critical Methodologies and Narrative Voice
October 2012
Invited Participant: “Critical Methodologies and Narrative Voice,” A Workshop held at the York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS), York University, Toronto, Canada
Launch Event for Journal of Narrative Politic
March 2014
Invited Participant: Launch Event for Journal of Narrative Politics, Toronto, Canada
Narrative Turn in IR: Do Stories Matter?
September 2015
Invited Keynote Speaker, “Narrative Turn in IR: Do Stories Matter?”, Centre for Refugee Studies 10th Annual Conference, York University, Toronto, Canada
Emergent Visions, Imagined Spaces and Practicing Slow Scholarship
February 2017
Invited Speaker, “Emergent Visions, Imagined Spaces and Practicing Slow Scholarship”, Jackman Humanities Institution, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Race and Racism in International Relations: An Introduction to Post-colonial/De-colonial Studies
February 2017
Guest Lecturer, “Race and Racism in International Relations: An Introduction to Post-colonial /De-colonial Studies”, York University, Toronto, Canada
Memory, Trauma and Hauntology
February 2019
Invited Lecturer, “Memory, Trauma and Hauntology”, University of Minnesota
February 2018
Invited Lecturer, “Intersectional Feminism: An Introduction”, University of Sussex, UK
Intersectional Feminism: An Introduction
Conducting research abroad: Ethical and practical challenges
May 2017
Invited Speaker, “Conducting research abroad: Ethical and practical challenges”, 12th Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Summer Institute,Winnipeg, Canada
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