Sorry Is As Sorry Does: Apologies and Beyond, in an Era of Reconciliation, Redress and Resurgence

Wednesday, March 7, 2018 4:30 pm - 4:30 pm EST (GMT -05:00)

Join the Department of Anthropology for the 2018 Silver Medal Award Lecture featuring visiting Professor Bonnie McElhinny, University of Toronto. Political scientists note that we live in an “age of apologies” for historical wrongs (typically, war-crimes and racialized harms). Canadian governments have made about 11 major apologies, quasi-apologies or statements of reconciliation since the mid-1980s, mostly for actions against Indigenous or racialized groups, but also recently for homophobic exclusions. This talk considers what these apologies are and do; what form of redress apologies are and are not; and why they have arisen alongside policies of trade liberalization, economic deregulation and state transformation.

Bonnie McElhinny

About the speaker

Bonnie McElhinny is Principal of New College and Associate Professor of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies, University of Toronto. She grew up at the confluence of Connoquenessing and Glade Run Creeks in Western Pennsylvania, on Lenape and Seneca Territory.  She lives in Toronto, the 9 rivers city, in the watershed of niigaani-gichigami, or chi’nibiish, on the territories of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee.

Her books include Filipinos in Canada: Disturbing Invisibility (2012) and Language, Capitalism, Colonialism: Toward a Critical History (2017). She is the founding editor of the journal Gender and Language. She directs Great Lakes Waterworks @ New College, an initiative supporting decolonial, feminist, queer and anti-racist approaches to environmental justice and water. 

Undergraduate awards, including the Silver Medal for Academic Excellence in Anthropology, will be presented at this event.  

Parking is available in C Lot ($5) or M Lot ($6), payable by coin or credit card.

Reception to follow in STC lower commons. No registration.