Annual Professor Chin Banerjee Memorial Lecture in Anti-Racism
Chinmoy Banerjee (1940–2020) taught 18-century and Restoration English literature, literary criticism, and post-colonial studies at SFU for 35 years. An accomplished teacher, celebrated by students and colleagues, he was also an active and esteemed human rights and anti-racism activist in the Vancouver community for 45 years. This annual lecture is to commemorate the life, work, and political activism of Professor Chin Banerjee, who passed away on July 29, 2020.
secular democracy
Past Speakers
The annual commemorative lecture is cohosted by the Institute for the Humanities, the Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation, West Coast Coalition Against Racism (WCCAR), and South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD).
2022: Robyn Maynard
Robyn Maynard is an author and scholar based in Toronto, where she holds the position of Assistant Professor of Black Feminisms in Canada at the University of Toronto-Scarborough in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies. She is the author of Policing Black Lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the present (Fernwood 2017). The book is a national bestseller, designated as one of the “best 100 books of 2017” by the Hill Times, listed in The Walrus‘s “best books of 2018,” shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, the Concordia University First Book Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction, and the winner of the 2017 Errol Sharpe Book Prize. Her most recent published work, co-authored with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, is titled Rehearsals for Living. Maynard is the winner of the “2018 author of the year” award by Montreal’s Black History Month and was nominated for Writer’s Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers. She has published writing in the Washington Post, World Policy Journal, the Toronto Star, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Canadian Woman Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, Scholar & Feminist Journal, as well as an essay for Maisonneuve Magazine which was the “most-read essay of 2017”. Her writing on borders, policing, abolition and Black feminism is taught widely in universities across Canada and the United States, including her most recent peer-reviewed publication “Police Abolition/Black Revolt,” published in TOPIA.