Dr. Mimi Khúc is a leading disability studies scholar whose work is situated at the intersection of care work, art practice, and community making. She will spend a week in residency at UBC holding workshops for students, staff, faculty, and community members intentionally devised to help us think through our relationship to one another, the structure of the university, and our intellectual and creative work. All events are open to the public.
Monday, March 18
Our Students Are Dying: Touring the University Abyss
4-6pm BuTo 225
Our students are dying. This is a reality many of us, including students themselves, have not been able to face. We have not been able to look directly at the mental health crisis happening beneath the veneer of our beautiful universities—a crisis the pandemic has only exacerbated. Dr. Mimi Khúc invites us to confront this crisis together, sharing what she has learned from students during her mental health tour across the U.S over the past seven years. Participants will have the opportunity to co-create a UBC Archive of Unwellness.
Tuesday, March 19
Drop-In Office Hours with Students, Staff, Faculty, and Community Members
10-11am Buchanan Tower 999A
Tarot for the Apocalypse: Engaging Unwellness through Critical Arts Praxis
4-6pm BuTo 225
Kicking off a communal durational exhibit that will be open for contributing and engaging throughout the week, this event engages Dr. Mimi Khúc’s Asian American Tarot and offers participants the opportunity to co-create a tarot card as a community.
Wednesday, March 20
Drop-In Office Hours with Students, Staff, Faculty, and Community Members
1-2pm Buchanan Tower 999A
Our Ableist Syllabi: Toward an Access- and Care-Centered Classroom, or, Reading Our Syllabi for Filth
4-6pm BuTo 225
What if education was not a system of achievement and inculcation into hyperproductivity but a transformative care project? The pandemic has revealed the contours of unwellness in our universities as never before, making it clear that “business as usual” in our classrooms not only cannot serve the needs of our students but also actually contributes to their deepening experiences of unwellness. Dr. Mimi Khúc makes the case for the necessity of access- and care-centered teaching, offering this pedagogy workshop where participants will work together to explore what teaching might look like if care were our first learning objective. Bring your actual syllabi to this workshop where we will collectively conduct “access audits” to root out all the ways ableism creeps into our teaching and begin grounding our classrooms in collective care.
Thursday, March 21
Drop-In Office Hours with Students, Staff, Faculty, and Community Members
10-11am Buchanan Tower 999A
Towards an Archive of Unwellness and Care
4-6pm BuTo 225
Dr. Mimi Khúc will facilitate a closing event for the durational exhibit created throughout the week. Participants will engage the communal archive that has excavated UBC unwellness to take stock of where we are and where we need to go as we move towards collective care.
Friday, March 22
Drop-In Office Hours with Students, Staff, Faculty, and Community Members
1-2pm Buchanan Tower 999A
How to Survive Grad School with your Soul (Mostly) Intact
Graduate Student Workshop
3-5pm BuTo 225
Join Dr. Mimi Khúc in a discussion on how to do ethical, interventional work within the unethical (and soul-crushing) structures of the academy. Spoiler: she doesn’t know, but we will figure this out together!
This residency is hosted by the UBC Centre for European Studies with co-sponsorship by UBC Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies, the UBC Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality & Social Justice, the UBC Public Humanities Hub, and the Waterloo Centre for German Studies Diversity Grant.
