The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy is an endowed, internationally recognized institute that supports the interdisciplinary study of law and social institutions. More than 100 UB faculty members from 17 academic departments participate in Baldy Center research, conference and scholarship activities, as do an increasing number of graduate students. The center maintains cooperative ties to other interdisciplinary research centers and co-sponsors a regional network of socio-legal scholars in New York State and Canada. The Baldy Center also hosts distinguished scholars from around the world as visitors, speakers and conference participants.

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Thinking beyond the Nation-state:
A Symposium on Empires, Diasporas, and Indigeneity

Friday, November 20, 2009
8:30 AM – 5:30 p.m.
509 O'Brian Hall

"Thinking beyond the Nation-state" brings together faculty and graduate students from Western New York and Southern Ontario to examine racial and indigenous rights in a global context. The University at Buffalo is the perfect location for comparing Indigenous, African American, and Ethnic Studies approaches to the global. After all, it sits on land formerly held by the Haudenosaunee people (Six Nations). Its two campuses are also in the midst of a metropolitan area that is segregated along racial lines. Furthermore, the university is located just minutes from the United States-Canada border – a border that crosscuts a region in which Western notions of nation-building, citizenship, and economic development have long collided with the interests of people of color. The purpose of this symposium is to spark conversations and to build relationships between scholars who have been traditionally separated by national and disciplinary boundaries.

This symposium provides a forum for faculty and graduate students to discuss groundbreaking research in three intersecting and overlapping fields: imperial and colonial history, policy, and practice; the global migrations of people of color and their attendant transnational political, cultural, and social movements; and indigenous peoples' history and culture, along with their varied responses to dispossession and discrimination. Thus, the symposium endeavors to spark conversations and build relationships between scholars who have been traditionally separated by national borders and disciplinary/topical boundaries.

Featured Commentators:
Richard W. Hill, Associate Director, First Nations Technical Institute
Rinaldo Walcott, Canada Research Chair, Associate Professor of Social Justice
and Cultural Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto

Sponsored by:
Buffalo Seminar on Racial Justice (Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy)
Haudenosaunee-Native American Research Workshop (Humanities Institute)
Canadian-American Studies Committee

To RSVP and for more information, please contact Theresa Runstedtler at tr23@buffalo.edu.