On Liberating Our Relationships for a Better World (Livestream)

• These tickets are for the livestream version of this event. Tickets are sold out for the in-person version of this event.
• Register for the in-person event and for one week of ad-free replay access.
• Books are available to add to your order at check-out for pick-up from Marcus Books in Oakland, California or delivery within the United States.

Lifelong activist and educator Dean Spade dares us to decide that our interpersonal actions are not separate from our politics of liberation and resistance. Many activist projects and resistance groups fall apart because people treat each other poorly, trying desperately to live out the cultural myths about dating and relationships that we are fed from an early age.

How do we divest ourselves from the idea that one romantic partner will be the solution to all our problems? How do we bring our best thinking about freedom and justice into step with our desires for healing and connection?

Join Dean and CIIS Associate Professor in Anthropology and Social Change and School of Consciousness and Transformation Targol Mesbah for a liberating conversation on how to combat cultural scripts and take our relationships into our own hands, better preparing us for the work of changing the world. Dean shares from their latest book, Love in a F*cked-Up World, daring us to be the change we want to see—both out in the world and amongst our closest connections. 
 

Image

Dean Spade has been working to build queer and trans liberation based in racial and economic justice for the past two decades. He’s the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, and Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) the director of the documentary Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!. His next book, Love in a Fucked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up and Raise Hell Together, is forthcoming from Algonquin Press in January, 2025.

Image

Targol Mesbah was born and raised in Tehran, Iran and immigrated to the United States with her family during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Targol’s research seeks to discern the social, psychic and material relations that shape the experience of wars and how the aftermaths of wars shape the everyday possibilities of living, knowing, loving and dying. Michel Foucault’s writings on the analytics of power as capillary movement help her articulate the creative possibilities of power in resisting war-like relations of domination. The Zapatista movement’s political theory and practice of building autonomous communities, councils, and schools, in order to build a world in which many worlds fit grounds her living, learning, and teaching in times of ever-intensifying environmental destruction, political violence and displacement of human and nonhuman populations. Targol is currently researching the aftermaths of radioactive contamination of soil, water and air, from uranium mining in the U.S. Southwest and the U.S. deployment of depleted uranium weaponry in the Middle East within the nuclear chain of production and the entanglements of militarism, colonialism and capitalism. She teaches critical and postcolonial theory, film, and media studies, and experiments in creating non-coercive spaces of learning and translation in and outside the university. 


We are grateful to our Bookstore Partner

Marcus Books is the nation’s oldest Black-owned independent bookstore celebrating its 60th year. Marcus Books’ mission is to provide opportunities for Black folks and their allies to celebrate and learn about Black people everywhere. Learn more about Marcus Books.

Accessibility

If you need to request accessibility accommodations, please email publicprograms@ciis.edu at least one week prior to the event. For more information, explore our Accessibility web page.

Important Event Information

Access to the livestream event is limited to registered guests. Registered ticket holders will receive the link to watch the livestream, will have access to chat and Q&A, and will have an ad-free watching experience.

Recording Policy

Ticket holders will have access to an ad-free replay of the event for one week after the live event. A replay with ads will be released on our YouTube channel one week after the livestream. Portions of the audio will also be released on our podcast. Only registered ticket holders who choose to watch live can participate in the chat and Q&A.

Refunding Policy

All tickets and donations for this event are nonrefundable.