Anti-oppression statement
The Department’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Committee worked to create a living document addressing oppression and systemic racism in our institution and classrooms. We ask all personnel engaged in our Department to read over the full Anti-Oppression Statement.
Academic institutions hold histories of systemic racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, xenophobic and colonial abuse, including Concordia University. Concordia University’s Theatre Department recognizes that Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) continue to be impacted disproportionately by white supremacist systems in Canada and beyond.
The Department of Theatre is committed to actively eliminating forms of marginalization, cultural insensitivity, microaggressions and oppression, especially those which we perpetuate in our creative practices. We do this by staying in communication and educating ourselves on how to live and work together in dismantling these systems. We recognize that individual marginalized people experience oppression differently, and are committed to listening to, and learning from, each other.
Academic and arts institutions can be sites of bold resistance. Performance, as an art form, is powerful. We support the cultivation of work that speaks out against oppression. Theatre and performance can also perpetuate harmful ideas and cultures. In other words, they can reflect the society in which they are produced, and can also offer potent glimpses of realities that could be.
The Department of Theatre is dedicated to an ongoing and open conversation aimed at dismantling systemic oppression in all of its forms. This statement is an articulation of the values and ideals that we strive to continually hold ourselves accountable to. We strongly encourage the members of our community, including staff, full-time faculty, part-time faculty, and students, to engage with the resources below as a means of contributing to a more equitable department.
Resources
Concordia Theatre EDIA Committee
In 2022, a theatre undergraduate student conducted a study as part of a CUSRA grant on trans student experiences in the Concordia theatre department. "Through a series of in-depth interviews, a complex picture of related experiences emerged, " the student concluded, and their interviewees describe the department both as a place where trans people "are acceptable if not accepted," who encounter "some instructors who make the effort to create space for them" as well as significant stressors around misgendering, navigating the institution and anxiety around bathrooms, gendered casting and the Public Performance Projects, "and courses requiring engagement with trauma or artistic vulnerability, all present contexts in which the needs of trans students are not sufficiently accounted for in participants’ experience."
Their recommendations include:
- trans specific diversity training for faculty and staff;
- increasing visibility of Concordia’s name change policy;
- bringing more trans voices into department syllabi;
- a reconsideration of gendered casting as it currently stands;
- increased clarity around boundaries and a practice of check-ins with students;
- listening to trans students’ discomfort, especially when similar situations will reoccur; and being prepared to be wrong and adapt together as a department.
- In all, participants raise a community focused approach, arising from a sense of belonging in the Concordia Theatre community and a desire for a more equitable student experience.
Parts of the trans theatre student experience still warrant further exploration. The research included no transfeminine participants, and the experience of trans POC students was not fully explored. Access to the full report is by permission of the author: please email meghanmoe.beitiks@concordia.ca with questions. The department is currently working to act on these recommendations.