Art as Resistance and Resilience with Dr. Asma Sayed

The Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Join us as we celebrate Asian Heritage Month, exploring how South Asian artists contribute to and further social justice in Canada.

Art as Resistance and Resilience: The Contributions of South Asian Artists in CanadaLocation: Webinar on Zoom (link to be emailed out before presentation)The Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at Western is thrilled to welcome Dr. Asma Sayed for a webinar presentation in honour of Asian Heritage Month 2025.Literature, film, visual art, music, new media and other modes of cultural production are interwoven modes of storytelling through which human life and people’s desires and hopes for a better world can be understood. For more than a century, many South Asian artists have used their art as counter-narratives to colonial and Eurocentric discourses to foster fairness and empathy in Canadian society. In this presentation, through a reading of contemporary South Asian literary and cultural texts, Dr. Asma Sayed will examine how artists forward social justice and human rights discourse, as a conscious or unconscious intent, through their creative output. Using an intersectional social justice and decolonial framework, she will look at how we can critically interpret creative expressions as sites of socio-political change, activism, empowerment, and community-building. Further, Dr. Sayed will question and explore how post-secondary institutions might establish and enact historically marginalized knowledge and creativity to envision transformative pathways to support, uphold and expand community knowledge and imagine ethically sustainable futures.

Bio: Dr. Asma Sayed is the Canada Research Chair in South Asian Literary and Cultural Studies in the Department of English at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Currently, she is also Vice President for Equity and Inclusive Communities leading KPU’s EDI portfolios. Her interdisciplinary research and social activism focus on the marginalization of gendered and racialized people and violence against women as represented in literature, film, and media. She specializes in narratives of exile and displacement from South Asia and East Africa, as well as feminist literary and cultural studies related to these geographies. Sayed’s research and teaching is informed by Critical Equity Studies, Critical Race Theory, Critical Hope and Solidarity Studies, and Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies. Her publications include six books and numerous articles in a range of periodicals, anthologies, and academic journals. Sayed’s work has been recognized through multiple awards and grants. In 2020, she was elected to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists. She is a recipient of KPU’s Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) award for 2023 and Distinguished Scholarship Award for 2022.

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Art as Resistance and Resilience with Dr. Asma Sayed

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