WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2025

Women, Life, Freedom and the Power of Storytelling
In-Person  |  5:30PM – 7:30PM PST  |  REGISTER HERE
Dodson Room, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre  |  1961 East Mall, Vancouver

Join us for an engaged dialogue with journalist and UBC Arts alumna Nilo Tabrizy, whose acclaimed new book For the Sun After Long Nights (Pantheon / Penguin Random House Canada, co-authored with Fatemeh Jamalpour) chronicles Iran’s Women, Life, Freedom uprising.

In conversation with Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Race, Ethnicity, Migration, and Identity, Neda Maghbouleh (UBC Sociology), Tabrizy will reflect on the intersections of journalism and scholarship, the power of friendship and feminism, and the enduring role of art and memory in movements for change. A reception will follow the event. Copies of the book will be available for purchase from UBC Bookstore in October. Please feel free to bring your copy of the book to be signed.

About the book
For the Sun After Long Nights A moving exploration of the 2022 women-led protests in Iran, as told through the interwoven stories of two Iranian journalists

In September 2022, a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jîna Amini, died after being beaten by police officers who arrested her for not adhering to the Islamic Republic’s dress code. Her death galvanized thousands of Iranians—mostly women—who took to the streets in one of the country’s largest uprisings in decades: the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

Despite the threat of imprisonment or death for her work as a journalist covering political unrest, state repression, and grassroots activism in Iran—which has led to multiple interrogation sessions and arrests—Fatemeh Jamalpour joined the throngs of people fighting to topple Iran’s religious extremist regime. And across the globe, Nilo Tabrizy, who emigrated from Iran with her family as a child, covered the protests and state violence, knowing that spotlighting the women on the front lines and the systemic injustice of the Iranian government meant she would not be able to safely return to Iran in the future.

Though they had met only once in person, Nilo and Fatemeh corresponded constantly, often through encrypted platforms to protect Fatemeh. As the protests continued to unfold, the sense of sisterhood they shared led them to embark on an effort to document the spirit and legacy of the movement, and the history, geopolitics, and influences that led to this point. At once deeply personal and assiduously reported, For the Sun After Long Nights offers two perspectives on what it means to cover the stories that are closest to one’s heart—both in the forefront and from afar.

This is an in-person event. For more even registration details, please click here.
 

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025

Ten Surprising Things About the History of Photography in Canada
In-Person | 5:00PM – 6:30PM PST  REGISTER HERE
Coach House, Green College | 6201 Cecil Green Park Road

Join us in person for an exciting event with Martha Langford about her book, A History Of Photography In Canada

About the book
A History Of Photography In Canada, Volume 1 From early reports of the invention to its wide application during World War I, the idea of photography created anticipation and participation in the modern world. 

The first volume of A History of Photography in Canada captures this phenomenon by looking at hundreds of photographs generated in and about Canada-in-the-making and by listening to the chords they struck in the collective imagination.Emphasizing technological readiness and cultural eagerness for the medium, Martha Langford shows how photography served ideals of progress and improvement as Canada’s settler society looked to master the world by seizing its visible traces.

Emphasizing technological readiness and cultural eagerness for the medium, Martha Langford shows how photography served ideals of progress and improvement as Canada’s settler society looked to master the world by seizing its visible traces.

This is an in-person event. For more even registration details, please click here.
 

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2025

Queering Families: Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times with Tamara Lea Spira
In-Person and online | 12:00PM – 1:00PM PST  |  REGISTER HERE
Buchanan Tower, Room 323 | 1873 East Mall 

About the book
Queering Families traces the shifting dominant meanings of queer family from the late twentieth century to today. With this book, Tamara Lea Spira highlights the growing embrace of normative family structures by LGBTQ+ movements—calling into question how many queers, once deemed unfit to parent, have become contradictory agents within the US empire’s racial and colonial agendas.

Simultaneously, Queering Families celebrates the rich history of queer reproductive justice, from the radical movements of the 1970s through the present, led by Black, decolonial, and queer of color feminist activists.

Ultimately, Spira argues that queering reproductive justice impels us to build communities of care to cherish and uphold the lives of those who, defying normativity’s violent stranglehold, are deemed to be unworthy of life. She issues the call to lovingly wager a future for the world’s children, the planet, and all living beings against all odds, and in increasingly perilous times.

This is an in-person event. For more even registration details, please click here.