Monday, December 12, 2022, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EST
Alix Olson, Assistant Professor, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Oxford College, and Co-Director, Emory Studies in Sexuality Program
“Re-considering Resilience: Response to Crisis or Responsible for Crisis?”
Calls to bolster the resilience of vulnerable individuals and communities have become ubiquitous across social, political, and economic life. In this talk, Alix Olson calls attention to the stakes of uncritically deploying resilience, particularly for those interested in a more just and emancipatory future. Moving through a variety of case studies, from self-help books to plans to "Occupy Mars," she shows how discourses of resilience are at work in shaping a specific understanding of
ourselves and the world around us. Ultimately, this talk will pose the question: Is resilience-building a “common-sense” response to a world of escalating crisis or a central strategy for sustaining and extending deeply threatening ways of life?