Launch of Settler Attachments & Asian Diasporic Film - Beenash Jafri

Featuring a discussion with Ali Kazimi and Punam Khosla, moderated by Nazli Akhtari.

Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film is an interdisciplinary examination of the stubborn attachment of Asian diasporas to settler-colonial ideals and of the decolonial possibilities Asian diasporic films imagine. Beenash Jafri uniquely addresses the complexities of Asian–Indigenous relationality through film and visual media, urging film scholars to approach their subjects with an eye to the entanglements of race, diaspora, and Indigeneity.

Highlighting how Asian diasporic attachments to settler colonialism are structural, she explores how they are manifested through melancholic yearning within the figure of the Asian cowboy in films such as Cowgirl and Wild West and through the aesthetic and representational politics of body and land in experimental films by Shani Mootoo and Vivek Shraya. While recognizing the pervasive violence of settler colonialism, Jafri maintains a hopeful outlook, showcasing how Asian diasporic filmmakers persistently work toward decolonial worldmaking. This emerging vision can be seen in the radical friendship between Ali Kazimi and Onondaga artist Jeffrey Thomas in Kazimi’s film Shooting Indians, in the queer relational survivance depicted in films such as This Place and Scarborough, and in the sensory disruptions of Jin-me Yoon’s interactive art project Untunnelling Vision.

From film and media studies to diaspora studies and critical ethnic studies, Indigenous studies to queer theory, Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film provides a critical framework for engaging cinematic media to understand and imagine beyond the entrenched settler-colonial dynamics within Asian diasporic communities.

Beenash Jafri is an associate professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at UC Davis. She is the author of Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film, co-editor of Cultural Studies in the Interregnum and of the Amerasia journal special issue, “Assemblages of Asian Settler Colonial Critique.” A former Torontonian who now resides in the US, she is an alum of Environmental Studies (York), Sociology and Equity Studies (UT), and York’s Gender, Feminist & Women’s Studies PhD program.

Moderator

Nazli Akhtari writes about the archive, memory work, and image making in the context of Southwest Asian and North Africa. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo where she teaches performance theory and archive-based practice as well as topics on race, culture, and technology.

Discussants

Ali Kazimi is a Toronto-based documentary filmmaker, author, and media artist whose award-winning films include Continuous Journey, Shooting Indians, Rex vs Singh, and Beyond Extinction: Sinixt Resurgence, engaging deeply with questions of migration, race, and Indigeneity. A Professor in the Department of Cinema & Media Arts at York University, he is known for research-driven, ethically grounded work that foregrounds archival practice and community collaboration. He is a recipient of the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts and holds an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of British Columbia.

Punam Khosla (coming soon)

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