{"id":893,"date":"2024-10-07T06:50:12","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T06:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/?p=893"},"modified":"2024-10-07T06:50:14","modified_gmt":"2024-10-07T06:50:14","slug":"tracing-the-complicities-of-colonial-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/2024\/10\/07\/tracing-the-complicities-of-colonial-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracing the Complicities of Colonial Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On a warm Saturday morning, on 24 August 2024, a small audience gathered to celebrate Amin Beiranvand as he defended his doctoral dissertation Gendered Sexual Violence and Complicity: A Postcolonial Study of Selected Works by J. M. Coetzee. <\/em>Professor Joel Kuortti acted as custos and adjunct professor John Stotesbury from the University of Eastern Finland as the opponent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The viva began with Amin\u2019s lectio praecursoria<\/em>, in which he outlined the historical and cultural context and the main research questions of his dissertation. He ambitiously investigates the fiction of the critically acclaimed Noble Prize winning Coetzee, whose fiction has dealt with, among other themes, the legacy of colonialism and its violent power relations in human and animal encounters. This underlies also Amin\u2019s research, in which he focuses on Coetzee\u2019s portrayals of gender-based violence against racially and ethnically marginalised women in three novels, Dusklands <\/em>(1974), Waiting for the Barbarians<\/em> (1980) and Disgrace <\/em>(1999).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All’s well that ends well. The opponent accepts the PhD dissertation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opponent presented his questions and criticisms in an approachable and captivating way. The questions began with a lengthy discussion on the dissertation title and specifically the many implications of the word complicity. The effects of colonial violence and its legacy are more far-reaching than those confined into the pages of Coetzee\u2019s novels. This inspired the opponent to ask about Amin\u2019s choice of the term \u201cgender-based\u201d when discussing violence in a setting where it springs as much from the colonial power structures and the racial hierarchies portrayed in the fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the viva dealt with each novel individually and focused specifically on themes of violence, imagination, history, anger and the effects of silences that deny the voice of the oppressed. On this point, the opponent created an immersive experience for everyone in the room by staying silent for a disturbingly long time. Overall, the atmosphere of the viva was relaxed and the opponent told many entertaining anecdotes from his own career, for example being invited to dinner at Coetzee\u2019s house and the introverted author then failing to show up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The successful viva resulted in an accepted doctoral dissertation and we congratulate the new Doctor of Philosophy, Amin Beiranvand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Text by Ira Hansen & Suvi Sepp\u00e4l\u00e4<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo by Damon Tringham<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a warm Saturday morning, on 24 August 2024, a small audience gathered to celebrate Amin Beiranvand as he defended his doctoral dissertation Gendered Sexual Violence and Complicity: A Postcolonial Study of Selected Works by J. M. Coetzee. Professor Joel … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36648,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,31],"tags":[6,32,11,10],"class_list":["post-893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research","category-special-occasions","tag-literature","tag-phd-process","tag-students","tag-thesis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36648"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":895,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions\/895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/englishturku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}