Targol Mesbah will discuss Mexico’s Zapatista indigenous peasant movement, which for 25 years has resisted colonial and racialized capitalism by building autonomous communities, councils and schools to create a world in which many worlds fit. The speaker will reflect on what lessons the political theory and practice of this leading contemporary social movement can teach those in “otherplaces” about living, learning and teaching during intensifying environmental destruction, political violence, and displacements of human and non-human populations.

Targol Mesbah, PhD, received her BA in film studies from the University of California Irvine and her PhD in history of consciousness at University of California Santa Cruz. She is presently working on her book manuscript entitled “Why Does the Other Suffer? War, Trauma, and the Everyday.” She has taught courses in critical theory, postcolonial critique, media studies and Iranian cinema. Her research interests include critiques of the normalizing effects of biopower, poststructuralist philosophy, psychoanalytic time and the politics of difference.

This event is part of the Wisconsin Ideas in Education Lecture Series, an interdisciplinary speaker series intended for educators and future educators across campus. It is organized by early career faculty members from UW-Madison’s School of Education, with support from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.