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Social Science Gender Studies

Remembering Vancouver's Disappeared Women

Settler Colonialism and the Difficulty of Inheritance

by (author) Amber Dean

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Dec 2015
Category
Gender Studies, Native American Studies, General
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781442644540
    Publish Date
    Dec 2015
    List Price
    $68.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781442612754
    Publish Date
    Dec 2015
    List Price
    $37.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442660854
    Publish Date
    Jan 2016
    List Price
    $25.95

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Description

Between the late 1970s and the early 2000s, at least sixty-five women, many of them members of Indigenous communities, were found murdered or reported missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. In a work driven by the urgency of this ongoing crisis, which extends across the country, Amber Dean offers a timely, critical analysis of the public representations, memorials, and activist strategies that brought the story of Vancouver’s disappeared women to the attention of a wider public. Remembering Vancouver’s Disappeared Women traces “what lives on” from the violent loss of so many women from the same neighbourhood.

Dean interrogates representations that aim to humanize the murdered or missing women, asking how these might inadvertently feed into the presumed dehumanization of sex work, Indigeneity, and living in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Taking inspiration from Indigenous women’s research, activism, and art, she challenges readers to reckon with our collective implication in the ongoing violence of settler colonialism and to accept responsibility for addressing its countless injustices.

About the author

Amber Dean is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Her first book, Remembering Vancouver’s Disappeared Women: Settler Colonialism and the Difficulty of Inheritance (2015), offers a critical analysis of the public representations, memorials, and activist strategies that brought the story of Vancouver’s disappeared women to a wider public. In addition to publishing work on the topic of Air India, she has also published several journal articles and book chapters on artistic and (counter)memorial responses to murdered or missing women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and on gentrification in Edmonton, Hamilton, and Vancouver. With Vancouver writer Anne Stone, she has guest edited a special issue of West Coast Line on representations of murdered or missing women, and she has contributed chapters to several edited books, including Reconciling Canada: Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress.

Amber Dean's profile page

Awards

  • Winner, Donald Shepherd Book Prize awarded by the McMaster University Faculty of Humanities
  • Joint winner, Outstanding Scholarship Prize awarded by the Women’s and Gender Studies Association
  • Winner, Best Book in Canadian Studies awarded by The Canadian Studies Network – Réseau d'études canadienne