Micah Kalisch (she/they)

Areas of Interest

• Sexualized Violence Studies
• Decolonial, Indigenous, Feminist Research Methodologies
• Childhood Studies
• Queer Ecologies
• Sexual and Reproductive Health
• Transformative Justice and Anti-Carceral Feminisms
• Poetry and Visual Studies
• Trauma Informed and Survivor Centric Praxis, Disability Justice
• Gender-Based Violence Prevention and Response in Post Secondary Institutions
• Feminist trauma research
• Politics of Believability
• Affect Theory
• Somatic and Embodiement research
• Biomedical Discourse

Biography

Micah Kalisch is an activist and scholar dedicated to dismantling systems of rape culture and supporting survivors of sexualized violence. Micah is an MA student in the Women & Gender Studies Institute at UofT, they completed their undergraduate studies with a Specialist in Women and Gender Studies, a Major in Sociology, and a Minor in Critical Equity and Solidarity Studies. Her research focuses on trauma responses to sexualized violence being rooted in survival and resiliency, and Western pathology utilizing diagnosis as a tool of rape culture and a temporal erasure project that lends itself to settler societies’ fragmentation of histories.

As a survivor herself, Micah’s dedication to survivor advocacy spans beyond academics and into formal and informal spaces. She works and has worked in both grassroots and institutional organizations such as the Dandelion Initiative, Students For Consent Culture Canada, REES, Luke’s Place, The PEARS Project, and WAGE. She was awarded the Award for Scholarly Achievement in the area of Gender Based Violence in 2021, and has continued to contribute to this field through both scholarship, art, peer support, community care, and activism.

Program: MA 2024

Education

BA, University of Toronto

Master’s Research Paper

Title: Trauma Bones: Beyond Pathology as a Process of Semantic Obfuscation

Supervisor: Judith Taylor

My MRP explores how Western culture weaponizes the pathologization of experiences of sexualized violence to reproduce rape culture through semantic obfuscation. Pathology can invisibilize acts of violence, silence and homogenize survivors’ experiences, create hierarchies of validity and standards of proof, allow men to remain in control of the narrative and reduce responses rooted in survival and resiliency to symptoms and pathology. The ideological work of pathology relieves humanity of the work needed to dismantle rape culture by problematizing the person rather than the act of sexual violence. In keeping with the much-documented patriarchy of biomedical discourse and the legacy of disordering bodies to create essentialist categorization, this paper extends this discourse to include medicalized understandings of sexual assault. Utilizing affect theorists and theoretical interventions of speech acts being hailed into a subjectivity, diagnosis becomes a tool of rape culture and a temporal erasure project that lends itself to settler societies’ fragmentation of histories. This MRP emphasizes sexual violence responses are not monolithic, and rather are rooted in survival and resiliency. By pathologizing these survival responses, the very rape culture we are trying to eradicate is reproduced.

Presentations

Our Voices Now: Roundtable on Gender-Based Violence. Hosted by Action Now Atlantic, REES, Students for Consent Culture. April 28th 2022.

Gender and Trauma as a Social Determinants of Health from an Interdisciplinary Perspective. Mosaic Institute Panel on Social Determinants of Health, Toronto. April 5th 2022.

Survivor Centred Peer Support and Survivor Advocacy on Campus. Provincial Forum for the Eradiction of Gender Based Violence. University of Toronto 2023.

Navigating Gender-Based Violence at University. Hosted by WGSSU at the WGSI, November 14th 2023.

Centering Survivor's Experiences in Medical Discourse. Women in Health Conference. March 2024. Hart House Ontario.

Selected Works

Kalisch, M. 2023.“Reclaiming the Red Zone: A Toolkit for Post-Secondary Students, Student Unions, Clubs, and Organizations. Prepared for Students for Consent Culture Canada.

Book Chapter in: This Wasn’t on the Syllabus: Stories from the Front Lines of Campus Activism Against Sexualized Violence. Publisher: Rising Action (November 26, 2024). ISBN13: 9781998076758.

Victim or Survivor? Language matters. Luke’s Place. May 7, 2024

Reconciliation and Decolonization Initiatives at Non Governmental Organizations in Canada. The Cultural Interface Institute · Oct 3, 2023

We Deserve Better: A Student-Driven & Informed Review of UofTs Policy on Sexual Violence. The PEARS Project · Jan 1, 2022

Honours and Awards