Robyn Maynard

Assistant Professor

Email: robyn.maynard@utoronto.ca

Website:
www.robynmaynard.com

Areas of Interest

• Black feminist thought
• Black social movements
• Abolition
• Policing, borders, carcerality
• Black/Anti-colonial studies
• Black and Indigenous solidarities
• Black Canadian studies

Biography

Robyn Maynard is an Assistant Professor of Black Feminisms in Canada at the University of Toronto-Scarborough in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, with a graduate appointment in the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the St. George Campus. She is the author of Policing Black Lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the Present (Fernwood, 2017) and the co-author of Rehearsals for Living (Knopf/Haymarket, Abolitionist Papers 3, 2022).  She has published writing in the Washington Post, World Policy Journal, the Toronto Star, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Canadian Woman Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, Scholar & Feminist Journal, and a number of peer-reviewed book anthologies. Maynard’s research and teaching focus on transnational Black feminist thought Black social movements, policing, borders and carceral studies, Black-Indigenous histories and praxis, Black Canadian studies, as well as abolitionist and anti-colonial methodologies.

Education

PhD, Women & Gender Studies, University of Toronto

BA, McGill University 

Selected Works

“Maynard, R. Simpson, L.B. “We can only think in a polyphonic chorus.” Antipode (book forum). Reviewers: Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Andrea J. Ritchie, Harsha Walia, Jamaica Osorio Heolimeleikalani, Jade Nixon, Karyn Recollet.

Starblanket, G., Maynard, R. and Simpson, L. B. “On Black and Indigenous Relationality: A Conversation.” In Making Space for Indigenous Feminisms, 3^rd ed. Fernwood Publishing.

Maynard, R. & Simpson, L. B. Rehearsals for Living. Foreword by R. W. Gilmore, Afterword by R. D. G. Kelley. Knopf (ed. L. Henry, Canada); Haymarket: Abolitionist Papers Series (ed. N. Murakawa, US/UK)

Maynard, R., Simpson, L. B., Voegele, H. & Griffin, C. Every day we must get up and relearn the world: An interview with Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Interfere: Journal for Critical Thought and Radical Politics (Fall).

Police abolition/Black revolt. TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. Special Issue: Our COVID Conjuncture: Critical Essays on the Pandemic; 41 (Fall), 70–78.

Trans-Atlantic affinities: Post-Ferguson freedom dreams and the global reverberations of Black (feminist) struggle. Scholar and Feminist (S&F) Online, Special Issue: Unraveling Criminalizing Webs, Building Police-Free Futures, 15.3. (invited)

Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. Fernwood Publishing.

Honours and Awards

Teaching

Undergraduate Courses:

Black radical thought, Abolition feminisms, Critical Race and Black feminisms, Histories of Black feminism in Canada.

Graduate Courses:

Against and Beyond Carcerality: Abolitionist Worldmaking