Erica Lawson
Looking at Black women's past, present to teach students critical thought
Gender, sexuality, and women’s studies prof prepares to teach new minor in Black studies
By Nicole Laidler
Erica Lawson’s career changed course the day she watched Pray the Devil Back to Hell. The powerful documentary tells the story of a group of Liberian women whose nonviolent tactics helped press their government into negotiating an end to 13 years of civil war in the West African country.
“Their activism went a long way to bring the fighting factions to the table,” said Lawson, associate professor in the department of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies. “The power of what they did really shocked me. I decided I had to meet them.”
Lawson reached out and built both a professional and personal relationship with Liberian activists Vaiba Kebeh Flomo and Cerue Konah Garlo. Since 2017, an SSHRC Insight Grant has supported their collaborative research into women’s leadership roles in the Liberian peace movement and post-conflict reconstruction.
Their work focuses on the ‘peace huts’ women implemented after the civil war. Here, women mediate disputes, provide entrepreneurial opportunities, educate girls and women about their rights, and support the country’s health-care system during crises like the Ebola outbreak and more recent COVID-19 pandemic.
Garlo believes the model could be replicated in post-conflict zones around the world. “We have to take into consideration the context, but peace huts can be used in other places to sustain the level of peace, or to improve relationships at the community and at the national levels,” she said.
Lawson’s research and teaching interests include motherhood studies; maternal grief, bereavement, and activism; critical race studies and Black feminist studies.
“I have a lot of interest in how Black women organize,” she said. Her current research focuses on how Black mothers turn the loss of their children into activism. “How do they support each other? What kind of social change are they pressing for? Are they making progress?” she asked.
Born in Jamaica, Lawson says she has always been interested in issues of race. “We had a lot of conversations in our family and in our community about what it meant to be a Black Jamaican, what it meant to be British subjects, and what it meant to be descendants of enslaved people.”
But it wasn’t until Lawson was in her mid-20s that she began to consider the issues on a deeper level. “I took a long break between my undergraduate and graduate school,” she said. “I worked, and I read a lot. I read about Black and critical race theory, and feminist theory. After six years of being out of university, I felt like it was time for me to go back.”
Lawson completed her PhD in the department of sociology and equity studies in education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto (OISE/UT). She came to 澳门六合彩开奖预测 in 2008.
In January 2023, Lawson will teach Introduction to Black Studies, offered as part of 澳门六合彩开奖预测’s new minor in Black studies through the department of gender, sexuality and women’s studies.
“I’m interested in Black liberation movements, going far back, and coming up to Black Lives Matter. We’ll be talking about Black intellectual traditions and looking at them in different ways – through poetry, music, sociology, feminist studies and literature,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for students to think more deeply, in a critically informed way, about the world that we live in.”
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