Beverly Bain

Biography:

Professor Beverly Bain is a Black queer feminist, antiracism, anti-capitalist scholar. She teaches in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga Campus. She currently teaches and researches in the area of Caribbean and Black diasporic sexualities, Black and Caribbean queer feminist organizing, sexual assault and violence against women, gender, colonialism, transnationalism and anti-capitalism. Bain is the author of Fire, Passion and Politics: The Creation of Blockorama as Black Queer Diasporic Space in the Toronto Pride Festivities, in We Still Demand: Defining Resistance in Sex ad Gender Struggles, edited by Patrizia Gentile, Gary Kinsman and L Pauline Rankin (UBC Press, 2017), and Uncovering Conceptual Practices: Bringing into Lived Consciousness Feminist Activities on the Toronto Police Services Board Audit (Canadian Women Studies, 2010). Bain is currently working on a series of essays on Black radical feminist queer organizing in Toronto from the 80s to the present.

As an educator in the University classroom, Bain is committed to an “engaged pedagogical” approach to learning that encourages students to think critically, creatively, and reflexively about their current context and the world. Key words for her are feminism, justice, and liberation.

Bain has devoted 40 years of her life to feminist, anti-racism and anti-capitalist organizing and activism in the city of Toronto. She was the Executive Director of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), Canada’s largest feminist organization from 1992-1997. She views the work in the classroom as connected to the larger community locally and transnationally. Bain believes that much of the theory and praxis that she teaches in the classroom is shaped and inspired by her work with Caribbean and Black and of Colour scholar and activists feminists and LGBTQ activists in the Caribbean and in Canada.

Bain has delivered numerous lectures, training, and keynotes on and off campus in the Toronto community and internationally on feminism, gendered anti-black racism and police violence, and LGBTQ issues. Bain was awarded the 2005 Inaugural Steinert and Ferreiro Award of Excellence - Community One Foundation of Toronto for her teaching and activism in the women of colour and LGBT Communities in Toronto.