Beverly Bain

Area of Interests, Research and Teaching:

• Black queer Feminist Organizing 
• Decolonial Feminisms, anti-colonial, anti-capitalist Struggles
• The Black Radical Tradition
• Black Refusals
• Caribbean and Diasporic Sexualities
• Decolonial Pedagogies and the Archives

Biography:

Professor Beverly Bain is a Black queer radical feminist, antiracist, anti-capitalist activist scholar and public Intellectual. She teaches in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga Campus. Bain teaches, research and writes in the field of Black and Diasporic Sexualities, the Black Radical Feminist Tradition, Decolonial Feminisms, anti-colonial, anti-capitalist struggles, movements, and abolition.  Bain has been an organizer in the feminist anti-violence anti-colonial, anti-capitalist movements for 48 years.

She is the founder of Scholars Strike for Liberation a virtual platform that facilitates radical, decolonial, anti-colonial liberatory and abolitionists scholarship, art, and activism. It is a space of conversations/teach-ins with scholars, activists, artists, and students.  Some of the issues covered include academic freedom, Black feminist and Transnational Politics, building global solidarity, Black feminist refusals, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, genocide, imperialism and war, Indigenous and Decolonial knowledges and police free campuses. Bain views Scholars Strike for liberation as a space that transcends the university institution and connects to the larger global world, where the radical collective work for freedom and liberation takes place.

Bain is regularly interviewed and deliver lectures nationally and internationally on police violence against Black women, Black queer feminists’ activism, Black Feminists’ refusals, academic freedom, abolition and liberation.

Selected Works:

Bain, Beverly. (2026) “Struggle” in Thinking From Black: A Lexicon. Edited by Tina Campt and the Practicing Refusal Collective. Alchemy by Knopf Press.

Bain, Beverly. 2023. “Beyond the Capitalist, Colonial, Carceral and White Supremacist University: Radical Abolitionist Imaginings and Activism. Topia Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies Volume 47, September 23, pp.206-216.

Bain, Beverly. Lee, Min Sook. (2021) Foreword in Coloniality and Racial (In)Justice in the University: Counting for Nothing? Edited By Sunera Thobani. Toronto Women’s Press. 

Bain, Beverly. (2020). "Wake Work and Coronavirus." Society for the Diffusion of Useful  Knowledge, Tilting (2) Issue 7.

Bain, Beverly. (2016) Fire Passion and Politics in the Creation of Blockorama as Black Queer Diasporic Space in the Toronto Pride Festivities” In We Still Demand! Redefining Resistance in Sex and Gender Struggles. Eds. Patrizia Gentile, Gary Kinsman, Pauline Rankin. UBC Press.