Events

Speaker: Alex Fleck

Respondent: Toben Racicot

Jack Halberstam is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. This is a special lecture and conversation co-sponsored by the Department of English Language & Literature, the Department of Philosophy, the Critical Media Lab, and the Faculty of Arts.​

WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT:
Come and enjoy cheese and pastries, relaxed conversation, and a discussion of crime in medieval England.

Christine Bold is Professor of English and Killam Research Fellow, University of Guelph. She has published six books and many essays on popular culture and cultural memory, most recently the award-winning The Frontier Club: Popular Westerns and Cultural Power, 1880-1924.

Dr. Christine Bold, Professor of English and Killam Research Fellow, University of Guelph, will give a talk at UWaterloo, “Indigenous Performers, Vaudeville, and Building Relations of Research Exchange.”

As the University of Guelph writes: “Indigenous Performers, Vaudeville, and Building Relations of Research Exchange” is part of “a research project that [Bold] says upends long-held notions of the role Native peoples played in the popular culture of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Critical Media Lab presents

In 2019, the Barbie doll turned 60.  Plasticity in body and persona allowed the Mattel toy company to position and reposition their high-achieving money-maker as relevant by exploiting social trend, political movements and historical shifts. As a complex international celebrity and feminist bête noir, Barbie is a mirror helping us to reflect on ourselves. 

This lecture is based on my book, Plastic’s Republic, a poem collection centering on the Barbie doll as an enduring cultural icon. I will examine her creation, her impact on female beauty and discuss how her mouldable nature made her a “capital doll” and free market diva. Following the book’s themes, I will elaborate the philosophical, feminist and social issues she engenders and discuss how Barbie became plastic surgery’s prophet by spawning “plastic positive” humans. Finally, plastic’s reach extends to the dollification of romantic relationships via silicone sex dolls and ends (un)naturally in our plastic infused lives and smothered oceans.

I will follow the lecture by reading from Plastic’s Republic.

The Wilfrid Laurier Department of Communication Studies presents a talk by Dr. Ghislain Thibault: Look Up! A Media History of Aerial Communication.