Join us for a research talk with panellists Lai-Tze Fan, Jessica Thompson, and Jin Sol Kim.
About the panel
Invisible Stories (Dr. Lai-Tze Fan)
Lai-Tze Fan will uncover how writing machines (typewriters, word processors, and computers) have been associated with women's invisible labour since the late 19th C and will briefly discuss how women have since used them as communication tools to empower themselves through creative output, community building, and critical intervention.
(Sound)Mapping Inequality (Dr. Jessica Thompson)
Jessica Thompson will discuss how intersectional approaches to sound mapping can be used to generate critical dialogues around equality in cities, and how the creative use of mobile technologies can be used to engage and empower the ears on the ground. Her project, Borderline, is a research-creation tool that enables users to automatically tag sounds in their environment, create generative soundscapes to animate urban geographies, and export data in an open, accessible format.
Responsible Representation: Recognizing Paratextual Parallels and Dog-Whistles in 20th and 21st Century Racial Photographs (Jin Sol Kim)
Earlier this year, in January 2021, there was a debacle involving Vogue magazine and then-Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris in which the editorial team released a cover photo of VP Harris that had not been approved by her team. In this talk, Jin will provide a close reading of two different visual texts from the 20th and 21st centuries: three photos of significant Black leaders from the fifth Pan-African conference in 1945, published on a single page in Picture Post magazine, and the problematic Vogue photo of Kamala Harris from 2021. By reading these visual texts together, she will argue that when it comes to racial representation, mere media representation is not enough. Rather, we must account for representation behind the scenes, for it is there that paratextual decisions and thus ideologies are challenged and made.
About W3+
W3+ (Waterloo Womxn + Nonbinary Wednesdays) is a community of womxn and nonbinary grad students, post-docs, staff and faculty that meets on the last Wednesday of every month.
How to attend
W3+ events take place in the W3+ Team on Microsoft Teams. You'll find them in the "General" channel there. You can also email w3plus@uwaterloo.ca to request a calendar invite.