Speaker: Alex Fleck
Respondent: Toben Racicot
Join us for an engaging discussion with Tess Chakkalakal, author of A Matter of Complexion: The Life and Fictions of Charles W. Chesnutt, as she speaks with moderator Dr. Vay.
Title: De-Coding Literacy: An Analysis of Ontario’s 2020 K-8 Mathematics Curriculum
Speaker: Sophie Morgan
Respondent: Sarah Casey
Speaker:Dakota Pinheiro
Respondent: sarah currie
The Wilfrid Laurier Department of Communication Studies presents a talk by Dr. Ghislain Thibault:Look Up! A Media History of Aerial Communication.
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.
Critical Media Lab presents
Dr. Christine Bold, Professor of English and Killam Research Fellow, University of Guelph, will give a talk at UݮƵ, “Indigenous Performers, Vaudeville, and Building Relations of Research Exchange.”
As the: “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.
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.