Department of Gender Studies Speakers' Series
The Advisory Committee on Speakers, Department of Gender Studies, organizes public talks by local and visiting speakers on topics of interest to the university and St. John's communities.
The series runs in the Fall and Winter semesters of each academic year.
WINTER SEMESTER 2013
All lectures are open to the public and unless otherwise noted are held in the Sally Davis Seminar Room, SN 4087.
The following speakers are confirmed for the Winter 2013 Department of Women's Studies Speakers' Series.
Tuesday, 15 January, 1:00 p.m. -- Dr. Delores Mullings, School of Social Work, Memorial University
Growing Old in Canada: The Impact of Institutionalized Exploitation on Caribbean Canadian Women
Canada was a reluctant host in accepting Caribbean-born women into the country as legitimate immigrants. They were categorized mainly as domestic workers and low level nurses, regardless of their education. However, Black, English-speaking Caribbean women played a critical role with their contributions in building the Canadian nation state. These women have now aged in place, but what is the cost of the institutional violence that they experienced? How did the exclusionary violence impact their ability to adequately prepare for retirement? This presentation explores poverty among older Caribbean Canadian women and challenges standard white feminist discourse around older women and poverty.
Friday and Saturday, 1-2 February -- (un)doing GNDR: A Research Symposium
The symposium will feature presentations and displays by Gender Studies faculty and undergraduate and graduate students, as well as keynote presentations by invited guests, Dr. Ann Braithwaite, (Women's Studies, UPEI) and Leslie Vryenhoek, (Writer & Editor, including for Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing, WIEGO).
The full schedule to be posted at www.mun.ca/genderstudies
Tuesday, 5 February, 7:00 p.m., SN 2109 -- S. Bear Bergman, Author, Storyteller, Educator
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Gender
Just exactly what is a transsexual anyway, and how do they get that way? How is transsexual different from transgender, exactly? And what is genderqueer, and why do the words keep changing, and none of these newspaper articles make sense, and can't you kids today just make up your damn minds!? An informational and personal lecture about hormones, surgeries, 'social gender', gatekeepers, identification (and its discontents), and all the nuts, bolts, mechanics, fears, hopes, and dreams before and beneath a gender change. Rated M for mythbusting.
Co-sponsored with the Department of Folklore and the Department of Sociology
Friday, 8 February, 1:00 p.m. -- Dr. Noreen Golfman, Dean, School of Graduate Studies, Memorial University
Women in View on Screen: Under-Representation in Canadian Film
Women are certainly central to feature filmmaking as objects of the camera's gaze but they are rarely subjects of significance behind the camera. Why is this so? Canada's track record of women as directors, writers, and editors is as dismal as that of the USA. This talk will focus on the history and gendered context of filmmaking in this country and reveal a new initiative involving the women's community right here in St. John's.
Monday, 4 March, 12:30 p.m. -- Jessica Khouri, Master of Gender Studies Candidate, Memorial University
D.I.Y. Fat Activism: Exploring Fat Activisms and Fat Community in Toronto
This presentation explores the contemporary fat activist movement in Toronto, and the complexities and variations of what it means to be a fat activist. Examining the connections between the fat hatred supported by "obesity" discourses and the fat positive rhetoric used by fat activists, I examine the multiple forms of fat activism occurring as a response to "obesity" in a Canadian context. Additionally, I make the link between fat-hating discourses as individualizing, and fat activism as community building, in order to explore what fat community looks like, the importance of it and who belongs.
Monday, 25 March, 12:30 p.m. -- Christina Young, Master of Gender Studies Candidate, Memorial University
Caring in Community: The Doulas of Newfoundland and Labrador
Doulas are emotional, physical, and informational caregivers to women before, during, and just after birth. Currently, doulas practice in the St. John's area within the Doula Collective of Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as independently. In aiming to understand the experiences of doulas within this context, I investigate whether membership within a collective provides doulas with the support necessary for enacting their intimate and caring role, examine how doulas construct the significance of their relationships with their clients and explore the potential to conceptualize the activities of doulas as a form of resistance against medicalized models of birth.
