February Monthly News 2020

February Monthly News 2020 Department of Communication Studies February 2020 Newsletter In This Issue: • What’s Coming Up • What's Happened Winter exams will be held April 7-25. For more information, go to the Registrar's website. We are starting our own Little Free Library! The full filing cabinet is near the CSSA at DB 3036, and the other filing cabinet that has fewer books, is in the alcove in between 3030 and 3040. What’s Coming Up Media & Communication in Canada Networks, Culture, Technology, Audience, Ninth Edition is being released this month! Written by Mike Gasher, and Communication Studies professors David Skinner and Natalie Coulter; the textbook is considered the gold standard for studying media and communication in Canada. Thoroughly revised and updated, this authoritative ninth edition explores the shifting nature of media and communication systems by examining traditional and new media and a wealth of current media issues and trends. With a stunning full-colour design and extensive updates throughout, Media and Communication in Canada is essential reading for anyone studying this constantly evolving field. In June, several professors will be presenting at the Canadian Communication Association (CCA) Congress 2020 at Western University. Professor Anne MacLennan is presenting Representations and rhetoric of poverty and working class on North American television. Professor Jonathan Obar is presenting Unpacking “The Biggest Lie on the Internet”: Assessing the Length and Readability of Internet Carrier and Loyalty Program Policies. Professor Estee Fresco will be co-presenting a paper with Dr. Nicole Neverson of Ryerson University titled We the North?: The Toronto Raptors and the Commercialization of Urban Culture. Course Director Carmen Victor is presenting The Anthropocene Imaginary. Course Director Mary Grace Lao is presenting #MeToo and Popular Feminism: Gender and Race in Contemporary Feminist Discourse. George Martin, one of our TA's in COMN 2500, is presenting Fences and Defences: Neighbourhood-level responses to a volatile housing market. Jeffrey Donison, one of our TA's in COMN 1401, is presenting Sonic Difference: Listening to Race, Decolonizing Voice. Stephen Neville, one of our TA's in COMN 1000 and COMN 4140, is presenting Adversarial Imaginaries and Far-right Politics in Canada. Jessica Bay, one of our TA's in COMN 1000, is presenting Consuming Space: Corporate Controlled Fan Conventions. The Black, Indigenous, Non-Binary, Women of Colour (BINBWoC) Graduate Student Collective invites you to attend their Research Methods Lightning Round on Wednesday, February 26, 3-5pm in Kaneff 749. The Research Methods Lightning Round is a panel of 4 BINBWoC scholars who will briefly share the method they used in an MRP/Thesis or PhD dissertation. Panelists and participants are invited to share theoretical understandings of methods, challenges, and successes. The panelists are: Bryn Ludlow is an artist and PhD candidate in the York and Ryerson Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture, and an International Affiliate Member at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University in Montréal, Quebec. Her dissertation is investigating multidisciplinary perspectives on digital stories created by former youth in foster care in Canada. The methods that she used in her dissertation include: video elicitation, semi-structured interviewing via Skype, and naturalistic observations. Here is a complete description of her study: https://brynludlow.com/portfolio/dissertation/ Romana Mirza is a brand strategist and scholar. She brings 25+ years’ experience in marketing services, manufacturing and design disciplines to fashion studies. Romana is a first year PhD student in the Communication and Culture program offered jointly by Ryerson and York Universities. Her dissertation will be exploring distinctions in modest fashion for men, women and trans people with the goal to explore modest sartorial practices as a point of connection as opposed to a point of division. Her research will challenge Islamophobic assumptions surrounding modest dressing and the dominant narrative that marginalizes Muslim women who dress modestly. She hopes to address the stigma that has long been associated with modesty and transform narrow understandings and stereotypes in order to advance inclusion. Tannaz Zargarian holds a PhD in Education at York University. Her dissertation, “Iranian Women’s Quest for Self-Liberation Through the Internet and Social Media: An Emancipatory Pedagogy” examines the educational role of social media on women’s body autonomy. She looks at sexuality, hijab, and public mobility. Mary Grace Lao is a PhD candidate in the joint program in Communication and Culture at York and Ryerson Universities. She is a co-founder of the BINBWoC Graduate Student Collective and member of the IRDL. Her dissertation is a genealogy of rape culture through feminist publics, from the second wave feminist movement to #MeToo. Course Director Michelle Mohabeer will be presenting at the Caribbean Studies Association Conference, June 2-5 in Georgetown, Guyana with a cultural event screening of her feature documentary Queer Coolie-tudes, followed by a Q&A. Course Director Carmen Victor will be on a panel on 'Living Archives' through the Film Studies Association of Canada at Congress with Janine Marchessault and Susan Lord from the Archive/CounterArchive project. She is also a network fellow with the Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity at the University of Sussex, UK. 1 - Carmen Victor David Lyon - Surveillance: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow - From Occasional Encounters to Constant Immersion is an upcoming lecture that will explore personal privacy, power, and the massive changes taking place in surveillance worldwide. Students can now apply to the LA&PS Internship Awards Program! This is an opportunity to do a paid summer internship where you'll work side by side accomplished industry professionals to help transform GTA communities. The Show a Little Heart Student Video Competition, is open until May 6th, 2020! To enter, submit a video that Illustrates a special bond between generations, highlighting the exceptional aspects of these relationships, and the impact generated. It is open to all University and College level students in Canada, and there are cash prizes! Heart to Home Meals delivers complete frozen meals, soups and desserts to seniors living at home across Ontario, Alberta, and Nova Scotia. What's Happened Professor Mark Hayward recently published a new book! Identity and Industry: Making Media Multicultural in Canada, is a book focusing on identity, industry and the roots of multilingual media in Canada. 2 - Mark Hayward How migration and multiculturalism have transformed the Canadian media landscape since the Second World War. In 1947, grocer Johnny Lombardi went on air for the first time to share the sounds of "sunny Italy" with the radio listeners of Toronto. Meanwhile, in cities across the country, a handful of theatres began to show films in foreign languages. In the decade after the Second World War, these events were some of the earliest indications of the nationwide changes taking place in Canadian media as it responded to the new cultural, political, and economic visibility of cultural and linguistic minorities. Identity and Industry explores how ethnocultural media in Canada developed between the end of the Second World War and the arrival of digital media. Through chapters dedicated to film exhibition, newspapers, radio, and television, Mark Hayward documents the industrial and institutional frameworks that defined the role of media in Canadian multiculturalism. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book situates late twentieth-century "ethnic" media at the intersection of demand, cultural integration, and the changing economics of popular culture. As the development of ethnocultural media continues to shape Canadian society in the age of digital media, Identity and Industry provides richly detailed historical context for contemporary debates about identity and culture. Professor Hayward also has a chapter in the book Cultural Studies in the Classroom and Beyond: Critical Pedagogies and Classroom Strategies titled Cultural Studies and (Un)Critical Pedagogies: A Journey Through the Corporatized University. Derived from the body of critical literature on the academy and from experiences of everyday academic life, this chapter analyzes how neoliberal strategies have transformed and depoliticized higher education largely through the appropriation of difference and the proliferation of discourses of a disciplinary professionalism. We highlight how Cultural Studies, in particular, has become a target of these strategies and argues that, within the past two decades, the signifiers of Cultural Studies have often been disarticulated from issues of critical praxis, solidarity, and political change. As a result, the conceptual and thematic language of Cultural Studies is increasingly used to attract students to ‘fun’ classes on popular culture that are primarily meant to boost flagging enrollment numbers and increase revenue; it superficially pleases and insidiously exploits the student-consumer simultaneously. From this perspective, we pose the question: how can Cultural Studies work be done in an actively hostile environment? As provisional answers, we highlight strategies and modes of working that offer potential avenues for the continuation of critical pedagogies and research practice.

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