SMF Speakers Series and Annual Symposium

[Tracy Penny Light]

We hope you will join us for our upcoming speakers series and symposium.  Please feel free to distribute this poster widely  http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/Temp/DianaParryTalk.pdf .

Thursday February 9th, 1pm (STJ 3020)
Dr. Diana  Parry, Recreation and Leisure Studies (University of Waterloo)

"A Feminist Analysis of Women's Experiences with Infertility: Examining the Roles of Leisure and Conceptualizations of Family"

Pronatalist ideology embodies the belief that a woman’s worth is tied to conceiving and bearing children (Ulrich & Weatherall, 2000). Despite the broadening roles available to women within North America, ideologically, motherhood is still emphasized as their primarysocial role (Nelson, 2010; Jordan & Revenson, 1999). Given leisure’s link with resistance to dominant ideologies, this talk will explore it as a context for women to resist pronatalist ideology (Shaw, 2001). Specifically, the talk will explore how active creation of leisure spaces, times, and activities may empower or otherwise support women who experience infertility.


Tuesday February 28th, 7pm (Siegfried Hall, St. Jerome's University)
Miss Representation

The documentary Miss Representation, by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and aired on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.The film explores how the media’s misrepresentations of women have led to the underrepresentation of women in positions of power and influence.
Join us for a screening of the film and learn about a new project being launched where students will have the opportunity to empower others with their own stories of learning and transformation!

Thursday March 8th, 7pm (Siegfried Hall, St. Jerome's University)
Dr. Carla Rice, Canada Research Chair (University of Guelph)

"Re*Visioning "Miss" representations"

For girls coming of age in consumerist, individualist, and media-driven culture, the body has become an important identity project. While the body has come to be a key medium of self-making, many girls and women also experience it as a significant obstacle and a source of distress. This is, in large part, due to a psychologically sophisticated, highly profitable, globalizing beauty/dieting industry that colonizes and capitalizes on women’s most intimate wishes and worries about their bodies in order to sell a dizzying array of products to expanding markets. As a result, millions are affected by a global trade in harmful skin-lightening products, by a culture of cosmetic surgery, and by fears about an obesity epidemic said to threaten public health. In this talk, I draw on narrative research to analyze the scope and reach of cultural misrepresentations and their wide-ranging consequences for ordinary Canadian women: those of varying shapes and sizes, diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, and with and without disabilities and physical differences. Moving beyond “the problem,” I shed light on the limits and possibilities of pathways for change, analyzing recent examples of “positive” interventions from within commercial culture itself and highlighting the tremendous potential and promising avenues that exist through new media for our critical analysis, creative expression, and collective action.


Friday March 30th, 9am-5pm (St. Jerome's University)
3rd Annual SMF Sympsosium - "Everyone Counts: Couples, Families and Relationships in a Globalized World"

Join us for a day of research and discussion.  More information to follow - check out the website athttp://smfsymposium.ca

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Tracy Penny Light, Ph.D.
Acting Chair, Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Studies

Assistant Professor, Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Studies/History
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Health Studies and Gerontology (UW)

St. Jerome's University
STJ 1013B
290 Westmount Road North
Waterloo, ON Canada N2L 3G3
519-884-8110 x.28291

tplight at uwaterloo.ca

"Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

  ~~Ralph Waldo Emerson
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