Media@McGill - Events

Misrepresentation: Women, Girls, Power and the Media

ttsentas — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:09:48 -0500

Start: 2012-02-09 11:00

End: 2012-02-09 21:00

Thursday, February 9, 2012, 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m., Leacock 232, 855 Sherbrooke West [map]

The influence of media on society has long been debated, especially with regard to the correlation between violence exposed in various communication and entertainment mediums and aggression among teenagers. However, what of the correlation between the representation of women in the media and roles of power for women in Western society?

Media@McGill and the Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies invite you to join us for a panel discussion on the theme of media representation of women which will be based on issues raised in the 2011 documentary, Miss Representation, by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. The panel is free and open to the public, but online registration is advised as places are limited. Screenings of Miss Representation will also be shown throughout the day.

Conversation: Is This Where the Commons is?

ttsentas — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:02:36 -0500

Start: 2012-02-02 17:30

End: 2012-02-02 18:30

Thursday, February 2, 2012, 5:30 p.m., Arts W-215

Media@McGill visiting scholar, Professor Laura Murray will be giving a talk on conversation as a conceptual model of the commons as part of the Department of Art History and Communication Studies Speaker Series.

In discussions about Intellectual Property law and creative practice, the "commons" has become a touchstone for everything good, and yet it has proven to be a difficult concept to define or locate. I suggest in this paper that the knowledge commons is all around us in ordinary conversation, and furthermore, that conversation is a more fundamental and versatile conceptual model for creative labour than the utilitarian or rights discourses that prevail in much policy thinking, or the gift or sharing discourses valorized in critiques of the same. While conversation is often considered a diversion from the important tasks and moments of life, it is in fact an ideological and cultural necessity to social relations. Most of what we know about expression, originality, creativity, and community we learn from, and continually practice in, conversation. Our contributions to conversation establish us both as individuals and as members of a group, or groups. Whether or not we are “creative” conversationalists in an aesthetic sense, our words help to create social outcomes for ourselves and for others. Conversation is a noncommodified creative activity, one in which every human participates. It is not governed by rules, but neither is it a free-for-all, and it exists in numerous specific modes and types. Thus as a model for creative labour, conversation invites us to emphasize and characterize collaboration, process, and local value rather than genius, rules, and market value. We all know that conversation is not always easy or pleasant, and we daily experience the new and newer technologies turning our desire to converse into money: as a model conversation will not incline us to romanticize the commons or neglect issues of power and capital. But it allows us to start where we are: in the everyday. To sketch out the power of conversation as conceptual model, the paper will draw on eighteenth-century etiquette manuals, nineteenth-century fur trade journals, twentieth-century literary theory, and twenty-first century linguistics.

Biography: Laura Murray (PhD Cornell) is Associate Professor in the Departments of English and Cultural Studies at Queen's University, and a visiting scholar this term at Media@McGill. She comes to work in copyright and cultural theory from work in American literature and journalism before the Civil War and Indigenous Studies. Coauthor with Sam Trosow of Canadian Copyright: A Citizen's Guide (Between the Lines, 2007), which will go into an updated second edition later this year, she is working with Tina Piper (Law, McGill) and Kirsty Robertson (Visual Art, UWO) on a book manuscript Putting Intellectual Property in its Place: Creative Labour, Rights Discourses, and the Everyday, of which this talk will form a part.

Media, Politics and Protest Camps in the Occupy Social Movement

ttsentas — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:54:50 -0500

Start: 2012-01-27 10:30

End: 2012-01-27 20:00

Friday, January 27th, 2012

10:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, 3487 Peel [Workshop venue]

6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m., Grande Bibliothèque auditorium, 475 Maisonneuve Est [Keynote and Panel venue]

In May 2011, renowned economist Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote an article titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” in that month’s issue of Vanity Fair. His message of extreme inequality in US society and the historical consequences resulting from the polarization of wealth in the hands of a few, resonated in the Occupy protests that began in Wall Street early last fall. “We are the 99%” fast became the motto of the social movement that transgressed New York boundaries and evolved into a worldwide movement, with more than 80 countries and one thousand cities witnessing their own manifestation of protest camps in the months that followed.

Despite the phenomenal scope of civil society in the Occupy movement, Stiglitz’ warning that the 1% will only belatedly awaken to the importance of maintaining the welfare of the largest slice of the population will, in all likelihood, be realized. Nonetheless, many compelling issues have been borne from the protests: from the mainstream media’s initial disregard of the events to the communication of activists within the camps and the policing methods adopted by each city. Media@McGill will be hosting a free public event on Friday, January 27, 2012 to address many of the media, political and social themes that have transpired during the months-long Occupy protests.

New Media and Scholarly Communication: A History | Lisa Gitelman

hive — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:10:11 -0400

Start: 2012-01-12 17:30

End: 2012-01-12 19:00

A public lecture by Beaverbrook/Media@McGill Visiting Scholar, Lisa Gitelman.

Thursday, January 12, 2012, 5:30 pm
Arts W-215. (map)

Co-sponsored by Media@McGill, the Department of Art History and Communication Studies Speaker Series and the Situating Science McGill Node and HPS Seminar Series.

News of the World: is a similar scandal possible in Quebec?

hive — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:35:25 -0400

Start: 2011-11-26 15:30

End: 2011-11-26 16:30

The News of the World scandal does not boil down to a simple case of phone hacking. It highlights the excessive power that one media group can wield over society, the police and the political powers that be. It also illustrates the extent to which a journalist's moral fiber can be degraded by such a situation. Is Quebec sheltered from experiencing similar blunders?

Marc-François Bernier, Associate Professor and Researcher at the University of Ottawa's Department of Communication, and Guy Gendron, Journalist at Radio-Canada, will participate in the discussion, which will be moderated by Marc Raboy, Beaverbrook Chair in Ethics, Media and Communications at McGill University. The session is co-sponsored by Media@McGill and will take place at the 2011 Annual Congress of the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec (FPJQ), at the Fairmont Château Frontenac in Quebec City. (map)

Beyond Wikileaks: Journalism, Politics and Activism one year after Cablegate

hive — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:17:37 -0500

Start: 2011-11-29 16:00

End: 2011-11-29 18:00

Tuesday, November 29, 4:00 pm
Thomson House Ballroom, 3650 McTavish (map)

On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and a small number of media partners released thousands of U.S. embassy diplomatic cables in what came to be referred to as 'Cablegate'. International diplomacy, journalism, and broader society were shaken by this extremely public disclosure of classified cables, which had been sent to the U.S. Department of State by its consulates, embassies, and diplomatic missions around the world. Among numerous other revelations, the cables exposed U.S. government war crimes, government corruption in North Africa, and misdealing within the financial sector, igniting an intense debate on the future of diplomacy and the media.

Writing and Publishing in a Time of Media Transformation | Ken Wissoker

hive — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:03:12 -0400

Start: 2011-11-15 17:30

End: 2011-11-15 19:00

A public lecture by Ken Wissoker, Editorial Director of Duke University Press, as part of the Art History and Communication Studies Speaker Series.

The lecture is co-sponsored by Media@McGill.

Tuesday, November 15, 5:30 pm.
Lorne M. Trottier Engineering Building, 0060 (map).

Miranda July | Book launch: It Chooses You

hive — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:16:48 -0400

Start: 2011-11-14 19:00

End: 2011-11-14 21:00

Filmmaker, writer and artist, Miranda July, will be giving a presentation and launching her new book, It Chooses You, at the Ukrainian Federation in Montreal on Monday, November 14th at 7:00 pm. (map) Media@McGill is co-sponsoring the event with McGill's Art History and Communication Studies Department Speaker Series and the Canada Research Chair in Technology and Citizenship, and is happy to be offering free tickets for the book launch. Tickets will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis at the Media@McGill offices (room 231 Ferrier Building, 840 Dr Penfield) (map), at the following dates and times:

CACS Biennial Conference

hive — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:17:30 -0400

Start: 2011-11-04 14:30

End: 2011-11-06 18:00

Media@McGill is co-sponsoring the biennial conference of The Canadian Association of Cultural Studies (CACS) , which will be hosted at Thomson House at McGill University's Downtown Campus between Friday, November 4 and Sunday, November 6, 2011. (map)

The Gadfly in the Ointment: 100 Years of Questioning the Status Quo

hive — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:05:06 -0400

Start: 2011-10-15 16:30

End: 2011-10-15 18:00

Saturday, October 15, 2011, 4.30 - 6.00 pm
Centre Mont-Royal, 2200 Mansfield Street, 3rd floor
Montreal (map)
Co-sponsored by Media@McGill and McGill Development and Alumni Relations.

The McGill Daily, which once billed itself as "the oldest student daily newspaper in the Commonwealth" celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. Among the many events commemorating the occasion, Media@McGill and the department of Development and Alumni Relations will hold a blue-ribbon panel discussion on the role of the media in society - past, present and future. A distinguished panel of experts will look back at the defining role of media in some of the key moments of the past century - and forward to suggest what we might expect from the media in the next.