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Imagined Bodies Conference 2023

Corps Illusoires 2023

September 15, 2023

About Us

Each year, the first year cohort of the Media Studies Masters program at Concordia University organizes the Communications and Media Studies Graduate Conference. The theme of this year’s conference is “Imagined Bodies.”We believe bodies and embodiment is a generative topic to place at the center of our conference. We see issues of embodiment in the current discourse around artificial intelligence. Concerns around bodies are central to today’s politics, as debates swirl about who and what institutions have control over our bodies. Scholars from multiple disciplines challenge the rhetoric around the Anthropocene asking how geologists can ignore the bodies that were enslaved and marginalized, whose blood is literally etched in the rocks, in order to satisfy the material desires of capitalism. Attendees and speakers will be tasked with investigating their own preconceptions about what a body can be and how our embodied perspectives alter how we view the world.

Meet the Team

Our conference team operates in a horizontal manner, fostering collaboration and equal participation among all team members. We aim to challenge traditional vertical structures and their colonial legacies.

Guillaume Jabbour

Guillaume Jabbour began his MA in Media Studies at Concordia University in 2022 after being

away from academia for 16 years. His research involves sound walking as a means of building

intergenerational bridges and community. A community artist, Jabbour leads a digital storytelling

project with seniors and a social justice music project near his Laurentians home. He also

manages the ELAN ArtistsInspire Grants project, pairing English Quebec schools and Artists. His research project is supported by SSHRC and FRQSC.

[Image description: This is a colour photo of Guillaume on a brown background. He is a male with tanned skin, short hair and a beard. He is wearing glasses, a hat, a blue shirt and jacket and green pants.]

Natalia Espinel-Quintero

Natalia is an MA student in Media Studies at Concordia University in Tiohtia:ke (Montreal). She holds a master's degree in Latin American Cultural Studies from Universidad Javeriana (Colombia) and a BA in Liberal Arts from Concordia University. Her research explores the mediation of violence and resistance in the context of the Colombian 2021 National Strike (Paro Nacional) to understand how the interplay between material and digital spaces contributed to the emergence of a new structure of feeling. Natalia’s research is supported by SSHRC and FRQSC.

[Image description: This is a black and white photo of Natalia. She is a light-skinned Colombian. She has short bangs and shoulder-length hair. She is wearing round glasses and a black shirt.]

Aviva Majerczyk

Aviva Majerczyk is an MA student in Media Studies at Concordia University in Tiohtia:ke/Montreal. She holds a BA in Communications and Cultural Studies with a minor in Religions and Cultures from Concordia University. Her research is focussed on the affective qualities of online anti-gender hate movements, specifically in TikTok. A writer and media-maker, Majerczyk also produces freelance cultural criticism and hosts a long-running radio show on CJLO 1690AM.

[Image description: This is a colour photo of Aviva. She is a white woman with shoulder-length brown hair and bangs. She is wearing a white t-shirt with a black sweater and is sitting in front of a white wall.]

Speakers

Keynote Speaker

Sheena Wilson, PhD

We are honoured to announce that University of Alberta professor of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, Dr. Sheena Wilson has accepted to deliver the keynote address.

Dr. Wilson’s work on petroculture, energy imaginaries and decolonial energy futures speaks directly to the themes proposed by our conference. Her research interests involve an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to studying how the extractivist world-view that has contributed to climate change through the exploitation of land and resources, likewise allows for the exploitation of gendered, classed and racialized bodies, and the erasure of knowledge held by those bodies.

Agenda