Marlie Centawer

Marlie Centawer is a Ph.D student and Research Assistant in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. She is also an adjunct lecturer for the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture and Department of Visual Arts at Brock University. A cultural and music historian, her research interests include popular music history and the intersections between popular music, youth culture, and visual culture. Centawer’s recent publications include “My Name is Called Disturbance: Jagger, Performance, and the Spectacle of Excess” in The Rolling Stones: Sociological Perspectives (Lexington Books, 2013).

 

Avery Everheart

Avery is a first year Master’s student in Gender Studies at Queen’s Unviersity, as well as a practicing installation, visual, and performance artist. Their academic work can be situated largely within intersections of critical race theory, transgender studies, queer theory, and performance studies. Their artistic endeavors tend toward three-dimensional work that aims to confound the boundaries between performance and installation. They are a current tenant-member of the Artel collective and their thesis research is on technoscience, afrofuturism, transhumanist thought and Black science fiction.

 

LIB SPRY

Lib Spry is a first year doctoral student in Cultural Studies at Queens University. Her work is part of a growing body of knowledge using art as a basis for research in the Social Sciences and Humanities. For fifty years she has been a theatre director, writer, teacher, performer and translator. She is a specialist in non-traditional theatre forms: popular theatre, site-specific theatre, theatre for young audiences, clown, mask and movement. She has taught at the University of Ottawa, Concordia, McGill and Queens since the 1980s . She is a collaborator on two SHRCC projects: ACT: Ageing, Communication, Technology (Kim Sawchuk, Concordia University) and Art for Social Change: A Research Partnership in Teaching, Evaluation and Capacity-Building (Rachael Van Fossen, Concordia University),

She has a MFA from Goddard College and had her mind blown and vision of theatre altered while studying with master clown teacher Philippe Gaulier from 2006-09.

 

Elena Cecchetto

Elena Cecchetto is a 2^nd year M.A. student in the Cultural Studies program at Queen’s University. The research for her M.A. Major Research Paper will explore the racist stereotype and its perpetuation in our society through “innocent” forms of commodified culture. She is interested to explore more in-depth forms of racism that we no longer see, because they have been re-invented or re-shaped to have less impact on us, therefore we have become “blind” to them. Furthermore, her interests are linked to the interpretation and misinterpretation of “signs” caused by different cultural background. She has volunteered as an Intercultural Advisor for many years for an international group, and she has directly seen the consequences of prejudice, and the effect that those prejudices can have on the community.

My name is Junyu Ke, a first year MA in Cultural Studies program at Queen’s university. With a background in Chinese Language and Literature, I develop my research interests on Chinese classical philosophies (Daoism, etc), ecology and body. I am currently investigating how to elevate people’s ecological awareness through body movement, especially through the symbolic, ritualized and aesthetic practices such as Taichi since I believe that this is a kind of ecological pedagogy.