Brock Talks

In 2012, the Faculty of Humanities began to take its research downtown. The Brock Talks series of public lectures, held at the St. Catharines Public Library, introduced research by Humanities scholars to the local community.

2023-2024

September 18, 2023 – 6:30 pm
Robert Alexander, Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature:
“What is Comics Journalism”

October 23, 2023 – 6:30 pm
Allison Glazebrook, Professor, Department of Classics and Archaeology:
“Women and Community in Classical Athens”

November 22, 2023 – 6:30 pm
Mike Griffin, Lecturer, Department of Dramatic Arts:
“Staging the Internal Injury: Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Through Physical Theatre and Mask”

January 15, 2024 – 6:30 pm
Tim Kenyon, Vice-President, Research, Brock University
“Building Critical Thinking Communities”

February 28, 2024 – 6:30 pm
Jean Ntakirutimana, Associate Professor, Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures
“The impact of working with local community organizations on my research and teaching.”

March 27, 2024 – 6:30 pm
Christin Daigle, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Adam Dickinson, Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, and Francine McCarthy, Professor, Department of Earth Sciences
“The Anthropocene as Scientific and Cultural Concept (for our Times)”

Archive

October 3, 2022 – 6:30 pm
Andrew McDonald, Professor, Department of History:
“In search of the sea kings: recovering the history of the lost medieval kingdoms of Man and the Isles”

October 24, 2022 – 6:30 pm
Sarah Stang, Assistant Professor, Center for Digital Humanities:
“Wicked Witches, Hideous Harpies, and Seductive Sirens: Monstrous Women in Video Games”

November 24, 2022 – 6:30 pm
Amanda Burk, Associate Professor, Department of Visual Arts:
“Stories of Contentment and other Fables: Reflections of Drawing and Uneasy Meditations of Life”

January 25, 2023 – 6:30 pm
Aaron Mauro, Assistant Professor, Department of Digital Humanities
“Cyber security and digital culture”

February 28, 2023 – 6:30 pm
Lissa Paul, Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Quentin VerCetty, Artist, and Hyacinth Campbell, PhD candidate, Interdisciplinary Humanities
“Making Decolonization Visible on the Ground: Towards a Memorial Relief Sculpture for what has historically been designated as the ‘Negro Burial Ground’ in Niagara-on-the-Lake”

October 6, 2021 — 6:30 pm
Jason Black, Fulbright Research Chair:
“Indigenous Mascotting Culture”

October 28, 2021 – 6:30 pm
Michelle Vosburgh, History and Canadian Studies:
“Port Colborne’s Tennessee Avenue”

November 24, 2021 – 6:30 pm
Ann Howey, English Language and Literature:
“Afterlives of the Lady of Shalott: Lively Ladies and Elaines after Tennyson”

February 10, 2022 – 6:30 pm
Tim Conley, English Language and Literature:
“Ulysses at 100: Time, Reputation, and Joyce’s Novel”

March 24, 2022 – 6:30 pm
Elizabeth Vlossak, History:
“Game on! Historical Research, Teaching, and the Canada Games”

September 30, 2020 — 7:00 pm
Liz Clarke, Communication, Popular Culture and Film:
“The Women of Early Hollywood”

October 29, 2020 — 7:00 pm
Daniel Samson, History:
“Making/Teaching History in the Pandemic: A Student-Research-Led History of 18th Century Acadia”

November 24, 2020 — 7:00 pm
Nina Penner, Music:
“Opera During the Pandemic”

January 26, 2021 — 7:00 pm
Leah Knight, English Language and Literature:
“A Seventeenth-Century Poet’s Digital Renaissance: Hester Pulter and the Pulter Project”

February 24, 2021 — 7:00 pm
Dan Malleck, Health Sciences:
“Controlling the Essentials”

April 12, 2021 — 7:00 pm
Keri Cronin, Visual Arts:
“Who the Heck Was Jocko and Why Should We Care?: Entangled Empathy and Environmental History in the Niagara Region”

September 25, 2019 — 7:00 pm
Adam Rappold, Classics:
“Ancient Drama and the Modern Citizen”

October 10, 2019 — 7:00 pm
Elizabeth Vlossak, History:
“FROM CABARET TO BABYLON BERLIN: The Weimar Republic in History and Popular Culture”

November 19, 2019 — 7:00 pm
Katharine T. von Stackelberg, Classics:
“How to Eat a Flamingo: What Ancient Rome Can Teach Us About Our Relationship with Food”

January 16, 2020 — 7:00 pm
Neta Gordon, English Language and Literature:
“Three Ways of reading Fables: a survey of Bill Willingham’s comic book series”

February 26, 2020 — 7:00 pm
Jessica Clark, History:
“Scents of Change: Writing Sensory Histories”

March 18, 2020 — 7:00 pm (Cancelled due to COVID-19)
Kimberly Monk, History:
“Reading St. Catharines’ Maritime Past: 2019 Shickluna Shipyard Project”

September 19, 2018 – 7:00 pm
Maureen Lux, History:
“Race, Medicine, and the State: ‘Indian Hospitals’ in Canada”

October 30, 2018 – 7:00 pm
Felipe Ruan, Modern Languages, Literatures & Cultures:
“Cervantes’s Captivity in Ottoman Algiers”

November 22, 2018 – 7:00 pm
Allison Glazebrook, Classics:
“Working Women in Classical Athens”

January 15, 2019 – 7:00 pm
Donna Szoke, Visual Arts:
“Invisible Animals”

February 27, 2019 – 7:00 pm
Francine McCarthy, Earth Sciences:
“Scientific Insights from Poets, Painters and Philosophers”

March 12, 2019 – 7:00 pm
Nadine Brundrett, Classics:
“Spectacular Games in Ancient Pompeii”

September 20, 2017 — 7:00 pm
Karin Di Bella, Music:
“Wit and Whimsy: Piano Works of Canadian Composer Jack Behrens”

October 18, 2017 — 7:00 pm
Diane Bielicki, Modern Languages, Literatures & Cultures:
“The Murmuring Spring: Walter Kempowski’s Literary Collages”

November 14, 2017 — 7:00 pm
Alex Christie, Centre for Digital Humanities:
“The Past and Future of Imaginary Worlds”

January 30, 2018 — 7:00 pm
Malcolm Matthews, PhD, HUMA:
“The Comedic Autistic: a Rethinking of the Human and the Humour Being”

February 28, 2018 — 7:00 pm
Carrie Murray, Classics:
“Female Votive Figures: Religious Worship in the Ancient Mediterranean”

March 13, 2018
— 7:00 pm
Colin Rose, History:
“Violence and Contagion in Early Modern Italy”

September 21, 2016
Elizabeth Greene, Classics:
“Excavating an ancient church under the sea: the Marzamemi Maritime Heritage Project”

October 4, 2016
Jessica Clark, History and Nigel Lezama, Modern Languages, Literatures & Cultures:
“Gucci, Louis, Prada … Maple Syrup? What is Canadian Luxury?”

November 8, 2016
David Hutchison, Education/Digital Humanities
“How Project Management Principles Can Help Us Manage Our Everyday Lives”

January 26, 2017
Terrance McDonald, PhD candidate, Interdisciplinary Humanities:
“Visual Effects in Contemporary American Cinema: A Multiplicity of Images”

February 15, 2017
Amy Friend, Visual Arts:
“Finding Photographs”

March 22, 2017
Carol Merriam and Anton Jansen, Classics:
“A Walk Through (8th Century) Rome”

October 13, 2015
Jason Hawreliak, Digital Humanities:
“Multimodal Persuasion in Videogames”

November 11, 2015
David Schimmelpenninck, History:
“Russia’s Great War: The Eastern Front in Centenary Perspective”

January 20, 2016
Yasmine Kandil, Dramatic Arts:
“Theatre for Development in the slums of Cairo: The impact on a disempowered community”

February 24, 2016
Roberto Nickel, Classics:
“On becoming a Greek Hero: Sons and their Fathers in Homer’s Odyssey”

March 24, 2016
Robert Alexander, English Language and Literature:
“A monument to suffering and courage in our time”: A talk on Svetlana Alexievich, the Winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature”

October 29, 2014
Angus Smith, Classics:
“Death in the Land of Agamemnon: The Excavation of a Mycenaean Cemetery”

November 27, 2014
Neta Gordon, English Language and Literature:
“Curious Nostalgia: Representing WWI in Contemporary Canadian Literature”
St. Catharines Public Library, Mills Room (Free)

January 28, 2015
Andrew McDonald, History:
“10 Things you may not have known about the Vikings”

February 26, 2015
Gregor Kranjc, History:
“Memory Politics: Ottawa’s Monument to the Victims of Communism”

March 19, 2015
Cristina Santos, Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures:
“Vampires and Virgins: Monstrous Depictions of Female Sexuality”

October 1, 2013
Athena Colman, Philosophy:
Philosophy’s Role in a Technolgical World”

November 21, 2013
Brian Power, Music:
“Sacred discoveries: Late Medieval Music Manuscripts Unearthed in the Brock University Library”

January 29, 2014
David Hayes, Applied Linguistics:
“Divided by a Common Language? The Spread of ‘Global Englishes’ in the Modern World”

February 26, 2014
Elizabeth Vlossak, History:
“Fighting Against Their Will: Forced Conscripts in Occupied Europe, 1942-1945”

March 19, 2014
Leah Knight, English Language and Literature:
“What Did Renaissance Women Read? The Case of Anne Clifford”

October 2012
Fanny Dolanksy, Classics:
“Girls and Dolls: Children’s Play and Adults Ideals in Ancient Rome”

November 2012
Keri Cronin, Visual Arts:
“Be Kind: The Art of Humane Education”

January 2013
Renée Lafferty, History:
“Tending to the Comfort of the Soldier: Alcohol and the War of 1812”

February 2013
James Allard, English Language and Literature:
“The Poetry of ‘Flesh and Blood:’Romanticism and Medicine”

March 2013
Duncan MacDonald, Visual Arts:
“Art and Process”

January 2012
Michael Carter, Classics:
“The Gladiators’ Code: Life in the Roman Arena”

February 2012
Virginia Reh, Dramatic Arts:
“Finding Direction: What does a theatre director actually do?”