Dr. Kim Fedderson
Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Questions about identity are at the forefront today. It’s personal. Who am I? Where do I come from? Where should I be headed?

It’s also social. Who are we? What is our identity? Is there a national culture? Is there an underlying, sustaining coherence to Canada’s multicultural story or are we currently witnessing its unravelling?

The spaces in which these questions get addressed—mainstream media, social media, service clubs, coffee shops etc.—are turbulent ones.  We often find ourselves buffeted between an extreme populist right and an extreme populist left.

On the one side, an ALT right in the grip of a fear of otherness—other nationalities, other races, other sexes, other genders—is possessed by a fervent nostalgia that hopes to restore a pristine past that never was.

On the other, a CTRL left whose passionate commitment to difference—giving voice to the voiceless, bringing the marginalized to the centre—propels the unflinching zeal with which it judges both the past and present by the standards of a utopian future yet, if ever, to come.

One slams the brakes, the other hits the gas pedal.

How do our narratives—the stories we tell and are told— shape our lives, our community, our country? How are these narratives constructed? What materials do they use and how do they put these materials together? And, most importantly, can we step outside these stories that shape us, so that we can tell which ones we should remember and which ones we should forget?

Kim Fedderson was the founding dean of Lakehead University’s Orillia campus and is a Professor Emeritus in Lakehead University’s department of English.His research focuses on the history of rhetoric and rhetorical theory. His published work explores how cultural moments of the past, as represented in novels, films, paintings, ceremonies and monuments, are preserved, celebrated, transformed, or simply forgotten in the present.

Dr. Kim Fedderson will attend in-person.

Julie Czerneda
Wednesday, February 8, 2023

At its core, science fiction is a thought experiment told as a story. Writers speculate what might happen if, for example, we start living on Mars, or discover extra-solar planets. Ideas once considered far-fetched—science fiction– are now in the daily news. Yet science fiction doesn’t try to predict the future. Writers pay attention to what’s possible now and predicted soon, then use their imaginations to look beyond and consider what if…? To celebrate wonder and reveal potential consequences. It’s powerful stuff. Join acclaimed author Julie E. Czerneda for a look at space and what we might do and become there, through the lens of science fiction.

Former biologist and textbook author Julie E. Czerneda has always been fascinated by space. Several of her science fiction novels speculate on what our future there might be like, including the Aurora-Award winning In the Company of Others, and her latest, To Each This World. Her anthology, Space Inc., explored work in space beyond the astronaut. Julie has conducted workshops for the Smithsonian Institute and Chandra Telescope on potential alien forms of life. She was inducted in 2022 into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Julie is published by DAW Books NY and represented by Sara Megibow of KT Literary.

Julie Czerneda will attend in-person.

Dr. Gary Pluim
Wednesday, February 22, 2023

(To be updated)

Dr. Gary Pluim is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at Lakehead Orillia. He has a PhD from the University of Toronto, where he completed his doctoral thesis on constructions and conceptualizations of youth participation in the context of the post-earthquake, national reconstruction in Haiti. Informed by his work as a classroom teacher, an outdoor educator, and an international program director, Gary’s current research examines the nexus between global citizenship education and local, place-based education. He has received numerous awards for his research, including an International Research Partnership Award from Lakehead University and a Partnership Engagement Grant award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, provided to investigate the benefits, limits, and consequences of transferring educational curriculum between small states of the Commonwealth.

Dr. Gary Pluim will attend in-person.