Les TIC pour le vieillissement socialement actif et en bonne santé

/0 Comments/in , /by

On March 20, 2015, several members of ACT presented on the topic of Les TIC pour le vieillissement socialement actif et en bonne santé. The presentation, held at the Musée des civilisations in Québec City, took place as part of the Rencontres science et société de Québec, an event that attempts to create bridges between the university and the general public in creative and informative ways, through a series of roundtable discussions and exhibits. This roundtable was organized by Margarida Romero, an ACT researcher and professor at the Université Laval, as well as Nadia Kichkina also of Université Laval. Other ACT members included ACT postdoctoral researcher Maude Gauthier, as she presented on the work of ACT broadly and on two specific ACT projects: ACT-Wiki and InterACTion. Sadeqa Siddiqui, the current president of Respecting Elders: Communities against Abuse (RECAA), an ACT community partner, presented and screened some videos that depict the work of RECAA. Brietta O’Leary, a research assistant with ACT and a MA student at Concordia University, discussed her involvement with RECAA and the work she does with them on digital technologies.

Ageing (with) animals

/0 Comments/in , , /by

ageingwithanimals

 

ACT is organizing a brainstorming day on the theme of Ageing (with) animals on Saturday, April 4th, 2015 on the SGW campus of Concordia University in Montreal from 10 am to 4 pm.

Humans share life courses with other species: often willingly with cats, dogs and other “pets” in tightly tangled relationships. We age with pets. And they age with us. But also these relationships can become difficult, disrupted and untenable, especially through conditions of old age. Animals are otherwise commodified for entertainment, get euthanized in zoos and circuses when they get old, less active, less lucrative and more expensive. Or they are moved to sanctuaries for them to retire out of sight, and indeed it is even possible to talk about animals retiring. Animals, live and animatronic, are enlisted in old age homes and hospitals for therapeutic purposes. Animal figures are routinely taken up in our lexicon of ageing bodies, often in ways that reify (hetero)normative social orders (cougars, silver foxes and cat ladies). In addition, the proliferation of ageing human bodies and our increasing life expectancies are enabled by medical innovation and testing that intimately rely on the confinement, mistreatment and death of other species.

The idea for the Ageing (with) animals day is as follows: we come together to discuss and explore our overlapping creative and research interests on animals and ageing. We explore intersections and generate discussions on the multiplicity and connectedness of ageing bodies and life courses: a line of questioning that is often excluded from the way ageing and cultural studies have thought about age, and even from the way animal studies have engaged with the topic of animal lives. Among others, ACT collaborator Dr. Teresa Mangum from the Obermann Center and from Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa will join us.

SB 403
Concordia University

Those interested in participating can contact constance (dot) lafontaine (at) concordia (dot) ca.

Playing Age Symposium to be held February 27-28, 2015

/0 Comments/in , , /by

 

Screen Shot 2015-02-09 at 10.34.59 AM

ACT is co-sponsoring the Playing Age symposium, to be held February 27 and 28 at the University of Toronto. The inter-disciplinary symposium is co-organized by ACT collaborator and Professor Marleen Goldman and Professor Lawrence Switzky of the University of Toronto. Kim Sawchuk, Director of ACT, will discuss “Challenging Digital Ageism through Research Creation” and Stephen Katz, ACT co-applicant, will present “Use It or Lose It!: Brain Games and the Performance of Age.”

The symposium “Playing Age” offers a humanistic exploration of aging, old age, and inter-generational relations. Seminal theorists of play, from Johan Huizinga to Roger Caillois, claimed that rule-bounded games and mimetic enactments create a “magic circle” in which conflicts within the self and the community can be negotiated at a safe remove. More recently, performance and game theorists have insisted that even playing within the bounded precincts of a stadium, a theatre, or a video game influences everyday conduct, particularly when we play with volatile topics like inter-cultural representations, social class, race and gender. This symposium asks how aging and old age can be investigated through playing, specifically the playfulness of artistic representations, and whether aging is uniquely available for or resistant to imaginative inhabitations.

For more information about the symposium, including full programme, please consult the website: https://playingage.wordpress.com.

 

Kim Sawchuk named Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies for the Faculty of Arts and Science

/0 Comments/in , /by

This month ACT Director, Kim Sawchuk will assume her role as the Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies for the Faculty of Arts and Science.

“Her innovative thinking, combined with a pragmatic approach, will allow our faculty to reach the next level in research and graduate studies. She is a wonderful leader by example.”

http://www.concordia.ca/cunews/main/stories/2015/01/06/kim-sawchuk-research-graduate-associate-dean.html

Barbara Crow and Kim Sawchuk publish “New and Old, Young and Old: Aging the Mobile Imaginary”

/0 Comments/in , /by

Screen Shot 2015-01-12 at 3.05.12 PMACT co-applicant Barbara Crow and Director Kim Sawchuk co-authored an article titled “New and Old, Young and Old: Aging the Mobile Imaginary” for the new edited collection Theories of the Mobile Internet: Materialities and Imaginaries. The collection is edited by Andrew Herman, Jan Hadlaw and Thom Swiss and part of the series Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyber Culture.

Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol to present in workshop at University of Eastern Finland

/0 Comments/in /by

Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol from Universitat Oberta de Catalunya will participate in a workshop titled “Humanities look at technology, ageing, well-being and agency” organized by ACT partner University of Eastern Finland. She will present on “The ACT project and the COST Action on Ageing” on December 5, 2014. The organizing committee from the University of Eastern Finland comprises Prof. Jukka Mäkisalo (serving as the Chair), Senior Lecturer Johanna Uotinen, Prof. Helmi Järviluoma-Mäkelä of ACT, Prof. Stefan Werner and Senior Lecturer Taina Kinnunen.

ACT members organize panel at ECREA

/0 Comments/in /by

On November 15, 2014, ACT Director Kim Sawchuk, co-applicants Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Line Grenier, Loredana Ivan and Eugène Loos, Collaborator Eric Craven and Associate Director Constance Carrier-Lafontaine organized a panel titled “New Media and Older People: Age, Narratives and Normativities”  at the 5th annual European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) conference held in Lisbon, Portugal. Sawchuk and Carrier-Lafontaine presented a paper titled “Ageing in App-Land: Interrogating Access, Creating InterACTion” about the work being done with ACT local community partner Groupe Harmonie. Grenier and Craven presented “‘Fresh Ears on Past Perspectives’: Using Digital Tools, Disrupting Assumptions About Music Making” about a series of sound workshops conducted with local community partner the Atwater Library and Computer Centre. Fernández-Ardèvol presented on behalf of her joint project with Ivan on “Older People and Computer Anxiety: Going Beyond Assumptions” and Loos spoke about gaming and ageing in his talk titled “Homo Ludens Playing Digital Games: The Representation of Older Players in Market Studies and Game Design.” As part of the same conference, ACT affiliated student Daniel Blanche presented on his research with Fernández-Ardèvol on “The Iaioflautas Movement in Catalonia: A Seniors’ Networked Social Movement”. Co-Applicant Shannon Hebblethwaite was also present at the conference.

Fannie Valois-Nadeau on Digitizing and Biographizing Léo Gravelle

/0 Comments/in /by

Fannie Valois-Nadeau, a Queen’s University Postdoctoral Fellow affiliated with ACT, has recently presented in Dr. Line Grenier’s Master’s seminar Mémoire, médias et pouvoir (Memory, Media and Power). Her presentation was titled “Numériser et biographiser Léo Gravelle” (Digitizing and Biographing Léo Gravelle). More information on Valois-Nadeau’s research on the former Montreal Canadiens hockey player is available here.