The UTM Office of the Dean, Experiential Education Unit and Mississauga Library System are proud to present Lecture Me! a series of lectures by UTM Faculty
The Lecture Me! series highlights research from different departments by UTM faculty members in a way that is approachable and fun for the whole family. This multidisciplinary series will feature a different faculty member each month who will deliver their presentation to the community about their research.
The events will be hosted through a hybrid model providing audience members with the option to attend the lecture in-person at the Mississauga Library or virtually through the Virtual Library - Webex platform by the Mississauga Library System typically on the first Tuesday of each month from 7:00-8:15pm.
Registration is required for all talks and can be found through the Mississauga Library on Eventbrite. Registration links for each talk can be found in the table below.
For any issues relating to registration, please contact customer service at 905-615-4100 or email rec.info@mississauga.ca.
The 2024-25 Season is now here!
| Date | Faculty Name | Description | Event Registration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesday, September 10, 2024 | 
Department of Sociology | Policing at a Crossroads: Racial Justice, Community Safety, and Police Practices in Turbulent Times Across Canada, police services are going through a period of crisis unprecedented in modern times, including declining public trust and confidence, calls for defunding, and ongoing pressure to address systemic anti-Black racism. In this presentation, we will explore these issues through the lens of policing in the GTA. First, we will review the nature and extent of some key problems faced by our local police. Next, we will discuss the impacts of police practices on public trust and confidence in the police and why this is vital to the police mandate. Lastly, we will critically examine policy responses to these issues, such as race-based data collection, training, oversight mechanisms, and alternative first responders. | REGISTRATION CLOSED RECORDING NOT AVAILABLE |
| Tuesday, October 8, 2024 | 
Department of Anthropology | Skeleton Keys: Bodies, the Archive, and Lived Lives Bioarcheological (the study of human skeletons from archaeological and historical contexts) engagement with questions of marginalization and social disenfranchisement is critical to questions of social justice in the examination of past lived lives. We will discuss examples of how marginalization may become embodied in the skeleton, the process by which individuals or skeletal collections may themselves become marginalized, and how archival sources can reveal bodies pushed to the edges of dominant narratives. | REGISTRATION CLOSED |
| Tuesday, November 5, 2024 | 
Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology | Pseudomedical Psychedelia: examining the rhetoric of "nootropic" supplements This talk will describe a trend in popular interest in psychotropic substances like psilocybin, ketamine, and amphetamines, all of which are touted as “nootropic” drugs on social media and in marketing materials. We'll look at two examples of gendered framings of such substances—one in "bromeopathic" grind culture and the other in the mommy-blogger world. Ultimately, we'll see how both bros and moms frame these drugs as tools to help them be more productive contributors to the circuits of capital. | REGISTRATION CLOSED |
| Tuesday, February 4, 2025 | 
Department of English & Drama | "Poetry is Not a Luxury": Resources for Survival in Black Women's Writing In this talk, I will explore how Black women writers have turned to poetry in order to navigate both chronic and critical difficulties in life. With a particular focus on Audre Lorde, whose essay 'Poetry is Not a Luxury' inspires the title of this talk, I will share how poetry enables the exploration of the self and the other, the individual and society, and between 'feeling,' and 'reason.' I will also demonstrate how close reading - a methodology for critically engaging texts central to literary studies - can attune us to ever-expanding meaning, can reward re-reading, and can help us navigate our own everyday conditions of life. | TBD |
| Tuesday, March 4, 2025 | 
Department of Psychology Centre for Child Development, Mental Health, and Policy | Pathways to Kindness: Nurturing Prosocial Development in Early Childhood Children show exceptional potential for kindness and care, or prosociality, from a young age. This early positive potential is important because prosocial development impacts well-being, social harmony, and peace positively at the individual, community, and global level. In this lecture, I will explore the factors that help children grow into caring individuals and how adversity, like trauma and stress, can affect this growth. The lecture will focus in on several early social-emotional capacities and factors of early relationships that serve as protective foundations for prosocial development. Finally, I will discuss efforts from our research at the Centre for Child Development, Mental Health, and Policy that aim to nurture prosociality from an early age. | TBD |
| Tuesday, April 1, 2025 | 
Department of Historical Studies | Stolen Photo: How to spark historical imagination in the age of the always new? One hundred years ago, banana workers went on strike in Colombia. A US-owned fruit company refused to negotiate, and the military massacred the striking workers. Moving between Colombia and company archives in Toronto and Boston, Stolen Photo is a documentary film that traces the connection between physical violence and archival violence, between the killing of striking banana workers and the historical oblivion that enables the continued production of cheap bananas. In this talk, I will reflect on converting historical research into a film for the general public. | TBD |