TFMS: Queer/Feminist Humour, Media & the Body

“‘They're all going to laugh at you’: How I claim the joke first when it lands on my body,” — Dayna McLeod

Dayna McLeod is a middle-aging queer performance-based artist. Her work often uses humour and capitalizes on exploiting the body’s social and material conditions. Her video and performance work have been presented at the Impakt Festival in Utrecht Netherlands, the Mardi Gras Festival in Darlinghurst Australia, MIX Brasil Festival Of Sexual Diversity in São Paulo Brazil, the Modern Art Museum in Warsaw Poland, Le Centre d’art contemporain in Paris, the Tang Teaching Museum in Saratoga Springs, the PHI Centre, OFFTA, and Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois in Montreal, the Summerworks Theatre Festival in Toronto, and Performatorium, Queer City Cinema’s performance festival in Regina. www.daynarama.com

"Breaking Ankles: Humour & Embodied Mythos within American Basketball"— Danielle Howard, York University

Dr. Danielle A.D. Howard is an Assistant Professor in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD) at York University. She teaches classes on global theatre history, playwriting, dramaturgy, Black theatre & performance, and the intersections of theatre and sport. As a scholar, Howard has published an award-winning article on the speculative lives of nineteenth and twentieth century Black American performers in TDR (The Drama Review). She is also published in the Black Theatre Review and Sports Plays (Routledge). Currently, she is working on a book about Black basketball players’ virtuosic and improvisational movements akin to jazz aesthetics. Additional teaching and research interests include Afrofuturism, visual and sonic cultures of the African Diaspora, poetics, critical theory, Black feminist theory, and socially engaged art methods. Dr. Howard completed her Ph.D. in Theatre & Performance Studies at UCLA, where she also became a certified Social-Emotional Arts Facilitator. Combining her academic training with her practice of music, dance, and theatre, she invests in improving the health and resilience of her community through their participation in collective artmaking.

• Friday, November 11, 2022 • Talks begin 4:00 • Social at 5:30pm • Register here.

Toronto Film and Media Seminar

Steering Committee for 2022-2023

Co-chairs: Em Barton (York) and Kate J. Russell (UofT) • Faculty members: Kathleen Cummins (Sheridan); Desirée de Jesus (York); Malini Guha (Carleton); Mark Lipton (Guelph); Gabriel Menotti (Queens); Paul Moore (TMU); Taien Ng-Chan (York); Katherine Spring (WLU); Elizabeth Wijaya (UofT) • Grad student members: Roxanne Hearn (WLU); Mary Hegedus (York); Patrick Marshall (UofT); Cleo Sallis-Parchet (York) • Postdoctoral members: Jon Petrychyn (TMU); Jessica Whitehead (Cape Breton University) • TIFF: Keith Bennie. 

The goals of the Seminar are:

• Encouraging intellectual and collegial discussion among the Cinema and Media Studies scholars in the region.
• Encouraging in-depth scholarly discussion and critical debate.
• Showcasing diverse research methodologies and research fields that address a wide range of cinematic technologies (film, television, video, new media, and other forms of moving image and sound screens).
• Aiming to model collegial and professional academic discourse for graduate students entering the field.