What can occur when two scholars explore unexpected intersections between their fields of research? Join us to find out! Carleton University academics Anna Paluch and Kimberly Stratton will be speaking about their current research in relation to two exhibitions at CUAG. Hear their separate talks and then join the discussion to bring out convergences across new and exciting research in order create conversations between the exhibitions.

Admission is free, everyone is welcome, and coffee and tea will be provided.

Set in an intergalactic realm, SuperNova’s talent show parody explores “ethno-futurism” and challenges the euro-centric cultural gaze that represents eastern subjects as stagnant and frozen in time. Cultural Mediations PhD candidate Anna Paluch will compare Rah’s “ethno-futurism” to science fiction narratives found in Indigenous and Slavic Futurism, where colonialism, connections to land and time (or lack of), representations of culturally specific ideologies and politics become key themes.

The exhibition Saints and Madonnas invites us to reevaluate the intrinsically gendered nature of powerful and enduring Christian images. Dr. Kim Stratton (College of the Humanities) will discuss the production of sainthood through martyrdom and its transforming effect on sexually defined bodies: accounts of female martyrs that complicate gendered binaries by depicting female saints becoming “male”, even as the texts fixate on maternal roles and sexualized female bodies.

Anna (Ania) Paluch is a 4th year PhD student in Cultural Mediations at ICSLAC, Carleton University. Her research focus is on Indigenous and Slavic Futurism, spaces of cultural hybridity, and post-memory in the diaspora, specifically around diasporic and mixed identity. She is a curator, mixed-media artist and co-director of the Indigenous+Diasporic Friendship Festival in Ottawa, connecting diasporic/immigrant communities with local Indigenous communities through art, academia and culture.

Kimberly Stratton is Associate Professor in the College of the Humanities, specializing in the comparative history of ancient religions. Her monograph, Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology and Stereotype (Columbia UP, 2007), won the Frank W. Beare Award from the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies. She is currently writing a book on the origins of Christianity and Judaism in response to Roman conquest and occupation. Her work engages with the intersection of violence, meaning-making, and collective identity as well as gender and stereotyping.

Carleton University Art Gallery
St. Patrick's Building
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