The Media History Research Centre is pleased to host
Greg Waller (Indiana University, editor of the journal Film History)
Friday, November 21
3:00 pm
LB 1042.03
Sir George Williams Campus
Concordia University
The Media History Research Centre and the Feminist Media Studio, in conjunction with Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal, are pleased to bring you a special talk by Irene Lusztig on her archival compilation film The Motherhood Archives, including a screening of a portion of the film.
Assembling an extraordinary archive of over 100 educational, industrial, and medical training films (including newly rediscovered Soviet and French childbirth films) The Motherhood Archives (2013) inventively untangles the complex, sometimes surprising genealogies of maternal education. From the first use of anesthetic ether in the 19th century to the postmodern 21st century hospital birthing suite, The Motherhood Archives charts a fascinating course through the cultural history of pain, the history of obstetric anesthesia, and the little-known international history of the natural childbirth and Lamaze movements. Revealing a world of intensive training, rehearsal, and performative preparation for the unknown that is ultimately incommensurate with experience, The Motherhood Archives is a meditation on the maternal body as a site of institutional control, ideological surveillance, medical knowledge, and nationalist state intervention.
Irene Lusztig is a filmmaker, media archeologist, and amateur seamstress. Her film and video work mines old images and technologies for new meanings in order to reframe, recuperate, or reanimate forgotten and neglected histories. Using hybrid formal strategies and combining visual textures (including digital video, Super 8 and 16mm film, and found / archival materials) her work investigates the production of personal, collective, and national memories. Her work has been screened around the world, including at MoMA, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Anthology Film Archives, Pacific Film Archive, IDFA Amsterdam, and on television in the US, Europe, and Taiwan. She teaches filmmaking at UC Santa Cruz where she is Associate Professor of Film and Digital Media.
Monday, November 17, 2014, 4:30 pm
CJ Building, Room 1.114
Concordia University
Co-sponsored by:
Concordia University Research Chair in Communication Studies
Concordia University Research Chair in Media and Contemporary Literature
Canada Research Chair in Feminist Media Studies
Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal
Media History Research Centre
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIO /
For more information:
The Media History Research Centre at Concordia University is delighted to announce a public lecture:
Wolfgang Ernst
“Temporalizing the Present and Archiving Presence. The Impact of Time-Critical Media Technologies”
Friday 26 September, starting at 4:00 PM
Concordia University, MB 2.210
Wolfgang Ernst is Professor of Media Theory at Humboldt University, Berlin, where he also directs the “Medienarchäologischer Fundus,” a major archive and laboratory for research on “old media” artifacts. One of the key figures of Media Archaeology, Ernst is the author of several books and articles (in German) in media theory and media archaeology. A recent collection of his translated essays is Digital Memory and the Archive (Minnesota UP, 2012).
Sponsors: Concordia University Research Chair in Communication Studies and the Concordia University Research Chair in Media and Contemporary Literature.
For further questions, please contact: jeremy.stolow@