Dr. Max Haiven hosting various lectures at the Brodie St. Library
September 19, 2019 – Thunder Bay, Ont.
Dr. Max Haiven, Lakehead University's Canada Research Chair in Culture, Media and Social Justice, will deliver three free public lectures at the Brodie Street Library this fall on timely topics that will interest people of all ages.
Dr. Haiven is the author of several books including "The Radical Imagination" and "Art After Money, Money After Art." In addition to his research and teaching, he also co-directs the ReImagining Value Action Lab, which organizes many public events in Thunder Bay and elsewhere.
“The idea for this lecture series is connected to a class in cultural studies I'm teaching online this fall at Lakehead,” Dr. Haiven said. “I think it's important to link research to teaching and to make this accessible not only to students but the broader public as well.”
In the first lecture on Saturday, Sept. 21 at 2 pm, called The power and poverty of the imagination, Dr. Haiven will summarize his research into the role of creativity today. Once thought of as the property of artists, today creativity has become a key part of the global economy. But that same economy, he said, leaves many so overworked, distracted or impoverished that creativity suffers.
The economy of anxiety, the second lecture on Saturday, Oct. 26 at 2 pm, was partly inspired by the rising rates of mental illness among youth. The lecture links it to the rise of what Dr. Haiven called “financialization.”
“Financialization is the process where everything in society gets transformed into a private asset, where debt is the norm, and where we're each supposed to imagine ourselves as an ‘investor,’ with one foot in a future that is just the same as today.”
Dr. Haiven said the final lecture, Our age of revenge on Saturday, Nov. 30 at 2 pm, is the most provocative. Presenting the main point from his book on the subject to be published next year, he said the “revenge politics” that seem to be at work around the world today is actually an expression of an underlying “revenge economy” that creates extreme social tensions.
The series is free and open to the public, and will also be webcast here. For more information, please visit rival.lakeheadu.ca/fall-2019-lecture-series.
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Media: For more information or interviews, please contact Brandon Walker, Communications and Marketing Associate, at (807) 343-8177 or mediarelations@lakeheadu.ca.
Lakehead University has approximately 9,700 full-time equivalent students and 2,000 faculty and staff in 10 faculties at two campuses in Orillia and Thunder Bay, Ontario. Lakehead is a fully comprehensive university: home to Ontario’s newest Faculty of Law in 44 years, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, and faculties of Engineering, Business Administration, Health & Behavioural Sciences, Social Sciences & Humanities, Science & Environmental Studies, Natural Resources Management, Education, and Graduate Studies. In 2018, Research Infosource named Lakehead Research University of the Year in its category for the fourth consecutive year. Maclean’s 2019 University Rankings place Lakehead University among Canada's Top 10 primarily undergraduate universities and found that students ranked Lakehead University as one of the top 10 universities in Canada and top three universities in Ontario that prepare them for employment. Visit www.lakeheadu.ca.
