"One of my personal highlights was the invitation to present a public lecture to open the program, but also to honour Professor Stephen Katz, whom I have always admired as a most outstanding, brilliant intellectual and generous mentor in the field of Aging Studies.I wanted to show how important Stephen's work is in Austria - and what impact he has had in building an interdisciplinary, international community of Aging Studies scholars."- Dr. Ulla Kriebernegg, Director for the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care at the University of Graz, and Inaugural Katz Scholar. |
About the Program
It is our great pleasure to invite you to be a part of the Stephen Katz Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Interdisciplinary Aging Studies program; the first of its kind developed by the Trent Centre for Aging & Society (TCAS).
We do so to honour the outstanding intellectual contributions Dr. Katz has made to his discipline and to the creation of our Centre. Prof. Katz helped conceptualize TCAS and put an immense amount of energy into its creation. He remains an active executive member and understands, clearly, the multiple benefits of attracting world-class scholars to Trent University.
To establish and endow this lecture, Trent University has launched a $75,000 fundraising campaign. Dr. Katz and his family have stepped up with a significant financial commitment, but we need your help to ensure the program is robust enough to attract leading researchers to Trent University every year. To contribute to the Stephen Katz Distinguished Visiting Scholar Program, you can learn more here.
Have a look at the video above to learn a little more about the Stephen Katz Distinguished Vising Scholar in Interdisciplinary Aging Studies program.
If you'd like to support the program, please do. Our students, scholars, and community thank you. We thank you.
Past Lectures
The Indigenous Elsewhere of Aging: Elder Epistemologies for Decolonial Futures
The 2022 Stephen Katz Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Interdisciplinary Aging Studies was held on Thursday October 6th in the Gathering Space at Trent University. In her public lecture Dr. Sandy Grande (University of Connecticut) reimagined global aging as a site of possibility; as a conceptual opening for rethinking the central dichotomies and contradictions of contemporary society built on the exigencies of capital and settler hegemony: the centrality of work to existence; of economic growth to production; of age to declining yield, and ultimately of life beyond the productivist logics of capital. In so doing, she considered how the lives, knowledge and care of Indigenous Elders help to structure conditions for societal renewal. Her central claim was that Elder epistemologies will become increasingly important as we work collectively to create new possibilities for anti-racist and decolonial futures.
About the speaker
Sandy Grande is a Professor of Political Science and Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Connecticut with affiliations in American Studies, Philosophy, and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Across her work, she aims to produce more nuanced analyses of the colonial present. She was recently awarded the Ford Foundation, Senior Fellowship (2019-2020) for a project on Indigenous Elders and aging. Her book, Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought was published in a 10th anniversary edition and a Portuguese translation is anticipated to be published in Brazil in 2021. In addition to publishing numerous articles and book chapters, she is a founding member of New York Stands for Standing Rock. As one of their projects, they published the Standing Rock Syllabus. In addition to her academic and organizing work, she has provided eldercare for her parents for over ten years and remains the primary caregiver for her 94-yr. old father.
Watch the lecture recording here!
Bunions, Brain Games and Belly Fat: Ageing and Algorithmic Media
On October 16, 2019 at 5:30pm our third annual Stephen Katz Lecture in Interdisciplinary Aging Studies was held at Trent University. We welcomed Dr. Kim Sawchuck to discuss critical questions about both AI and the algorithms that profile us as we age. Building on the critical work of feminist media study scholars such as Wendy Chun, critical race theorists, such as Safiya Noble and age studies scholars such as Barbara Marshall and Stephen Katz on quantified ageing, this talk explored how ageing operates as a critical lens to reveal differential relations of power in present day mediated/consumer cultures.
About the speaker
Dr. Kim Sawchuk is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University and the director of the SSHRC Partnership Grant, Ageing, Communication, Technologies: Experiencing a Digital World in Later Life (actproject.ca). She holds the Concordia University Research Chair in Mobile Media Studies. Dr. Sawchuk’s research focuses on the intersection between age, ageing, and communication technologies, more recently examining the ways in which Web 3.0 is shaping public knowledge of ageing and old age through community-based research with older adults. Her recent publications include Game-based Learning Across the Lifespan (Springer, 2018) a co-edited collection of articles on collaborative media-making with older adults. View the poster here.
Late Life Homelessness
Our second annual Stephen Katz Lecture in Interdisciplinary Aging Studies welcomed our esteemed guest, Dr. Amanda Grenier. Dr. Grenier discussed the results of her four-year ethnographic study on homelessness in Montreal, Quebec. The Lecture took place at 5:30 pm on October 10th, 2018 at Bagnani Hall, Traill College, Trent University.
The Old King in his Exile
The inaugural lecture was held at 5:30 pm on October 19th, 2017 at Bagnani Hall, Traill College. We were thrilled to have Dr. Ulla Kriebernegg from Graz University, Austria as the first recipient of this honour. In addition to being an outstanding scholar, Prof. Kriebernegg has enjoyed productive working relationships with several members of TCAS, including Dr. Sally Chivers; both of whom have just released a co-edited monograph called “Care Home Stories: Aging, Disability and Long- Term Residential Care.”
