School of Social Work

• Mommyblogs as non-traditional parenting text

On February 8, 2012, Dr. May Friedman will participate as a guest speaker in the Ryerson Midwifery Education Program Speaker Series. Location: SHE 653, 99 Gerrard Street East, Sally Horsfall Eaton Centre for Studies in Community Health, Ryerson University. Time: 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM.

May Friedman teaches on faculty in the School of Social Work. She has grounded her interest in social work in her study of motherhood, which has led to an intense focus on the ways we are all interconnected, as both families and societies. She has blended this focus with an interest in unstable identities, including bodies that do not conform to traditional racial and national lines.

May's most recent project examined mommyblogs as examples of the ways that parenting is accomplished in community and across multiple co-existing and contradictory identities. She considers the ways that online women's life writing have enriched the story of motherhood and have, in some cases, shifted a focus away from telling stories about mothers, to stories told by mothers themselves. 

• Fattening the truth: Social Work SRC Seminar, Wednesday, January 25th at 12:00 PM in EPH 222, Eric Palin Hall.

You are invited to attend the First Social Work SRC Seminar of 2012 on Wednesday, January 25th from 12: noon to 2:00 PM in EPH 222.

Title: Fattening the truth - deconstructing fat

Dr May Friedman, Assistant Professor, Social Work and Sabrina Friedman, Hunter College, NYC

Abstract: The meaning of fat is in constant flux. With the diet and weight 
loss industry's skyrocketing profits, one wonders from where the 
allure of the thin and fit body has actually originated. Why is fat 
bad? The truth is that fat is geographically, temporally, racially, 
politically, socially and culturally constructed across various media. 
What constitutes fatness? Who is fat? And more interestingly, who 
passes for thin?

To RSVP, please contact Jennifer Poole at jpoole@ryerson.ca

May Friedman teaches at the Ryerson University School of Social Work.  Her work has focused on liminality and marginality in identity categories in many realms, including ethnicity, nationality and gender.  She has also written extensively on mothering and motherhood.  May has become increasingly drawn to the work of fat activists and the writing of feminist fat theories who remind us of the discursive nature of bodies.  A recent graduate of the York University School of Women's Studies, May is a passionate feminist committed to intersectionality and constant critical dialogue.  She loves blogs and reality television and has learned as much, or more, from personal narratives than from her many years of graduate school.  May lives in downtown Toronto with her family.

Sabrina Friedman is a body positive, radical, feminist fat activist from Ottawa. Her fat-tacular awakening came in the 3rd year of her Bachelor's in Communications and Women's Studies degree at York University. The class entitled "Reframing Fat: An Introduction to Feminist Fat Theory" markedly changed her path forever. A final project in fat-activism inspired Sabrina to finally "come out" to her close friends and family as fat, and she has not looked back since. Sabrina has published articles on the subject of fat and fat activism in York University's Excalibur, has participated in various performance-based fat activist work and won an Award for Excellence for her Fat is Sexy lecture at York University's annual Sexuality Studies forum in 2010. Sabrina is currently studying for her MSW at The Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College in New York City, and expects to graduate in May 2012.

• STRONG HELPERS'S TEACHINGS

On October 27, 2011, Dr. Cyndy Baskin, Associate Professor in the School of Social Work Launched her new book titled STRONG HELPERS' TEACHINGS.

Synopsis:

STRONG HELPERS' TEACHINGS provides enrichment for helping practices of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, practitioners, and scholars in the human services. All those in the helping professions are challenged to share these important Indigenous teachings without specific practices being appropriated.

• BEHIND THE RHETORIC: Mental Health Recovery in Ontario

On October 13th, 2011 Dr. Jennifer Poole, Associate Professor in the   School of Social Work launched her new book titled BEHIND THE RHETORIC: Mental Health Recovery in Ontario.

Synopsis:

Recovery has taken the mental health world by storm. In clinics, hospitals, community organizations and governments across North America and Europe, recovery rhetoric is everywhere. Its message of hope is catchy, its promise of wellness long overdue and its claims (somewhat) substantiated. But where did this new vision for mental health come from and what does it really mean for a system long unbalanced? Focusing on Ontario's mental health communities, the book is the first to take a critical look at recovery's talk and texts. Using Foucault's analyses of discourse, it is also the first to go behind recovery's rhetoric of hope and responsibility, re-theorizing mental health recover in Canada.