School of Social Work

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The Next Social Work SRC Seminar:

Can the Indian in the child ever speak?: The production of the residential school survivor in media discourse in Canada

A Research Paper presented by visiting scholar and Ryerson School of Social Work Alumnus, Dr. Teresa Macias, Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, University of Victoria.

Thursday May 17, 2012 from 12:00 to 2:00pm in EPH 222

To RSVP for the seminar please contact Kristin Smith at: kristin.smith@ryerson.ca

More Information:
Dr. Macias’ scholarship deals with issues of disappearances, torture, truth commissions and compensation policy. Her research and teaching interests also include ethics of international development and practice, nation and identity making, and anti-oppressive an

Research Paper Abstract
In 2009 Canada instituted the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools (TRC) as an independent body with the mandate to acknowledge “residential school experiences, impacts and consequences”; provide those affected with a “holistic and culturally appropriate” opportunity to share their stories and/or experiences; and facilitate “reconciliation among former students, their families, their communities and all Canadians”. The TRC is a key component of the 2007 Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement between the Canadian government and survivors of residential schools. As a result of the TRC, stories of survivors and of residential schools have proliferated in Canadian media providing us with images and narratives about this dark episode in Canadian history. This paper uses a Foucaultian discourse analysis approach, and a post-colonial and critical race theory framework to explore the process by which media reports surrounding the TRC capture residential school experiences and use them to produce images of residential school survivors, narratives about residential schools and their role in Canadian history. Three main questions guide this analysis: who is the residential school survivor that speaks through the media and how is that survivor discursively produced? What are survivors allowed to say and what is it that they cannot say about the history of residential schools? And, what kind of national narratives are made possible through the discursive production of residential school survivors in media discourses?
d anti-colonial practice and teaching methods. Her professional and academic experience include 4 years of international development and research work in Latin America as well as life-long involvement in international human rights work, community activism and popular education.

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. For more information please click here.

School of Social Work SRC Seminars

Upcoming SRC seminars:

Tales from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities (URO) Scholarship Program 

Wednesday, February 15, 2012 from 12:00 to 2:00pm in EPH 222    

The URO Scholars Program is a chance for undergraduates to design and carry out their own research projects under the supervision of a Faculty member. It also generously supports those students with a $6500.00 award. In this seminar, Holly Diaczun and Jennifer Ward, 2011 URO scholars in social work, will provide overviews of both their research and experience in the program. With their URO supervisors, Dr. Purnima George and Dr. Jennifer Poole, they’ll also provide tips and tools on how to apply this year.

To RSVP for the seminar please contact Jennifer Poole at jpoole@ryerson.ca 

 For more information about the URO program, go to: http://www.ryerson.ca/ors/funding/internal/URO_Fund_2012.html                

Past SRC Seminars:

Social Work SRC Seminar: Fattening the truth - deconstructing fat

On Wednesday, January 25th, Dr May Friedman, Assistant Professor, Social Work and Sabrina Friedman, Hunter College, NYC, co-presented our first SRC seminar of 2012. With a full house of participants, they spoke to definitions and discourses on fat, fat phobia, fat acceptance and fat activism. They asked, why is fat bad? Who is fat? And more interestingly, who passes for thin? Enlightening, refreshing and entirely nourshing, we look forward to hearing more from these social work scholars. For more information click here.

Message from the Chair

Dr. Winnie Ng, Sam Ginding Chair in Social Justice and Democracy

Faculty News:

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