Department of American and Canadian Studies

Canadian Studies Annual Lecture

Canadian Culture as Material Culture: Forms and Formats
Professor Will Straw, McGill University

This talk will look at a variety of examples of Canadian popular culture over the last hundred years, from magazines through musical recordings and films. It will examine the ways in which Canadian cultural artefacts have borrowed, stolen, adapted and perverted the features of popular cultural objects produced elsewhere.

Will Straw is the Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and Professor in the Department of Art History and Communications Studies. He is the author of Cyanide and Sin: Visualizing Crime in 50s America and co-editor of Intersections of Media and Communications: Concepts and Critical Frameworks, amongst many other publications. Recent projects include The Urban Night as Interdisciplinary Object, The Film Extra and its historical meanings, and Media and Urban Life in Montreal.