Presentations

Invited Presentations

International

  • “Schoenberg Gould Hofstadter,” for the Gödel Escher Bach Exhibition, West Den Hague Cultural Centre, The Hague, Netherlands, 28 May 2023, in conjunction with the installation based on Richard Cavell, SpeechSong (Punctum P, 2020): 38:00 min. 4:3 video with synchronized lighting; commissioned for the exhibition and realised by Baruch E. Gottlieb (Universität der Künste, Berlin)

  • “McLuhan and Composed Theatre,” invited keynote paper, Feedback: McLuhan and a ‘Reasonable Ecology of Media,’” Royal Academy of the Arts, The Hague, 28 September 2017
  • “M2 x 3,” invited presentation, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Seattle, 21 March 2014
  • “Canada, Israel, and McLuhan’s ‘Borderline Case,’” keynote lecture, Canadian Studies Conference, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 21 May 2013
  • “McLuhan and the Body as Medium,” invited University lecture, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade, Serbia, 28 March 2012
  • “McLuhan, Turing, and the Question of Determinism,” invited lecture, University of Paderborn, Germany, 30 March 2012
  • “McLuhan Our Contemporary,” invited University lecture, Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, 21 February 2012
  • “Re-Mediating the Medium,” invited keynote lecture, “Post-Media” conference, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, 2 December 2011
  • “The Future of Communications,” with Baruch Gotlieb, invited presentation, McLuminations, Frankfurt Bookfair, Frankfurt-am-Main, 14 October 2011
  • “The Later McLuhan,” Invited University lecture, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, 6 June 2011
  • “McLuhan, Tactility, and the Digital,” special keynote lecture, Touching McLuhan Conference, Canadian Embassy, Berlin, 27 May 2011
  • “McLuhan and Acoustic Space,” invited lecture, Institute for Sonology, Royal Conservatory, The Hague, 20 May 2011
  • “In-Corporating the Global Village,” invited keynote lecture, McLuhan in the Global Village Conference, Marburg University, 13 May 2011
  • “Histories of Forgetting,” at Canada and Beyond conference, University of Huelva, 23 May 2010
  • “Angels and Robots: Bio-extension revisited in the age of communicating objects,” invited lecture, Hungarian Academy of the Sciences, Budapest, 11 September 2009
  • “McLuhan Motion e-Motion,” invited keynote lecture, Potsdam University, 24 May 2009
  • “Specters of McLuhan,” invited inaugural lecture, McLuhan Salon, Canadian Embassy, Berlin, 19 February 2007
  • “Specters of McLuhan,” invited lecture, Re-Reading McLuhan conference, University of Bayreuth, 16 February 2007
  • “Marshall McLuhan’s Ec[h]o Criticism,” University of Frankfurt, 13 February 2007
  • “McLuhan’s ‘Borderline Case’ Revisited: Sovereignty and Flows,” invited lecture, School for American Studies, University of London, 6 April 2006
  • “McLuhan’s ‘Borderline Case’ Revisited: Sovereignty and Flows,” Keynote lecture for “Comparing Canada and the United States: Rupture and Continuity,” Centre d’Etudes Canadiennes, La Sorbonne Nouvelle, Université de Paris 3, 1 April 2006
  • “Histories of Forgetting: Canadian War Representations and the Politics of Cultural Memory,” for the conference “Remembering War and Building Peace: Mentalités and Political Choices in Belgium and Canada,” Canadian Studies Centre, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 17-19 November 2003
  • “Geographical Immediations,” in the “Textual Spaces / Spatial Texts” session, annual conference, Royal Geographical Society, with the Institute of Geographers, Kensington Gore, London, UK (2-5 September 2003)
  • “Performing the Nation in Theory,” Keynote Presentation, Canada / Australia Workshop, University of Woolongong, Australia, 26-27 June 2003
  • “The McLuhan School,” lecture at Meiji University, Meiji Gakuin University (both Tokyo) and University of Nagoya, Japan, October 4, 8 and 10, 2001
  • “Canadian Internationalism and the Question of Identity,” inaugural lecture series, Institute for Canadian and Anglo-North American Studies, Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrucken Germany, 14 May 2001
  • Series of six lectures on Canadian Literature, University of Urbino, September 1980; September 1981
  • “The Unspoken in Sinclair Ross’s As For Me and My House,” University of Bologna, 13 May 1981
  • “The Italian Topos in Canadian Literature: A Literary Map,” Circolo Italo-Britannico di Padova, 13 March 1981
  • Series of eight lectures on Canadian Literature, University of Pisa, 26-27 February; 19-20 March, 1980
  • “‘Et in Acadia Ego’: An Integrative Approach to Canadian Literature,” University of Bologna, 28 April 1980
  • “Verga, Goldoni, and the Dramatic Structure of I Malavoglia,” Canadian Academic Center in Italy, Rome, 27 February, 1980
  • “Voyages of Discovery: Cultural Relations Between Canada and Italy,” Circolo Italo-Britannico di Venezia, 21 January 1980

National

  • “The Toronto School: from Communication to Mediation,” invited plenary lecture, The Toronto School Conference, University of Toronto, 15 October 2016
  • “Seeing Through Vancouver,” invited keynote lecture, Three Days of Canada Conference, Brock University, 13 October 2016
  • “Mechanical Brides and Vampire Squids,” Invited Keynote lecture, McLuhan and Flusser conference, University of Manitoba and Videopool Artists’ Centre, Winnipeg, 31 May 2012 (https://vimeo.com/mcluhanflusser)
  • “Paratactic Informatics: Towards a Soft Ontology of Iain Baxter&,” Invited Keynote Lecture, InterPlay Symposium, Faculty of Information Sciences, York University, 26 March 2012
  • “Marshall McLuhan’s Ec[h]o-Criticism,” invited plenary lecture, McLuhan 100 Conference, University of Toronto, 8 November 2011
  • “Marshall McLuhan’s Ec[h]o-Criticism,” invited keynote lecture, McLuhan Centennial Conference, University of Alberta, 23 June 2011
  • “McLuhan’s ‘Borderline Case’ Revisited,” Keynote Paper, “Co-ordinates of Comparison: Contemporary Canon—Cultural and Intellectual Dialogues,” Comparative Literature Program, University of Alberta, 12 March 2010
  • “The Curve of Time and the Owl of Minerva: Space and Place in the West Beyond the (Philosophical) West,” keynote lecture, “Space and Place in British Columbia” conference, University of Victoria, 2 May 2009
  • “Jane Rule and Cultural Memory,” invited keynote lecture, “Re-Reading Jane Rule,” University of British Columbia, 6 June 2009
  • “Specters of McLuhan: Derrida and the Material Non-Material,” Institute for Globalisation and the Humanities, McMaster University, 16 October 2003
  • “Dreaming Awake: Mass Media as Ritual,” Distinguished Speakers Series: “Ritual Economies”; Humanities Research Group, Windsor University, October 14, 2003; “Iain Baxter’s Medium and Marshall McLuhan’s Message,” public conversation, Art Gallery of Windsor, 15 October 2003
  • “Architectural Memory and Acoustic Space,” Keynote Lecture, annual meeting, Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, 22 May 2002, UBC
  • Two day presentation in the “Made in Canada” series (lecture on day one; research seminar on day two), Dept. of English, University of Alberta, 8-9 November, 2001
  • “Funding and Expectations for Canadian Studies Programs,” Annual Meeting of Canadian Studies Program Administrators, Association for Canadian Studies, 7-8 December 2000, House of Parliament, Ottawa
  • “The Crisis of Comparative Literature,” Panel discussion (with Peter Brooks [Yale], Linda Hutcheon [Toronto], Walter Moser [Montréal]), Canadian Comparative Literature Association, Learned Societies Conference, UQAM, 1 June 1995
  • “‘Same Difference’: On the Hegemony of ‘Language’ and ‘Literature’ in Comparative Cultural Studies, Canadian Comparative Literature Association, Learned Societies Conference, Université de Québec à Montréal, 1 June 1995

Local Community

  • Curator of Adjunct Events, Wells Hill, by Action at a Distance Dance Company, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts and Dance House (Vancouver), 18-26 November 2017 (“Discourse on Glenn Gould,” with Owen Underhill; Speaking of Dance Roundtable [“McLuhan, the Global, and Artistic Production”]; “McLuhan, Gould, and Acoustic Space”; Pre-Show and Post-Show talks 24, 25, 26 November).
  • “Axes and Apes,” In Dialogue with Carr: Invitational Forum, Vancouver Art Gallery, 24 January 2015
  • “Media Theory and Digital Humanities,” invited lecture, Digital Humanities Centre, University of Victoria, 11 April 2014
  • “McLuhan and the Technology of Being,” invited keynote lecture, “Recurring Questions of Technology,” UBC/SFU Summer Institute, 12 July 2012
  • “McLuhan and the Body as Medium,” Noted Speaker Talk, Centre for Cross Faculty Initiatives, University of B. C., 5 March 2009
  • Discussant, “Bodies and Borders,” Refracting Pacific Canada, Dept. of History and International Canadian Studies Centre, 16 March 2007
  • “Designed Words for a Designed World,” with Jamie Hilder, Solitudes and Globalisation: Post-World War II Art and Culture across the Americas, Dept. of Art History, UBC, 16-18 March 2007
  • “Writing the City,” panel presentation, World Urban Forum, UBC Robson Square, 8 February 2006
  • “From Cosmic City to Global Village: McLuhan, Media, and the Metropolis,” invited lecture, World Urban Form, Vancouver Public Library, 31 October 2005
  • “Staging the Acoustic,” guest lecture to English 347 (Student initiative seminar), 11 Jan. 2005
  • “Art Without Walls: McLuhan in Vancouver,” UBC Noon Hour Talks, Robson Square Campus, 6 October 2004
  • “On Television,” lecture to the Alliance Française (in connection with “50 années de la télévision”), 21 September 2004
  • “Marshall McLuhan: Artiste de Livres,” History of the Book Lecture Series, Simon Fraser University, November 27, 2003
  • “Teletechnologies of Postmemory in W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz,” The Fading Image Conference, Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness, UBC, 16 May 2003
  • “Internationally oriented research in historical perspective,” position statement, “Research Without (Southern) Borders: The Internationalization of Canadian Research and the Global South,” International Development Research Centre (Ottawa), Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, Simon Fraser University, 3 February 2003
  • “Sadian Spaces,” Emily Carr College of Art and Design / Modern Baroque Opera, 12 February 2002
  • “What McLuhan Really Said About the Book,” Green College Speakers Series, UBC, 12 March 2002
  • “McLuhan and Global Time” Philosophy Café, Vancouver Art Gallery, 9 December 2001
  • “Translating Dante,” panel presentation to Medieval and Renaissance Studies Group, Green College, 16 September 1999
  • “Space, Time, and Media: Marshall McLuhan and Siegfried Giedion,” lecture to the School of Architecture, UBC, 11 March 1999
  • “Tuberculosis: Scientific and Artistic Representations,” with David Speert (Dept. of Pediatrics, UBC), Grand Rounds, G. F. Strong Hospital, 22 January 1999
  • “Pasolini, Discorso Indiretto Libero, and the Poetry of Cinema,” lecture, Dept. of Hispanic and Italian, 26 February 1998
  • “(Inter)Facing McLuhan,” lecture to the Comparative Literature Interdisciplinary Colloquium, Green College, UBC, 19 November 1997
  • “Flatland Revisited, or The Return of the Fourth Dimension,” lecture to the Nineteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Colloquium, Green College, UBC, 29 October,1997
  • “Madama Butterfly and the Absence of Empire,” plenary lecture, Madama Butterfly in Film, Drama, Opera, and Fiction: An Interdisciplinary Symposium,” University of B. C., 19 April 1997
  • “Cultural Studies: What Is It and Why are we Doing It,” Seminar for English Honours, UBC, 30 October 1996
  • “Monster Houses: The Race of Space,” colloquium, Department of Geography, UBC, 22 November 1996
  • “Languages of the Atlantic and the Pacific,” Department of Language Education, Faculty of Education, UBC, 20 November 1996
  • “Cultural Studies and the Challenge to the English Department,” panel presentation, B.C. Universities Conference, SFU, 4 March 1995
  • “The Space of Postmodernism,” panel presentation with J. O’Brian (Fine Arts), Canadian Studies Program, Green College, 20 October 1994
  • “Canadian Book Illustration: 1785 to 1985,” The Alcuin Society (Vancouver), 22 October 1992
  • “Postmodern/Postcolonial,” University College of the Cariboo, 11 March 1992 (UBC Liaison Series)
  • “From Conceptualism to Neo-Conceptualism,” Vancouver Art Gallery, 20 February 1991
  • “‘Coasts of Eternity’: Verbal/Visual Relations in the Canadian Far West,” Pacific Northwest Canadian Studies Consortium, UBC, 24 July 1990
  • “Ethnography as Pornography,” Cariboo College, 9 October 1990
  • “The Classroom: In Theory,” Second English Academic Seminar, UBC, 25 May 1990
  • “Glenn Gould: The Performer as Composer,” ARCT Alumni Association (Vancouver), 22 January 1990
  • “Photography as a Kind of Writing,” three-session workshop for the Tenth International Summer Institute for Semiotic and Structural Studies, UBC, 22-24 August 1988
  • “Reading Glenn Gould,” two-part program on Gould, written and produced for CITR-FM (Vancouver), 1 and 8 May, 1985
  • “Subtexts: Canadian Book Illustration,” Brock House Society (Vancouver), 7 February 1985
  • “‘Come up and be dead’: The Semiotics of Carnival in Our Mutual Friend,” English Department Colloquium, UBC, 6 March 1984
  • “‘Silent Speaking Words’: Eluard, Skvorecky, Sinclair Ross,” Comparative Literature Colloquium, UBC, 1 December 1983

Other Presentations

International

  • “Always Already Digital,” ACLA Conference, Harvard University, 15 March 2016
  • “The Multimodal Novel and the Remediation of the Book,” International Conference on Narrative, Amsterdam University, 19 June 2016
  • “Beverley Nichols, Rex Whistler, and Sexual Self-Fashioning in Down the Garden Path,” conference on The British Country House, University of Newcastle, 8 June 2014
  • “McLuhan Roundtable,” Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia, 28 March 2012
  • with Peter Dickinson, “Bucke, Whitman and the Cross-Border Homosocial,” NEMLA Conference, Tufts University (Boston), 31 May 1995
  • “Monster Houses: The Race of Space,” Canadian Comparative Literature Association, Learned Societies Conference, Carleton University, 30 May 1994
  • “Futurismo in Canada: The Bologna Connection,” Alma Mater Studiorum Saecularia Nona: International Conference on Bologna, Italian Culture and Modern Literature, University of Bologna, 18 October 1988
  • “Madmen and Magicians: Versions of the Artist in Canadian Fiction,” Sixth Annual Conference of the British Association for Canadian Studies, Lincoln College, Oxford, 10 April 1981
  • “‘The Dialogue of Being’: Dialogical Form in Klein, Kroetsch and Kogawa,” Sixth Inter-national Conference of the Italian Association for Canadian Studies, University of Bari, 29 March 1985

National

  • “Mediatic Shakespeare: McLuhan and the Bard,” 400th Anniversary Shakespeare Conference: Shakespeare and Canada, Ottawa University, 11 April 2016
  • “Comparative Media Studies: Theories and Practices,” organizer of and presenter at panel, Canadian Comparative Literature Association, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, University of Victoria, 2 June 2010
  • “Baroness Elsa and the Aesthetics of Empathy,” Canadian Comparative Literature Association, Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Alberta, 28 May 2000
  • “McLuhan in Space,” plenary session, The McLuhan Symposium, University of Ottawa, 7 May 2000
  • “McLuhan and Spatial Communication,” Congress of the Learned Societies, Sherbrooke University, 4 June 1999
  • “Passing Queer: The Cultural Transvestisms of FPG,” Joint Session of CCLA / CAUTG / ACCUTE, Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Ottawa, 28 May 1998
  • “Felix Paul Greve, Homosexual Panic, and Frederick Philip Grove,” Queer Nation?, York University, 14 March 1997
  • “Querying the Canadian Literatures: Towards Comparative Cultural Studies,” Aux Canadas: Reading, Writing, Translating Canadian Literatures: A Conference in Honour of Philip Stratford, Université de Montréal, 18 April 1993
  • “Theorizing Canadian Space: (Post)Colonial Articulations,” Theoretical Discourse in the Canadian Intellectual Community, Association for Canadian Studies, St. Jovite, Québec, 24-27 September 1992
  • “Where is Frye?: Theorizing Postcolonial Space,” Canadian Comparative Literature Association, Learned Societies Conference, Queen’s University, 30 May 1991
  • “‘An Ordered Absence’: The Deconstruction of Space in the Canadian Cultural Context,” Popular Culture Association, Toronto, 7 March 1990
  • “Canonic Variations: Futurism in Canada and Québec,” Association for Canadian and Québec Literatures, Learned Societies Conference, University of Windsor, 30 May 1988
  • “Horizontal Allegories: Image/Representation/Text in Atwood and Kiyooka,” Contexts: International Conference on the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, University of Manitoba, 16 May 1987
  • “Bakhtin Reads DeMille: Canadian Literature, Postmodernism, and the Theory of Dialogism,” Literary Theory and Canadian Literature Conference, University of Ottawa, 27 April 1986
  • “Narrative Discourse as Quotation: The Example of Free Indirect Discourse,” Association for Canadian University Teachers of English, Learned Societies Conference, Université de Montréal, 6 June 1985

Local Community

  • “McLuhan and the Technology of Being,” invited keynote lecture, Recurring Questions of Technology symposium, Faculty of Education, 7 July 2012; http://pdce.educ.ubc.ca/RQT2012-lectures
  • Joint seminar on “The Dialectics of Seeing” with Vivian Sobchack (UCLA) and Peter Seixas (CRC in Historical Consciousness, UBC), Faculty of Education, 12 March 2004
  • “Roughing it in the Veneto,” A Double Perspective: Canadian Studies in Italy / Italian Studies in Canada, UBC / Italian Cultural Institute, 28 February 1996
  • “Monster Houses: The Race of Space,” Race, Gender and the Construction of Canada, UBC, 18 October 1995
  • “The McLuhan Alternative: Interfacing Canadian Cultures,” Opening Plenary Lecture, Alternative Frontiers Conference, SFU, 17 February 1994
  • “Postmodernist Architecture: The New Art of Memory,” Tenth International Summer Institute for Semiotic and Structural Studies, UBC, 6 August 1988
  • “The Space of Writing: Reading Derrida Reading Wieland Reading,” Tri-Universities Conference, University of Victoria, 19 March 1988
  • “‘His Master’s Voice’: Glenn Gould quasi parlando,” Culture and Imperialism: An Inter-national Conference in Honour of Edward Said, UBC Program in Comparative Literature, 12 March 1988
  • “‘The Nth Adam’: Dante in Klein’s The Second Scroll,” Canadian Comparative Literature Association, Learned Societies Conference, UBC, 3 June 1983
  • “Dante’s Divine Komos: Aspects of Carnival in the Commedia,” Canadian Society for Italian Studies, Learned Societies Conference, UBC, 30 May 1983