Insight into Global Media Infrastructures

Dr. Lisa Parks delivers John Fekete Distinguished Lecture at Catharine Parr Traill College

November 16, 2022

Dr. Lisa Parks, director of the Global Media Technologies & Cultures Lab at the University of California Santa Barbara, described her interdisciplinary notion of “media infrastructures” during the annual John Fekete Distinguished Lecture on November 10.

During the public lecture held at Catharine Parr Traill College, Professor Parks shared work from her current book in progress, Mixed Signals: Media Infrastructures and Globalization and cited examples from her fieldwork in cultural contexts of energy scarcity, such as in Zambia and Dar El Salaam. She explored the everyday experiences of mobile and internet technologies in these contexts to open up ideas of “global media” and take “the outskirts” into account alongside experiences of people for whom energy is abundant.

“After a two-year COVID hiatus, it was wonderful to resume this in-person annual event with Lisa Parks’ visit, which also included an intensive seminar the next day,” said Dr. Victoria de Zwaan, associate professor of Cultural Studies at Trent University. The lecture is part of the Trent University Community Speaker Series, which are free and open to the public thanks to the generosity of donors.

“Events like these are an important way to bring different departments of the University together, connecting world-renowned researchers to our community,” added Dr. Anne Pasek, Canada Research Chair in Media, Culture and the Environment and an assistant professor of Cultural Studies.

The annual Fekete lecture was established in November 2011 and inaugurated in November 2013 by the Cultural Studies PhD Program to honour John Fekete on his retirement from Trent in 2012. The idea of the lectureship is to invite distinguished visitors to the University to share their most recent or forthcoming publications that are influential and important in the field of cultural inquiry.