The Big Hoax: Art, Ideology and Culture: Conspiracies of Desire and Influence

Zita Babarczi and Matthew Harris

The Big Hoax: Art, Ideology and Culture: Conspiracies of Desire and Influence

Zita Babarczi and Matthew Harris

11:00am

Saturday, October 23, 2021

Zita Babarczi and Matthew Harris will examine conspiracies in literature and how focused teaching of critical thinking in the classroom can help create citizens more capable of engaging with them. Conspiracies of desire are examined through an analysis of Philip K. Dick’s Time out of Joint. A close reading of the thought-terminating cliché of “Do the Research” has become the standard reply to any Qanon doubters in their dismissal climate change, BLM protests, and COVID vaccines in an embrace of reactionary politics. If we want our students to be “thinking critically” we must recognize that their thinking has to expand to take in other viewpoints, to embrace discomfort and to work towards a more just world.

This event is part of the annual interdisciplinary Humber Liberal Arts Conference. This year’s focus is The Big Hoax: The Anatomy of Anti-Intellectualism, Denialism and Conspiracy Theories, Past and Present. Tune in to plenary sessions, free and open to the public, October 22–23.

English captioning is available for this video. Please click the ‘CC’ button in the video toolbar to turn it on.


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Panel Discussion

Zita Babarczi and Matthew Harris will examine conspiracies in literature and how focused teaching of critical thinking in the classroom can help create citizens more capable of engaging with them. Conspiracies of desire are examined through an analysis of Philip K. Dick’s Time out of Joint. A close reading of the thought-terminating cliché of “Do the Research” has become the standard reply to any Qanon doubters in their dismissal climate change, BLM protests, and COVID vaccines in an embrace of reactionary politics. If we want our students to be “thinking critically” we must recognize that their thinking has to expand to take in other viewpoints, to embrace discomfort and to work towards a more just world.

This event is part of the annual interdisciplinary Humber Liberal Arts Conference. This year’s focus is The Big Hoax: The Anatomy of Anti-Intellectualism, Denialism and Conspiracy Theories, Past and Present. Tune in to plenary sessions, free and open to the public, October 22–23.

English captioning is available for this video. Please click the ‘CC’ button in the video toolbar to turn it on.


Humber Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sciences and Innovative Learning Logo

Panel Discussion

Featured Authors

Zita Babarczi is a second year PhD student at the University of Stirling, studying representations of gender in conspiracy literature from the late 1950s to the present day. She attained her English Studies BA (Hons) at the University of Stirling and a Modernities Masters in Literature at the University of Glasgow. Her research is funded by the Carnegie Trust.

Read more about Zita Babarczi

Matthew Harris is an English Professor at Humber College. His work there focuses on developing English pedagogy and curriculum that investigates how equity, technology and critical thinking impact each other in our new digital reality. He is one of the fiction editors of the Humber Literary Review and he is a part of Humber College’s 2SLGBTQ+ ERG. He is also a fiction writer and his stories have been featured in Grain, the Malahat Review, the Dalhousie Review, the New Quarterly and Plenitude Magazine. He is currently working on a novel.

Read more about Matthew Harris

11:00am

Saturday, October 23

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