Name: Film and Speaker Event: Barbie
Start: 2026-03-31T18:00:00-05:00
Location: John Edson Anglin Performing Arts Center

The film will be preceded by a guest lecture from Eileen G’Sell.
G'Sell (she/her) is a poet and culture critic whose work focuses on gender, sexuality, and economic class. She was born in St. Louis and earned a BA at Knox College, an MA at the University of Rochester, and an MFA at Washington University in St. Louis. Her first full-length volume of poetry, Life After Rugby, was published in 2018 by Gold Wake Press. Her second book of poetry, Francofilaments, was published in 2024 by Broken Sleep Books. Her first book of nonfiction, Lipstick, joins Bloomsbury Academic's Object Lessons series in 2026.
G’Sell’s poetry has been published in Poetry magazine, Fence, DIAGRAM, Oversound, The Rumpus, and The Boston Review; her essays have been published in The Baffler, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Current Affairs, and Jacobin. She serves as movie critic for The Hopkins Review and makes frequent contributions to Hyperallergic, Reverse Shot, and The Riverfront Times. In 2023, she won the Rabkin Prize for excellence in arts writing.
G’Sell teaches writing and media studies at Washington University in St. Louis.
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Barbie is a 2023 fantasy comedy film directed by Greta Gerwig from a screenplay she wrote with Noah Baumbach. Based on the fashion dolls by Mattel, it is the first live-action Barbie film after numerous animated films and specials. Starring Margot Robbie as the title character and Ryan Gosling as Ken, the film follows them on a journey of self-discovery through Barbieland and the real world following an existential crisis. The supporting cast includes America Ferrera, Michael Cera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell.
Named one of the top ten films of 2023 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute, Barbie received critical acclaim and other accolades, including eight Academy Award nominations (among them Best Picture), winning Best Original Song for "What Was I Made For?"; the song also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song while the film received the inaugural Golden Globe Award for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement.