About this Event
Gender-based violence, or GBV, has many forms and many victims: sexual assault, intimate partner violence, femicide, and violence against 2SLGBTQIA+ people. The #MeToo movement highlighted the power of speaking up on a global scale, and From Red Dresses to Memory Stones is a necessary investigation of GBV activism in Canada.
Nicolette Little interviews numerous activists and explores five antiviolence media projects in detail: the REDress Project and Disposable Red Woman installations, which draw attention to Canada’s crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls; the digital memorialization of murdered Ontario women each anniversary of the Montreal Massacre; the documentary Slut or Nut, filmed during the lead-up to a rape trial; and the Memory Stones Project, in which beach stones are painted with antiviolence messages, then posted across social media. Little challenges assumptions about GBV and provides insights into citizens’ creative, daring, collaborative, and memorializing ways of addressing it – and the discourses that normalize rape culture.
Ultimately, this engaging work is about hope, demonstrating that antiviolence activism is a matter of will and can be done in ways that prioritize consent and protect activists’ well-being.
Dr. Nicolette Little teaches with the University of Alberta’s Media and Technology Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies programs. Her research interests include feminist media interventions in gender-based violence (GBV), technology-facilitated violence, and automated algorithmic harm. She advises the Canadian federal government, media, and non-profits regarding media and GBV, and played a key role advising law enforcement and media in the aftermath of the so-called “Toronto Van Attack.” From Red Dresses to Memory Stones: Multimedia Activism and Gender-Based Violence in Canada, published by University of British Columbia Press, is out this June 1. Her current research, supported by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant, examines women’s mediated attempts to crowdsource dating safety in the context of increasing rates of both online dating site use and gendered abuse.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Another Story Bookshop, 315 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto, Canada
CAD 0.00
