Members of the Brock community recently gathered to discuss social media, beauty ideals and visual and cultural identities in adolescents during a research symposium organized by Fiona Blaikie, a Professor in the Department of Educational Studies. Blaikie’s recent research has focused on youth visual and cultural identity constructions and the need for these to be explored in art education.

The symposium, “Impression Management: Constructions of Visual and Cultural Identities,” was held in Pond Inlet on Friday, Feb. 1, 2019. The day included two discussion panels, with speakers also giving brief presentations on their work around the theme of youth identity construction. The discussions were moderated by Dolana Mogadime, Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies. The welcoming ceremony was officiated by Nicholas Printup, a media and communications student at Brock University and member of the Beaver Clan, Six Nations of the Grand River, and the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation.

. The speakers included:

• Olga Ivashkevich, Associate Professor, School of Art and Design at the University of South Carolina: Beyond “Bad” Bodies: Adjudicated Girls Perform Experimental Digital Narratives to Resist Criminalization
• Dónal O’Donoghue, Professor, Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia: Becoming Somebody in Boys’ Schools
• Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis, Assistant Professor in the School of Visual Arts, Pennsylvania State University: Decolonial Body Politics: Asian Refugee Girls’ Webtune Anime as Anti-White Privilege
• Jennifer Rowsell, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Multiliteracies in the Faculty of Education at Brock University: Feeling with Materials: Analyzing Young People’s Affect-Driven Maker Practices
• Kevin Gosine, Associate Professor of Sociology at Brock University: Reconciling Divergent Worlds in the Lives of Marginalized Youth
• Shauna Pomerantz, Associate Professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University: ‘It’s my Lifeblood’, or Why Do We Disparage What Girls Value Most in Their Construction of Self?
• Fiona Blaikie, Professor, Art Education, Faculty of Education at Brock University: Embodied, Constructed and Performed Youth Identities in Relation to Global Celebrity Influencers, Popular Culture, Social Media and Intersectionality: Dreaming the Impossible Dream.