Michael E. Gardiner, Professor

D.Phil. York (UK)
M.A. U. Calgary
B.A. U. Calgary

Cross appointed to the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism , University of Western Ontario

In the News

13 Feb 2019 "Marie Kondo: Less is More?" The Gazette

7 Dec 2016 "Our growing fascination with boredom" University Affairs.
[ Transcript of Diane Peters interview with Michael E. Gardiner for this UA piece.]

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Recent Publications (Past 5 Years)

Books

(2017) Boredom Studies Reader: Frameworks and perspectives (ed. with Julian Jason Haladyn), Routledge.

(2016) Gündelik Hayat Eleştirileri, Heretik

(2013) Weak Messianism: Essays on Utopia and Everyday Life Peter Lang.

Refereed Journal Publications

(2018) "An Autonomist Marcuse?" Rethinking Marxism 30(2):232-25.

(2017) "Critique of Accelerationism" Theory, Culture & Society 34(1):29-52.

(2016) "Bakhtin in the fullness of time: Bakhtinian theory and the process of social education" (with Craig Brandist, Jayne White, and Carl Mika), Educational Philosophy and Theory 2016:1-5.

(2016) "Bakhtin, Boredom, and the 'Democratization of Skepticism' The European Legacy 22(2):163-184.

(2016) "Bakhtin and the ‘general intellect’" Educational Philosophy and Theory 2016:1-16.

(2014) "The Multitude Strikes Back? Boredom in an Age of Semiocapitalism" New Formations, 82(2):31-48 (special issue on 'Mood Work').

(2012) "Henri Lefebvre and the 'Sociology of Boredom'" Theory, Culture & Society 29(2):37-62.

(2012) " Post-Romantic irony in Bakhtin and Lefebvre" History of the Human Sciences 25(3), 51-69.

Book Chapters

(2018) "In Search of Lost Cheekiness: Bakhtin and Foucault as Neo-Cynics" in Slav N. Gratchev and Howard Mancing (eds.), Mikhail Bakhtin’s Heritage in Literature, Arts, and Psychology: Art and Answerability, Rowman & Littlefield

(2014) "Marxisme, modernitet og utopi" in Hverdagslivet Sociologier om det upåagtede , 2nd ed., Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Søren Kristiansen (red.), Køvenhavn: Hans Reitzels Forlag, 2014.

(2012) "The 'Dictatorship of the Eye': Henri Lefebvre on Vision, Space and Modernity" in Barry Sandywell and Ian Heywood (eds.) Handbook of Visual Culture , Oxford: Berg Publishers, 342-360.

(2012) "Phenomenology and its Shadow: Visuality in the Late Work of Merleau-Ponty" in Barry Sandywell and Ian Heywood (eds.) Handbook of Visual Culture , Oxford: Berg Publishers, 115-130.

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Thesis Supervision

Supervisory Status:  MA, PhD

Sociology

PhD Theses

PhD Thesis Supervisory Committee Member for Cenk Saracoglu, Migration, Neoliberalism and Ethnicization: The Middle-Class Construction of Kurdish Migrants in Izmir, Turkey.

PhD Examining Board Member for Helga Benediktsson, Cultural Opportunities and Social Movement Symbolic Strategies: The Knights of Labour and the American Federation of Labour as Meaning-Makers, 1880-1900.

MA Theses

Rory Davis, A Taste for Distinction: Food Representations in Popular Canadian Magazines.

Tony Puddephatt, Materiality, Discourse and Intersubjectivity: New Directions for a Constructivist Sociology of Science.

Victor Racz, The Notion of What is 'Objective' in the Works of Adorno.

MA Research Paper

Brendan Watts (jointly supervised with Anabel Quan-Haase), Capitalism Flies Through Space: A Marxist Analysis of Capitalist Ideology Within the Video Game Eve Online .

Centre for Theory and Criticism

Julian Haladyn, The Will to Boredom, PhD thesis, 2012

Jessica Reilly, Beyond the Spectacle: Rethinking Debord, MA thesis, 2009

Timothy August, The Edible Plebiscite, MA thesis, 2006

Petra Hroch, Puppet Masters: Aesthetics and Politics of the Marionnette, MA thesis, 2006

Carolyn Veldstra, Subversive Postmodern Humour in the Era of Its Impossibility, MA thesis, 2005

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Upcoming Speaking Engagements

Fri. Mar. 22, 3:30 presenting 'Not your father's boredom': Late-modern ennui in Ben Lerner's Atocha Station, a Theory Session for Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism, Western University, STVH 3165

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