Photo by Eric Simard

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.]

Research

Michael Gardiner is currently interested in theories of affect (especially boredom), the everyday, utopia, and dialogical social theory (the work of Mikhail Bakhtin in particular).

Current Research Projects

Utopia and Everyday Life

Teaching

3362F - 001 Sociology of Utopia
4485F - 001 Selected Topics in Sociology: The Sociology of Climate Change
9005B - 650 Contemporary Social Theory

Thesis Supervision

Recent Publications (Past 5 Years)

Books

(2020) Bakhtin in the Fullness of Time: Bakhtinian Theory and the Process of Social Education , Routledge.

(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

(2019) "A Tale of Two ’68s: The “Politics of Boredom” in France and Italy" Cultural Politics 15(3): 289-302.

(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.

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.

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 .