As part of her three-week residency, Media@McGill Beaverbrook Visiting Scholar Peggy Phelan will give a talk, “From the Spectacle Society to the Performance Society: Ronald Reagan.” Well known as “the great communicator,” Ronald Reagan’s striking popular appeal stems from transformations that were and are larger than one man. Phelan’s talk considers Reagan’s political performances in relation to theories of performance, focusing in particular on distinctions between being and performing.
Phelan is the Ann O’Day Maples Professor in the Arts, Professor of Drama and of English, Stanford University (USA) and one of the foremost authorities on performance art.
The event will take place on Thursday, March 20, at 5:30 p.m., at Arts W-215 (853 Sherbrooke Street West). The conference, part of the Department of Art History and Communication Studies Speaker Series, is free and open to the public. For more information, click here.