2009 National Conference Program - PCA/ACA

FILM SCREENINGS
(Alphabetized by area sponsoring)
film aims to persuade, without alienating, those who may not have ever been exposed to
issues that are of import to the GLBTQ community or those who may have anti-GLBTQ
perspectives. While this presentation is informed by queer theory and covers some
sophisticated points about gender and sexuality including the representation and
understanding of each within the framework of popular culture, it does so in an accessible
way to give the audience a chance to join in this critical discourse.
Medical Humanities: Health and Disease in Culture
Duration: Approximately 40 minutes
Bissonet (3 rd Floor)
Friday, April 10, 5:00 P.M. – 6:30 P.M.
CONFLICTING PRESCRIPTIONS: TALES OF INTERVENTION IN THE LOWER
9TH WARD
Directed by Stephen Svenson
Sponsored by: The Culture of Cities Center, Toronto, Canada, The University of Waterloo;
Funding from Canadian Institutes of Health Research; Produced with assistance from
McMaster University Communication Studies and Multimedia Department and Common
Ground Collective.
Documentary Film Introduced by Stephen Svenson (Director)
Panel Discussion: Dr. Alan Blum, Culture of Cities Centre, University of Waterloo and
CIHR Research Project, City Life and Well-Being: The Grey Zone in Health and Illness;
Dr. Kevin Dowler, Communications Programme in the Division of Social Science;
Professor Stephen Bailey, Representative of Common Ground Collective.
Hurricane Katrina evolved from disaster to catastrophe, a catastrophe with grave implications
for the health and well-being of the City of New Orleans and its citizens. Katrina’s impact on
the health of the city and its members is nowhere more apparent than the Lower Ninth Ward
which was virtually wiped away. The Lower Ninth Ward’s position as the palimpsest of a
disaster that became catastrophe has meant that various actors have ‘moved in’ with
prescriptions on how to ‘rebuild’ the Lower Ninth Ward.
The first half of the documentary introduces the City and the Lower 9th Ward through the
motif of tourism. Discourses around tourism and the tourist (the tourist as healer vs. defiler,
tourism as rejuvenator vs. destroyer) as they surface in the mass media and in interviews with
residents and visitors (tourists, activists, wanderers, pilgrims) to the lower Ninth Ward,
reflect ethical tensions over the place of pleasure and its relation to health and death in the
city. The devastation and the responses of 'dark tourists' speak not just to a fascination with
death but the hopes and dreams of healing, rejuvenation, and reconciliation that underscore
this fascination.
Voluntourism, mission tourism, as well as more conventional “disaster” tourism in post-
Katrina New Orleans, all in some way exemplify the need for the actor to intervene or to
‘come to terms’ with a catastrophic breech not necessarily originating in the devastation of
the City.
The second half of the documentary extends this theme to the concerns and focus of NGO’s,
celebrities, local government, and religious organizations and their imaginings for the future
health of the Lower Ninth. The documentary intervenes in the discourse of urban and
personal health, problematizing the desires of locals, governments, NGO’s and celebrities,
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