Lecture: The Blessed Virgins

On September 30th at 3pm, the DRAGEN Lab welcomes colleagues to the St. Jerome’s Library, Room 2011, for a talk by DRAGEN Lab Alumni, Hannah Gardiner, titled, “The Blessed Virgins".

THE BLESSED VIRGINS

Hannah Gardiner’s literary project, The Blessed Virgins, is part memoir, part cultural critique. This work-in-progress reflects on the aesthetics of teenage pregnancy in the media culture of the late 2000s and early 2010s, a time when two of Hannah’s sisters became teen mothers. Her project situates this cultural phenomenon into larger conversations about the surveillance culture of women’s sexuality, with particular attention paid to the figure of the Virgin Mary. Hannah’s DRAGEN Lab talk will elaborate on her interest in the Virgin Mary in connection to this project, focusing specifically on medieval images of the pregnant Virgin Mary. Hannah will read preliminary field- note essays from her research trip to Bologna and Florence, where she visited cult images of the Madonna del Parto, and discuss why these fourteenth-century images are fascinating, as well as foundational to

The Blessed Virgins project.

Hannah gratefully acknowledges support for this project from Canada Council for the Arts and Region of Waterloo Arts Funding.

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Hannah Gardiner is a writer and cultural organizer. She has a master’s degree in literary studies and bachelor’s degree in knowledge integration from the University of Waterloo. Her writing projects have been supported by Canada Council for the Arts, the Region of Waterloo Arts Funding, the Brubacher House Museum, and the Mennonite Historical Society of Ontario. Her community art projects have been supported by the City of Waterloo, the City of Kitchener, 8 80 Cities & the Balsam Foundation. She was previously a graduate research fellow at the DRAGEN Lab, where she worked with Dr. Ann Marie Rasmussen, studying medieval badges.