Tertulia – Erin Morton on Taylor Swift

Tertulias Fredericton is back this fall with a pop culture edition. On October 27, Erin Morton delivered a talk on Taylor Swift that is now available for viewing here.

Morton explored the white settler feminine imagination, which may seem relatively innocuous, and even caring, when sung in a Taylor Swift lyric. Swift’s femininity is certainly a site of care, but it mostly cares damn hard about itself. The talk examined Swift’s Folklore album as a site that normalizes what Willow Samara Allen (2020) calls “white women’s subject-making” through colonial logics of land-as-property to be consumed, the violent displacement of Indigenous peoples, legacies of anti-Blackness rooted in trans-Atlantic enslavement, and the collective colonial amnesia that fosters the cis-heteronormative making of white femininity.

Erin Morton is a white settler professor in the Department of History at the University of New Brunswick in Ekwpahak|Fredericton. Her third book, Unsettling Canadian Art History, will be published by McGill-Queen’s University Press this spring.

Upcoming Tertulias

Nov . 17 – Katie Thorsteinson on Orange is the New Black
Dec. 1 – Sabine LeBel on Super Heroes

Milda’s Pizza is supporting Tertulias Fredericton this fall with a $3 discount on 10 inch pizzas on Tertulia night and free delivery 5 minutes from the cafe.

What is a tertulia? A tertulia can be described as a kind of philosophy café where participants talk about big thinkers, artists and ideas. This winter and spring, Tertulias Fredericton has put together a series on activists and social movements that have shaped our lives and allowed us to imagine a better future.

Tertulias Fredericton is supported by the NB Media Co-op, publisher of videos of the Tertulia talks.

For more information, visit Tertulias on Facebook or contact: fredericton.tertulia@gmail.com.