Dr. Ger Zielinski
Dr. Ger Zielinski lectures on critical media studies in the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, and in The Creative School. He received his PhD from McGill University for his pioneering research and dissertation on LGBTQ film festivals. Following his doctoral studies, he was awarded a FRQSC postdoctoral research fellowship for his project that mapped the transnational movement of underground cinema between NYC and West Berlin in the 1970s, tenable at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.
Recently, Zielinski was Principal Investigator of his research project 鈥淏uffering Online and Off鈥� on digital streaming cultures and online festivals, funded by a (2020-24). He has been a visiting researcher or scholar at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University, the Institut f眉r Europ盲ische Ethnologie in the Humboldt Universit盲t zu Berlin, and Innis College at the University of Toronto. He has also given many guest lectures and research seminars at universities worldwide, such as New York University, Columbia University, the New School, University of Vienna, University of Glasgow, University of London, and Liverpool John Moores University. Recently, he became a member of the Editorial Advisory Board, 鈥淧olitical Cinemas鈥� book series, Edinburgh University Press. In 2024, he joined the Scientific Committee for Film Festivals: Borders, Identities, Solidarities Symposium, held at the Ca鈥� Foscari University of Venice (Italy).
Moreover, Zielinski is an avid cyclist, who just following his undergraduate studies made a particularly errant journey from Vancouver Island, into the Rockies, up the Okanagan Valley, across the Prairies, and back to Toronto in just under two months on his trusty hybrid 12-speed.
Research Interests:
- environmental media studies
- film exhibition practices and festivals
- mediated cities
- LGBT and queer cinemas
- queer space
- experimental and underground film culture
- digital media arts
Select Courses Taught (成人大片):
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts
SOC-482 Advanced Approaches to Media Analysis
SOC-902 Hollywood and Society
SOC-202 Popular Culture
RTA School of Media & MA in Media Production (MMP), The Creative School
MP-8102 Theories in Popular Media Entertainment (graduate seminar)
MP-8101 Creative Research Methods (graduate seminar)
FCD-918/RTA-918/MP-8918 Media Ethics (upper year & graduate)
RTA-322 Technology, Identity, and Creativity
School of Professional Communication, The Creative School
CMN-601 Visual Communication: A Critical Approach
CMN-413 Corporate Communications
CMN-450 Participatory Media and Communication
CMN-448 Introduction to Visual Communication
School of Image Arts, The Creative School
(inaugural version in School of Image Arts)
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For details on a recent research project, see (2020-24).
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Zielinski鈥檚 research projects have received financial support from several funding agencies, including the Beaverbrook Foundation, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Fonds de recherche du Qu茅bec, Soci茅t茅 et culture (FRQSC), Canada Council of the Arts, Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Centre de recherche sur l'interm茅dialit茅 (CRI), Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), among others. He has also served as a research grant adjudicator on various merit review committees, including SSHRC and the Flemish Research Foundation in Belgium (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek). Moreover, he is also recipient of the Governor General鈥檚 Academic Award.
For several years, he served as a film programmer/curator with the nomadic artists鈥� film and video exhibition group Pleasure Dome and independently. He also worked as a commissioning editor for Alphabet City (MIT Press), and, as a film and media arts writer, he contributes to a handful of art and film magazines, including Cineaste and Afterimage (University of California Press).
He is currently researching and writing a monograph on the early work of queer activist-filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim for the Queer Film Classics series at McGill鈥換ueen's University Press.