Hear about parent-child play, postpartum depression and pulp fiction magazines in upcoming lectures

Students, faculty and staff are invited to attend three Spring 2013 Doctoral Showcase Lectures from the College of Arts and Sciences, April 16-19. The lectures will take place at 4:30 p.m., with refreshments beginning at 4 p.m., in Clark Hall 206. Doctoral Showcase Lectures feature the work of fellows of the 2012 Arts and Sciences Dissertation Seminar.

“The Parent-Child Play of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Speech/Language Impairment and ADHD”

On Tuesday, April 16, Maia Noeder will present “The Parent-Child Play of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Speech/Language Impairment and ADHD: Implications for Parenting, Assessment and Intervention.” Noeder’s lecture will examine the importance of parent-child play in children with communication disorders and the ways parents can encourage child development through play with their child; the importance of parent-child play as an assessment measure when diagnosing developmental disabilities and identifying a child's strengths and weaknesses; and the usefulness of parent-child play as an intervention tool when working with children with developmental disabilities.

“Empathizing, Sharing, and Coping with Life”

The next lecture, “Empathizing, Sharing, and Coping with Life: An Investigation of Postpartum Depression in a South African Township,” will be presented by Sarah Rubin on Wednesday, April 17. Rubin will examine how postpartum depression has been called both a global problem, affecting mothers across cultures and continents, and a culturally constructed medical diagnosis of doubtful applicability outside the industrialized West. She will discuss how, in a way, both views are true.

“The Shadow Modernism of Weird Tales”

Finally, on Friday, April 19, Jason Carney will present “The Shadow Modernism of Weird Tales: Experimental Aesthetics and Pulp Fiction in the 1920s and 30s.” At the beginning of the 20^th century, publishers pioneered a new print medium, the all-fiction magazine printed on pulpwood paper, or "pulp fiction magazine." The majority of these "blood and thunder" thrill magazines prospered by offering readers formula fiction. One magazine, Weird Tales, deviated from the commercially successful formulas of the day, however, by promising to publish "unique" stories of the bizarre and outré. In his lecture, Carney will consider the extent to which Weird Tales may be considered a form of "modernism," a trend across the arts of this period that has traditionally been defined in terms of its commitment to novelty and formal experimentation.