Marlene Goldman is a writer, filmmaker, and English professor at the University of Toronto. Her most recent work examines the connection between shame and stigma, specifically as relates to age. Exploring her subject through the lenses of literature, film, street art, and technology, Dr. Goldman seeks to re-imagine marginalized identities while translating her research into accessible narrative forms.
The author of six books and numerous scholarly articles, Dr. Goldman has contributed chapters to studies of Canadian literature and presented at symposiums around the world. Keynote speeches on the overlap between literature, neurology, and psychiatry have brought her to London, Austria, Italy, and China, while her 2017 book Forgotten: Narratives of Age-Related Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease in Canada continued her investigation of the theme. Her latest project, Performing Shame, considers the intersections between aging, the arts, healthcare, and technology. She is currently researching a book on Medical Assistance in Dying, MAID in Canada: Legalizing Euthanasia in the Case of Mental Illness.
Dr. Goldman’s artistic output provides her new avenues to examine the subjects she studies in her academic life. Her first short film, Piano Lessons, was adapted from Alice Munro’s In Sight of the Lake. As writer, director, and co-producer, Dr. Goldman brought a person-centred perspective to the film. Torching the Dusties, an adaptation of the Margaret Atwood short story of the same name, followed in 2018. Both films serve as accessible viewing as well as a case studies for clinicians, caregivers, and people living with age-related disorders. Dr. Goldman hopes her interdisciplinary approach will serve to broaden awareness of a spectrum of challenges including dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and vision loss. Her latest film, an adaptation of Souvankham Thammavongsa’s short story “Mani Pedi,” has played at over a dozen festivals to date, and won three awards.
Dr. Goldman’s book Forgotten was nominated for both the Gabrielle Roy Prize (2018) and The Canada Prize (2019)—the top scholarly book published in the Humanities. Dr. Goldman was awarded the 2019-2020 Research Excellence Award, recognizing her as the top researcher at University of Toronto at Scarborough. In 2022, she was nominated as a Fellow and inducted into the Royal Society of Canada.
Links:
Engage With the World, Succeed on Your Own Terms: Interview with Research2Reality
Dull, Simple, Amazing and Unfathomable: Short Stories of Alice Munro | Marlene Goldman | TEDxUTSC
U of T professor brings Atwood short story to the screen to spur discussion on sight loss