October 22, 2021 5:30 - 7:00 pm
Nathan Radke, MA & Lee Kuhnle, PhD
Moderators: Mr. David Miller & Dr. Jennifer Marotta Humber@TIFA co-chairs
Summary: This year’s plenary panel features a live recording of The Uncover Up podcast that will examine the roles of metaphor and pataphor in conspiracy narratives. Additionally, the co-hosts will consider how the conspiratorial mind is—unlike the stereotype of the paranoid loner—actually a member of a community of minds, and evaluate the concept of cognitive dissonance and the development of a new theory of the mind, “the superpositioned truth.”
Lee Kuhnle, PhD
Dr. Lee Kuhnle is a professor in the Department of Liberal Studies at Humber College, a co-host of "The UncoverUp" podcast, and regular contributor to the "Conspiracy Roundtable" radio show on CFRB1010. He is a graduate of York University's Social and Political Thought's doctoral program, where he focused his studies on 18th century German Political philosophy and Frankfurt School Critical Theory. As part of his graduate studies, he spent a year-long research leave in Berlin, Germany taking graduate courses at the Humbolt and Free University as well as researching at the Walter Benjamin archive. Lee Kuhnle works broadly in the field of 'ideology critique,' having for example researched and published on the role of religion in the formation of a political opposition to the former East German government. More recently, Lee’s work examines the political impact of conspiracy theories in liberal democratic political cultures.
Nathan Radke, MA
Nathan Radke is a Cultural Theory professor at Humber College, and completed his MA in Sociology at Lakehead University. He co-authored the 2018 textbook Ethnical Perspectives published by Oxford University Press. He specializes in conspiracy theories, particularly the manner in which ideas behave as social contagions. He is the author of “Simveillance in Hyperreal Las Vegas” and a contributor to Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History. He also co-founded the Conspiracy Theory podcast “The Uncoverup” which is available on itunes and Soundcloud.
