If you could design your ideal final lecture, what wisdom would you like to impart? Queen's inaugural Last Lecture Series invites a distinguished Queen’s faculty member to explore this opportunity during Teaching and Learning month.
The Last Lecture format originated at Carnegie Mellon University with a presentation by Dr. Randy Pausch, following his diagnosis with terminal pancreatic cancer. That lecture inspired universities around the world to invite celebrated teachers to consider what message they would want to share with their peers and future educators and then deliver that wisdom through their personal pedagogical style.
The Last Lecture series also serves to remind us that the lecture is a pedagogical tool as significant in our teaching toolkits as flipped classrooms and in-class active learning activities. Crafting lectures is an art and science of its own, and we can learn from the generosity of the Last Lecture presenters who share their work with us.
To Lecture as Fully Human | Dr. Eleanor MacDonald
Date: Wednesday, May 6, 2026
Time: 10:00 - 11:30 am
In-Person (Location will be shared after registration)
In this “last lecture”, Eleanor MacDonald draws on insights from a range of political theoretical frameworks in order to reflect on the lecture as a site of learning/teaching. Rejecting the characterisation of the lecturer as a “sage on the stage”, MacDonald offers alternative metaphors to represent the work that we do when we lecture, and to inspire us to rethink how we understand the educational encounter that is possible in a lecture-based course.
Biography
Eleanor MacDonald (BA Carleton, MA Carleton, PhD York), whose research and teaching focuses on critical political theories, worked at Queen’s from 1990 until 2025, initially as a Webster and SSHRC postdoctoral fellow and subsequently as an Associate Professor in the Departments of Political Studies, Gender Studies, and the Graduate Program in Cultural Studies. Over 35 years at Queen's, MacDonald was a recipient of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance Teaching Award (2012), a top five finalist for the TVOntario Best Lecturer Series (2010), a finalist for the Alumni Teaching Award for Teaching Excellence (2005), an ASUS Teaching Award winner (1991), and a seven times nominee for the Frank Knox Award for Excellence in Teaching, in addition to being regularly involved in teaching training and mentoring teaching assistants and new faculty. During this career, MacDonald also was engaged in a variety of types of service to the University including Department Head of Political Studies, QUFA Executive Member and member of the Collective Bargaining team, Associate Dean of the School of Graduate Studies and Research, Faculty Member of Senate, and Special Advisor to the Human Rights Office.
Co-editor with Dr. Abigail Bakan of . Kingston: McGill-ֱ Press, 2002
"Incredulity and Poetic Justice: Accounting for Postmodern Accounts" chapter for Critical Political Studies: Debates and Dialogue from the Left
"Deconstruction's Promise: Derrida's Rethinking of Marxism" Science and Society, Vol. 63, No. 2, Summer 1999
"Vectors of Identity: Determination, Association and Intervention" Studies in Political Economy, No. 57, Fall 1998
"Critical Identities: Rethinking Feminism Through Transgender Politics" Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal, special issue on "Sexualities and Feminisms", Fall 1998