Centre for Education and Research on Aging
Centre for Education and Research on Aging
Assistant Professor
School of Culture, Media, and Society
Abbotsford campus, D132
Phone: 604-557-7441 ext. 4195
email DarrenDarren is a graduate of the University College of the Fraser Valley with an Associate of Arts in Media and Communication Studies, a BA in Sociology and an extended minor in theatre studies. His Master's degree in Communication Studies was acquired at the University of Calgary where he looked at media representations of aging in our culture and utilized television's The Simpsons for his case study. Darren is a doctoral candidate at the University of Calgary.
PhD Candidate, University of Calgary
MA, University of Calgary
BC, University of the Fraser Valley
MACS 110 Intro to Communication Theory
MACS 130 Mass Communication in Canada
MACS 210 History of Communication
MACS 215 Advertising as Social Communication
MACS 221 Media and Popular Cultures
MACS 230 Cultural Industries in Canada
MACS 299C Wrestling With Culture
MACS 299D Zombies on the Brain: Pop Culture & The Living Dead
MACS/SOC 337 Taste and Culture
MACS/SOC 385 Television and Social Values: The Simpsons
MACS 460 /SOC 460 Issues in the Information Society
SOC 101 Introductory Sociology
SOC 215 Socialization
SOC 230 The Individual and Society
SOC 299C Aging and Culture
SOC 399E Sociology of Aging
THEA 111 Acting I
THEA 112 Acting II
Darren's primary research areas are popular culture, technology, and social gerontology. He has published several articles on aging and in 2009 published his book “Old people are useless”: Representations of Aging on The Simpsons. He recently finished a collaborative research project that looked at the cognitive and physiological benefits to a group of in-care elders from their participation in weekly dance classes with a group of local grade 3 students. He also produced and directed a documentary film of the project titled “They’re not scary”: An intergenerational dance project. He is currently editing a new documentary that looks at Chilliwack’s Happy Tappers, a local dance troupe. Darren often wonders how he ever gets anything accomplished considering how much television he watches.
Sport, Canadian Television, and Professional Wrestling: The economics of "liveness"
"They're not Scary!": An Intergenerational Dance Project
"It's cool to feel like I can see the window of nursing research and what it looks like. It can be more clinically based or really people-focused, but it kind of intersects because it is tying in sociology and other areas, but it’s still nursing."
Rosaley Klassen, Nursing