York University celebrates its sustainability leaders

York University celebrated its leaders in sustainability on Earth Day on Friday, April 22 at the third annual President’s Sustainability Leadership Awards reception. As part of Earth Day events, it was announced that two buildings − the newly renovated Ignat Kaneff Building, which is home to Osgoode Hall Law School, and the York Lions Stadium, site of the 2015 Pan Am and Parapan Am Games − received the LEED Silver designation. And, for the fourth year in a row, the University was named among Canada’s top 100 Greenest Employers.

Four individuals and one group were honoured for their work in sustainability and were named the 2016 recipients of the President’s Sustainability Leadership Awards on Earth Day, Friday, April 22. Faculty of Environmental Studies Professor Martin Bunch, who is chair of the President’s Sustainability Council, announced the awards on behalf of York University President and Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri (who was unable to attend the reception). The Earth Day event took place in the new York Lions Stadium on the Keele campus.

“On behalf of President Shoukri and the President’s Sustainability Council, I am very pleased to be able to announce the winners of the 2016 President’s Sustainability Leadership Awards,” said Bunch. “We are now in the third year of the awards program, and we have seen many inspiring nominations over the past three years highlighting the interesting and innovative work that sustainability champions are doing on our campuses.

“We hope that these awards, and the great accomplishments of the award winners, will encourage others across our campuses to get involved in sustainability, and help us make York one the world’s leading universities on sustainability,” said Bunch.

The 2016 winners of the President’s Sustainability Leadership Awards are:

Nicole Arsenault
Manager, Transportation, Campus Services & Business Operations (CSBO)

Nicole Arsenault (left) with Martin Bunch
Nicole Arsenault (left) with Martin Bunch

Nicole Arsenault is a sustainability leader who advocates for change and leads by example. When Arsenault started in her position, over 10 years ago, the transportation modal split for York was 80/20, in favour of single occupant vehicles. Today, that modal split is reversed and people come to York mainly via sustainable travel, and mostly via transit.

While there are several factors which led to this shift, one surely has been Arsenault’s tireless advocacy for sustainable travel. She has continued to push transit agencies to expand service, both in frequency and routes, and helped to move York University’s Keele campus to be home to one of the largest transit hubs in North America with more than 2,600 bus trips in and out of the Common every day.

Arsenault has worked continuously to expand priority carpooling, free shuttle service, on campus car sharing services and considerable support for the cycling community. It is this type of accomplishment that contributed to York University’s 2012 Smart Commute Regional Employer of the Year award, a distinction for organizations taking action to address traffic congestion and climate change.

Arsenault’s sensitivity to the environment transcends her job description. She is a true steward for York, and can often be seen picking up garbage or gently asking people to turn off the lights.

Jose Etcheverry (left) with Martin Bunch
Jose Etcheverry (left) with Martin Bunch

Jose Etcheverry
Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES), and Co-Chair of the Sustainable Energy Initiative

Professor Jose Etcheverry is a sustainability ambassador and a true champion who leads by example. He is the epitome of someone who talks the talk, then walks the walk. As a faculty member in FES and Co-chair of the Sustainable Energy Initiative, for several years he has been teaching students about the importance of clean, renewable energy. But he has also been able to take his experiences from the classroom out onto campus, by working with a number of partners, including students and CSBO, to install a photovoltaic electric vehicle charging station on the Keele campus. The charging station is innovative in that it is modular, easily replicable and made mostly from materials sourced right here in Ontario.

To install this station, Etcheverry was on-campus during sabbatical, in the early hours of the day and late hours of the night to ensure that the installation of the station was complete. He also promoted the project through numerous channels which has gained positive recognition for York University, the Sustainable Energy Initiative and FES.

Finance Department

The Finance Department for some time has been acutely aware of green initiatives, and one of their goals has been to reduce the consumption of paper used in many financial transactions.

The Finance Department staff accept their group award from Martin Bunch
The Finance Department staff accept their group award from Martin Bunch

The department has instituted digital journal transfers, the Sm@rtBuy eProcurement system, document imaging, the Concur electronic travel reimbursement and direct deposit for a variety of financial transactions, which has resulted in the saving of hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper on an annual basis. All the above initiatives, while contributing to sustainability, have also significantly added to the productivity both within the Finance Department and across the University community.

Mark Terry (left) with Martin Bunch
Mark Terry (left) with Martin Bunch

Mark Terry
Documentary filmmaker and PhD student in the Department of Humanities, Faculty of Graduate Studies

Mark Terry is a documentary filmmaker and PhD student in the Department of Humanities. His current project, which is also part of his academic research in Humanities, uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to showcase the latest climate research being done by climate scientists, researchers and scholars around the world.

The project was invited by the United Nations to be used as a data delivery system to delegates and negotiators attending the COP21 climate summit in Paris last December, and Terry was named to the official delegation representing Canada at this conference. It marked the first time the United Nations used a GIS documentary mapping project as a data delivery system for its COP conferences.

Terry has recruited students working with climate researchers around the world providing a voice for both the international youth community and the international climate science community at COP21. Collaboration on this project reached nearly 150 participants from every continent (including Antarctica).

The project, innovative in bringing together GIS and interactive documentary filmmaking, can be replicated by anyone interested in using Google mapmaking tools available to the public. To help facilitate the adoption of this tool and methodology for climate and related research, Terry has been giving presentations and seminars at York to faculty and graduate students.

The original project continues to grow as new media is added from collaborative contributors worldwide on a regular basis. As a result, the UN has made Terry’s project a permanent addition to its two websites.

Terry was also part of the first crossing of the Northwest Passage through the Prince of Wales Strait and became the first filmmaker to document a crossing of the passage. For this achievement, he was named one of Canada’s Top 100 Greatest Explorers by Canadian Geographic Magazine in August, 2015.

John Wilson (left) with Martin Bunch
John Wilson (left) with Martin Bunch

John Wilson
Manager, Mailing Services, CSBO (and York University’s unofficial arborist)

John Wilson’s role is mail room manager, and in carrying out these duties, he often steers community members to reductions in printing and savings on use of paper. But his official duties do not tell the story of the past 32 years that Wilson has spent contributing to improving the “green infrastructure” at York University.

Wilson started in the Grounds Department (CSBO), as he is an arborist by training. He moved from taking care of trees, into creating new environments, working with the Facilities Development, CSBO. There he worked on helping to expedite site works to make way for the construction of new roads and the subway, and in doing so, helped protect, spade, move and replant hundreds of trees on campus.

Wilson has worked with other likeminded tree champions over the past 30 years, examining ways to protect the woodlots, expand and protect the tree canopy and promote the need to create an inventory and manage the trees that are so vital to our environment. He continued to work informally with Grounds, and on several projects, including commenting on various tree and landscape designs for new developments. He also helped create a preferred list of trees that are now issued to all proponents on major capital projects. The list identifies species that work well on campus given specific conditions here. The list focuses on native, drought resistant species, and on the need to create variety for overall resilience and longevity. Wilson was instrumental in the creation of an Ash tree inventory and management program for fighting the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB), which has resulted in the survival of the highest quality remaining Ash trees on campus.

He documented efforts to manage EAB and created a web page to share with the community. That work grew into a full inventory of all trees on both campuses. This inventory is a living tool that holds incredible value to Grounds, and to those who are interested in the landscape, and to the overall health and wellbeing of the University community.

The recipients join Martin Bunch and CSBO AVP Richard Francki (far right) for a group cameo
The recipients join Martin Bunch and CSBO Assistant Vice-President, Richard Francki (far right) for a group cameo

The President’s Sustainability Leadership Awards were judged by a volunteer committee who reviewed the applications and made the decisions on the awards.

The President’s Sustainability Leadership Awards were judged by a volunteer committee who reviewed the applications and made the decisions on the awards. The committee members are: Sheila Forshaw, Helen Psathas, Pamela Martinez, Michelle Chin-Dawe, and PSC Chair Martin Bunch.

Professor Ian Garrett from the School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design, created the awards out of re-purposed scrap materials, in this case, Masonite, from stage productions produced by the Department of Theatre. Each of the award winners received a Las Nubes book. The books were donated by the York University Bookstores.

“Performing Cartography” inspiration behind annual Theatre and Performance Graduate Studies Symposium

York University’s fifth annual Theatre and Performance Studies Graduate Symposium “Performing Cartography” will present a series of paper panels, guest speakers and other events for a full day on April 29.

It takes place at on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Wendat Nation, Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation and the Métis Nation of Ontario at York University, Toronto, Ontario with a keynote speech delivered by Mishuana Goeman.

The symposium considers Canada as it nears its 150th birthday (2017) and the subsequent celebration, and reflects on the significance of looking back to consider the circumstances surrounding that birth.

cartogprahy

While carving out its own space, Canada violently displaced and dispossessed Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. One of the ways this displacement and dispossession was (and continues to be) enacted is through the cartographic eye of the colonizer.

Thinking about the performative act of cartography and how it has helped shape the settler state Canada, this symposium inquires what performance and indigenous forms of mapping can contribute to embodied or other alternative forms of mapping.

Goeman, an associate professor and vice-chair of the Gender Studies Department at the University of California, Los Angles, will present the keynote talk titled “Electric Lights, Tourist Sights: Gendering Dispossession and Colonial Infrastructure at the Niagara Falls Border”.

Goeman will discuss how Niagara Falls has become an important monument marking the boundary of the United States northern border and Canada’s southern border. For Seneca people however, the falls are the place where the Thunder Beings reside and thus it is a place instrumental to Seneca experience of place.

Built up as a tourist site in the early 1900s, and later marketed as a honeymoon site, Niagara Falls has become an important geographical area for Goeman to extend her work in examining state produced space (such as making of monuments and jurisdictions) and Indigenous place-making (such as the reflection of experiences through intergenerational stories regarding specific sites, that in turn produce a value system).

Niagara Falls becomes a site of biopolitical power in which Americans and Canadian settlers come to know themselves by not only sacrificing the Indian maiden, but literally sacrificing Haudenosuanee histories, land, water and meanings of place. By exploring the visual postcards, romanticized propaganda and the work of Seneca choreographer Rosy Simas, as well as unpacking a history of the development of hydroelectric power and technologies, Goeman will explore the fissures and contradiction in settler colonial placemaking and intend to bring a broader awareness of geographies and storytelling that refuse a silencing of the power of the Thunder Beings.

Other highlights of the symposium include:

Re-Manifestations, an installation by Kim McLeod and Helene Vosters
This work explores and invites participants to intervene into the popular narrative of Canada as a settled nation.

Closing presentation, a talk by Sandra Laronde
Laronde, the founder and artistic director of Red Sky, will deliver a talk on Backbone – a cutting-edge new dance creation inspired by the ‘spine’ of the Americas that combines contemporary Indigenous dance with athleticism to express their power, formation and spirit.

Talking Treaties Audio Gallery, a partnership between Jumblies Theatre and First Story
In the spring of 2015, interviews were collected with local historians, educators, and public figures, on their relationship to, and understanding of, Treaties in Toronto. Their responses were edited down into four separate five-minute audio tracks, and serve as inspiration and content for a large scale multi-year performance creation taking place at Jumblies Theatre’s The Ground Floor and in hands on workshops across Toronto.

The symposium is sponsored by the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design; Vice-President Academic and Provost’s Office; Faculty of Graduate Studies; Vice-Provost Academic’s Office; Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies; Department of Theatre, Graduate Program in Theatre & Performance Studies; Theatre and Performance Studies Graduate Students Association; Department of Dance; Department of History; and Department of Geography.

For more, visit www.yutpssymposium.wordpress.com or email yutps.symposium@gmail.com.

York U student wins trip to Portugal for academic excellence in Portuguese Studies

The program of Portuguese & Luso-Brasilian Studies is pleased to announce that Christian Araujo has been awarded the inaugural Portuguese Gives You Wings award, sponsored by Azores Airlines.

Christian Araujo
Christian Araujo

This new award was open to York University students enrolled in an elementary Portuguese language class (POR1000), and rewards the academic excellence of one student with a free trip to Azores, Portugal.

Students are graded on performance in reading, writing, speaking and listening – all the skills they will be able to put to use during a trip to Portugal.

Araujo excelled in Portuguese 1000 earning a final grade of A+. He has won a free trip to the region of the Azores, Portugal, courtesy of Azores Airlines.

Araujo is currently completing a degree in political science. He is also a global ambassador for York International. His love for the Portuguese language started while on an exchange in Australia, when he met Brazilian colleagues and became interested in both the language and culture. As a native speaker of Spanish, learning Portuguese will give Araujo access to the entire Latin American continent, as well as Europe and several immigrant communities and global destinations.

“Learning Portuguese at York is not limited to what’s written in a textbook,” he said. “I learned it through a set of real interactions – such as chatting with a pen-pal in Brazil, participating in oral activities in every single class, and discussing interesting topics in the “Hora de falar Português” – that were carefully designed by the program of Portuguese & Luso-Brazilian Studies.

“Professor Inês Cardoso also played a key role in my experience,” he continued, “with her enthusiasm, dedication, professionalism, and love for the language, my colleagues and I were able to learn Portuguese in a pleasant and stimulating environment.”

Araujo will experience life in the Azores, an archipelago widely recognized by UNESCO and National Geographic, among other agencies, for its natural beauty, ecological and sustainable development and known for its açorianidade, a term coined by 20th century Azorean intellectual Vitorino Nemésio that stands for the particular identity of its inhabitants.

The Azores islands are also well-known as a hypothesis for the location of the lost continent of Atlantis.

This award is representative of the overall program efforts to provide students from first to last year with significant and meaningful opportunities to engage with the language.

The award ceremony will take place on Saturday, May 7 at 2:30pm at the First Portuguese Canadian Cultural Centre, 60 Caledonia Rd., Toronto.

Robarts centre presents two-day conference and annual lecture

The Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies will host a two-day graduate student conference, “Canada: Homeland or Hostile Land?” on April 28 and 29.

Graduate students from across the country will come together at York U to explore themes of inequality, colonialism, racism, sexism and other social and economic disparities that exist in Canadian society.

The conference will feature more than 65 graduate student research presentations, and many members of York faculty will also participate as panel discussants.

Complementing the topic of the conference is the fourth annual Robarts Lecture in Canadian Studies at 6:30pm on Thursday, April 28 in 519 Kaneff Tower.

Deborah McGregor
Deborah McGregor

This year’s powerful and challenging talk is titled “The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and a New Reconciliation Proclamation: How Far Have We Come?” and will be given by York Professor Deborah McGregor.

McGregor is an associate professor with the Osgoode Hall Law School and Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. She currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Justice. Her research focuses on indigenous knowledge systems, water and environmental governance, environmental justice, forest policy and management, and sustainable development.

All are welcome to attend a reception in 519 Kaneff Tower at 5:30pm before the lecture for refreshments, light fare and music by the Liam Stanley Trio.  Registration for this event is free and open to the York community.

Visit the Canada: Homeland or Hostile Land? conference website for more details.

The conference is sponsored by the Department of Canadian Studies at York University, Glendon campus, the Department of Humanities, the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and the Faculty of Graduate Studies at York University.

Passings: Professor Rishma Dunlop inspired many with her poetry

York University English and Education Professor Rishma Dunlop died Sunday evening (April 17) after a long battle with cancer. The following In Memory of Rishma Dunlop was written by York University English Professor and dear friend Priscila Uppal.

In Memory of Rishma Dunlop

Rishma Dunlop
Rishma Dunlop

Rishma was a woman who wore a number of hats. Literally. She collected hats and hat boxes. One of the things we shared.

Rishma was also a mother, sister, daughter, wife, lover, friend; as well as an educator, professor, poet, essayist, prose writer, mentor.

But Rishma rejected labels. Another thing we shared.

In fact, our first conversation was about our dissatisfaction with labels.

I met Rishma because she invited me to lunch to discuss a project. I had no idea at the time that this would be the first of countless lunches we would have together and the first of many projects we would end up collaborating on.

Rishma had met with Denis DeKlerck, publisher of Mansfield Press, who had recently published her first book of poetry, The Body of My Garden, to propose an anthology of poetry by South-Asian Canadian women. The publisher liked the idea and suggested that Rishma seek me out as a co-editor.

We spent much of the lunch venting and laughing about how neither of us liked being slotted into any category: whether one of gender, ethnic or national background. So we hated the hyphen between South and Asian, we hated the term South-Asian (we both grew up calling ourselves Indian) and though we were both proud to be Canadian and to be women, we thought it was an indication of how little things in publishing had progressed that it was necessary for us to put those words on a cover for it to clearly indicate a void in the current publishing climate. We agreed that the poets and poems we would eventually select for the anthology would actively work against those categories and would showcase the exciting and innovative artistic practices of those artists outside of any prescribed labels or themes. The resulting anthology was Red Silk, and it is still being taught in schools.

That was only one of Rishma’s many accomplishments; one of her many literary, academic, artistic, and educational projects that contributed to her life of defying expectations, producing work that mattered to her, and developing her own personal and professional style.

Rishma published dozens of essays (particularly lyric essays), some fictional and memoir prose, and even some drama, in various academic journals and literary anthologies. She also published five full collections of poetry: The Body of My Garden, Reading Like a Girl, Metropolis, White Album, and then her last book, Lover Through Departure: New and Selected Poems.

As evidenced by that title, Lover Through Departure, Rishma’s life as a poet and professor was bound up in her life as a lover, traveller and friend. Through longing and grief, she believed one could learn love and tenderness; hence her beautiful line “Tenderness is our best gesture in the face of death” (“Metropolis Redux”). And her love of the world was always intimately bound up in her love of words: “The heart is literate./It wants to read the pages it has unfurled” (“Reading Amy Lowell”).

Rishma was a dedicated Professor in the Education and English Departments, and an important member of the Creative Writing Program (she coordinated the program for several years). Her teaching and research philosophy was firmly rooted in the idea that artistic practice is a highly beneficial method for knowledge acquisition and creation. In fact, she was the first person in Canada to submit a novel to earn a PhD in education. Her students always appreciated her passion for the arts and her mentorship, and nominated her for several teaching awards. Her scholarship and writing earned her several important awards and honours, including a Fulbright Scholarship and membership as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

But my favourite memories of her were outside the classrooms of York University, when we were travelling together to literary events, conferences and readings. Our first trip together was out west to promote Red Silk. I stayed in her home in Penticton and her daughters graciously offered to be our designated drivers while Rishma and I hopped from winery to winery, drinking full-bodied reds in full-bodied dresses.

We gave dozens of readings together as fellow artists, and as fellow colleagues we organized tons of events and sat on so many committees together I’ve certainly lost count. The latter frequently required a good deal of patience and I always considered it a goal of mine, when we were at stuffy meetings or boring lectures, to crack Rishma’s always elegant demeanour and cause her to break out into what I like to call “you’re-so-bad-but-you’re-so-right” giggles.

We went to movies and plays and conferences together, including one in Scotland where we had danced on the grounds of a castle. But I think my favourite one was in Sri Lanka, where we performed at this intimate festival in an old fort town of Galle, on the ocean, where the writers were feted on opening night with elaborate fireworks that literally exploded our ears and fell into our champagne glasses, and where we ran past snake charmers and sat on the porch of one the most beautiful hotels in the world trading stories with Tom Stoppard, Richard Dawkins and Simon Sebag Montefiore. I remember her saying her partner (soon-to-be husband) David Sobelman would have adored the view. They had considered him accompanying her on this trip, as I had considered whether my own husband should join us, but we’d decided against the expense. And besides, we had each other for company and commiseration and celebration. And that we did.

It was one of those “who knew” things. It would be Rishma’s last trip outside of Canada. A few months later she was diagnosed.

I don’t want to mention cancer. It’s another horrible label. But it is the reason Rishma is not with us today. And so I must mention it, and mention that I’ve rarely seen the kind of grace and perpetual elegance that Rishma displayed in dealing with the disease over the last four years. Unfortunately, undergoing treatments for cancer is another thing Rishma and I ended up sharing. And even when her prognosis got worse while mine became more hopeful, I always knew Rishma understood the deep pain we, and our loved ones, particularly our partners, were feeling, and she always sent me her love and healing vibes, even when she could have used that energy to think solely of herself. I am deeply grateful for her generosity in that and many other things. And I’m so grateful that in our last visit together, sitting on her bed, that I managed to get her to crack one of her famous smiles.

Probably the only thing Rishma disliked more than labels was someone else speaking for her. And so I want the final words to be hers. This is my favourite poem of Rishma’s; it showcases the tenderness of her heart, her sense of humour, and her profound appreciation of the most important things, and people, of her life.

Postscript

for my daughter who would be my eulogist

Dearest Rachel

Last night you had a dream. It was my funeral.
You were reading my eulogy. You spoke of my
perpetual claim that any day was a good day to die.

There is nothing definitive to be said of the dead.
But I have some request for your future script, my darling.

Tell those who are gathered that I have loved and
I have been beloved.

You do not need to speak to virtue or morals. You may
wish to say I endured suffering but I believe
my bruises to be pale beside the wounds of history.

Tell them that I loved my companions most of all.
Tell them you were one of them who gave me
a better way to journey alone.

Spread my ashes in the waters of the bay I have loved,
for there, on the wings of cranes, in the embrace of the delta
and its wetlands, it is always morning.

P.S.

You may have:
my black dress
my red shoes
my pearls
my hats and suitcases
my books and manuscripts.
Make of these things a breathing archive.
Writer yourself into every century.
Find me again and again as one with whom
faith could be kept.

A memorial reception will be held on Wednesday, April 27 at Mount Pleasant Funeral Home, 375 Mount Pleasant Road (east gate entrance) at 6pm.  Visitation will start at 5pm and the gathering shall continue to 8pm.

Condolences and other messages can be sent to http://mountpleasantgroup.permavita.com/site/RishmaDunlop.html?s=120&snId=143657&pageName=/siteContent/onlineNotification.html.

 

Annual Social Work Research Symposium to focus on social transformations and critical practices

An event designed to foster critical education, research and practice in relation to critical social work and social transformation will run for its ninth year at York University.

On April 29, the School of Social Work presents its annual Critical Social work and Social Justice Research Symposium, and this year looks at the theme of “Interdisciplinary Conversations on Social Transformation and Critical Practices”.

The symposium showcases research by faculty, alumni, community members and students, and creates opportunities to engage in discussions relevant to practice, education, current social work theories and more.

Soma Chatterjee
Soma Chatterjee
Bonnie Freeman
Bonnie Freeman

The event runs 8:30am to 4:30pm in Ross Building S802, and features two keynote speakers: Soma Chatterjee, School of Social Work, York University; and Bonnie Freeman, School of Social Work, McMaster University.

Chatterjee will present her talk “A paradox or a productive contradiction? A proposal to historicize discourses and scholarship on skilled immigrants’ labour market integration” from 9:30 to 10:15am.

Her research looks at the labour market integration of skilled immigrants, and how through the notion/practice of skill-training, a specific ‘immigrant’ subject distinct from Canadian ‘nationals’ emerges.

She has a critical, post-modern lens on settlement and integration and hopes to open up a space for dialogue on the high skilled labour market as a major site for the exercise of exclusionary nationalism in Canada, and the Western world in general.

Freeman’s talk, “Re-Search is a Journey: Connecting to the Spirit & Ways of Knowledge”, will be presented from 12:45 to 1:30pm.

Freeman is Algonquin/Mohawk from the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. Her work and research is rooted in connections with Six Nations, the Hamilton Aboriginal Community and other Indigenous communities throughout Canada and the United States.

Freeman’s dissertation research examined the journey of Six Nations Haudenosaunee youth, as they travelled on foot through their ancestral lands promoting the message of peace and unity and understanding the transformation of identity and well-being from the connection to land and culture, and self-determination.

The full program is available at http://bit.ly/1NBPGou. Log on to the website to register for the event.

Communication Studies hosts two-day event with Parisian sociologist and philosopher

Independent sociologist and philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato will be at York University’s Keele campus for a two-day event featuring a screening of his audiovisual project Assemblages (2010), made with artist Angela Melitopoulos, and his upcoming book, Wars and Capitalism, co-authored with Eric Alliez.

The event on April 25 and 26 is co-sponsored by the Department of Communication Studies, the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, the School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design, the Office of the Vice President of Research and Innovation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Infoscape Lab. The event venue will be the Nat Taylor Cinema, N102 Ross Building.

Poster-_-Assemblages-768x1024Assemblages: A Screening and Intervention by Angela Melitopoulos and Maurizio Lazzarato will be held on April 25 at 2pm.

The film is a long-term audiovisual research project about Felix Guattari and his revolutionary psychiatric practice, his political activism as well as his ideas concerning ecosophy and his interest in animism, especially in the Brazilian and Japanese context. It has been shown in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp, Belgium, at the 2011 Berlinale and at the 2012 Taipei Biennal, among others.

Lazzarato, born in Italy, lives and works in Paris. As an independent sociologist and philosopher, he specializes in studies of immaterial labor, the breakdown of the wage system, and “post-socialist” movements. He is co-founder of the magazine MULTITUDES, where he is now on the editorial board. He is the author of The Making of the Indebted Man and Signs and Machines.

Melitopoulos, born 1961 in Munich, lives and works in Berlin. She studied fine arts at the Art Academy Düsseldorf with Nam June Paik, is collaborating in political networks in Paris, Italy, Turkey and Germany, and teaches in several international academic institutions. From 1985, her work has been shown in international video and film festivals and in exhibitions and museums (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Whitney Museum, NY).
 
ML-_-Guest-Lecture-Poster-768x1024Financialization and War – Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality and Subjectivity: A public lecture by Maurizio Lazzarato will be held on April 26 at 2pm.

In this talk, Lazzarato will present an overview of the main themes of his upcoming book Wars and Capitalism, co-written with Eric Alliez. Building on both Carl Schmitt’s argument that the economy is the continuation of war through other means and his previous work on debt economy, Lazzarato will particularly interrogate the pivotal role of financial capitalism in indexing race, class, gender, sexuality and subjectivity to the logics of both military and non-military warfare.

York prof curates photography exhibit featuring work by youth in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, India and Canada

Photo Credit: Marat Mirzoev, Dushanbe, Tajikistan
Photo Credit: Marat Mirzoev, Dushanbe, Tajikistan

Our Stories, Our Images, Our Futures, an exhibition of photographs by youth in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, India and Canada will open to the public from April 30 to May 31, at the Ismaili Centre Toronto as an Open Exhibition in the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

More than just an exhibit of outstanding and beautiful photographs, Our Stories, Our Images, Our Futures shows how putting a camera into a young person’s hands gives them a visual vocabulary and a new language.

Zulfikar Hirji
Zulfikar Hirji

Curated by York University Professor Zulfikar Hirji and Fredric Roberts (The Fredric Roberts Photography Workshops), the exhibition is the outcome of an unique collaboration between the Aga Khan Development Network and The Fredric Roberts Photography Workshops.

Since 2014, 20 youth (10 boys and 10 girls), ranging in age from 14 to 18 years old, from urban and rural backgrounds in each country have acquired remarkable technical proficiency with cameras and editing, aesthetic sensibilities and story-telling skills, said Hirji. The outcome is a remarkable group of photographs that depict the intense workings of emergency rooms and the hum of industrial sites, the smiles of elders, the play of younger children, and the breathtaking beauty of the natural world.

The Ismaili Centre Toronto is located at 49 Wynford Drive in North York. The exhibit is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 4pm each day, or by appointment.

International labour association honours history Professor Craig Heron

History Professor Craig Heron has won the 2015 International Labor History Association (ILHA) Award for his book, Lunch-Bucket Lives: Remaking the Workers’ City. The ILHA choice for book of the year honours an outstanding contribution to labour history.

Craig Heron
Craig Heron

Heron’s book reveals the realities and struggles of the Canadian working class through the lives of Hamilton, Ont. residents in the 1890s and 1930s. The book outlines working-class people as essential to the country’s economic and social life, says Heron, and how their collective actions resisted powerful forces and shaped the 20th century Canada.

“Heron’s award-winning book illuminates the history of workers through the lens of race, class, gender, politics, ethnicity, economics and social organizations,” says an ILHA statement announcing the award winner. “The highly engaging narrative represents many years of careful research and reflection, convincingly revealing the inner dynamics of labour situated in an environment of deep anti-labour hostility, political struggles, community cross-pressured, societal and economic upheavals that, taken together, drove changes in the labour sphere.”

Though the city of Hamilton is a lesser known Canadian city on the global scale, Heron found that what can be learned from the city’s history can resonate internationally.

Book cover of Craig Heron's new book Lunch Bucket Lives
Book cover of Craig Heron’s book Lunch Bucket Lives

“A study of this factory town can address issues that resonate through many other communities in the industrialized world,” says Heron. “Hamilton has been a city much like many other industrial centres in other parts of Canada and in other countries. It has had a concentration of large-scale industries and a transnational work force drawn from the British Isles, Europe, North America and beyond. It was also exposed to many international trends in new management practices, new social policies, new labour ideologies and new forms of popular culture, including movies and radio.”

Heron finds that the issues faced by Hamilton’s working class in the past are still relevant today.

“The working class has become invisible in Canadian public life,” he says. “Historians need to remind their fellow citizens that there are now, and have been for generations, millions of people out there who work for wages, who have difficulty making ends meet and who exercise no power over major political and economic decision-making. The so-called ‘condition of the working class’ is in fact deteriorating and, indeed, looking more and more like what workers faced in the early 20th century.”

Lunch-Bucket Lives was also a finalist for the Legislative Assembly of Ontario’s 2015 Speaker’s Book Award. It has also been shortlisted for the Canadian Historical Association’s Sir John A. Macdonald Prize. That prize is given to the best scholarly book on Canadian history and the 2016 winner will be announced on May 31 at the CHA Annual Prize Ceremonies in Calgary.

School of Public Policy and Administration holds first Celebrating Public Service Reception

York University’s School of Public Policy and Administration (SPPA) held its first “Celebrating Public Service Reception” at Queen’s Park on March 21.

Queen's Park (image: http://www.ontla.on.ca)
Queen’s Park

The event, held in the Ontario Legislature Dining Room, provided York’s SPPA students with an opportunity to meet and connect with senior public officials, MPPs and their own program alumni.

It also provided SPPA faculty and staff an opportunity to develop connections and bonds between the Ontario government elected and appointed officials. It was an exemplary networking event like none other, and one that participants will long remember.

More than 100 guests – including undergraduate and graduate students, alumni, community partners and MPPs – were in attendance.

The event’s special guest of honour was none other than the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario Elizabeth Dowdeswell, a highly distinguished former public servant who was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws degree from York University in 1999.

The Lieutenant Governor of Ontario emphasized the importance of public service in advancing the “social good” in society. She urged all those students in attendance to pursue a career in the public service and noted that based on her own experience, they would be sure to find it a highly fulfilling and reward career.

York University Chancellor Greg Sorbara
York University Chancellor Greg Sorbara

Taking the podium as Master of Ceremonies for the formal reception was Chancellor Greg Sorbara, who stated the School of Public Policy and Administration was one of the “jewels in the crown at York University.” The value and necessity of a highly professional, effective and productive public service, he observed, in a modern democratic society should never be underestimated.

Other distinguished guest speakers included York University President and Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri, the Secretary to the Cabinet and the Head of the Ontario Public Service, Steve Orsini; and Peggy Sattler, MPP, London West, NDP critic for research and innovation.

Shoukri remarked that York University prides itself on offering innovative interdisciplinary programs that prepare students for the rigors and challenges of a fast-paced and ever increasing technological globalized economy and society. York University’s student graduates, he noted, are being prepared not only to be citizens of this great province and nation, but of citizens of the world.

Other notable public servants in attendance included Dave Levac, MPP, Brant; Speaker of the Ontario Legislature, Mario Sergio, MPP, York West, minister responsible for seniors; and two former York University presidents, Lorna Marsden and H. Ian Macdonald.

Also in attendance were former Speaker of the Ontario Legislature and diplomat Alvin Curling, OOnt; former Ontario Minister of Community and Social Services, Zanana Akande; former Ontario Human Rights Commissioner and mayor of the City of Toronto, Barbara Hall, OC; Deputy Chairperson of the Refugee Appeal Division, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Ken Sandhu; and Distinguished Visiting Professor, Social Innovation, at Ryerson University and Chair of Evergreen, Helen Burstyn.

Notable dignitaries who attended the event included Will Gage, York University associate vice-president Teaching and Learning, and Peter Avery, associate dean Students, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies.