York history students win Archaeological Institute of America award
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Kimberly McCullough, Alejandro G. Sinner, Ashwyn Grewal and Daniel Jankulovski with their prize-winning AIA poster
History Professor Alejandro G. Sinner and his summer study abroad students won first prize for best poster at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA).
Kimberly McCullough, Alejandro G. Sinner, Ashwyn Grewal and Daniel Jankulovski with their prize-winning AIA poster
Sinner, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History, and his students from the study abroad course Roman Spain: Archaeology & History attended the conference in San Francisco from Jan. 6 to 9, 2016.
The prize-winning students – classical studies majors Kimberly McCullough and Daniel Jankulovski and anthropology major Ashwyn Grewal – were provided generous funding by York International to attend the conference..
At each AIA annual meeting, one session of the conference is devoted to the display and discussion of 25 posters selected for presentation. Each year since 2005, three awards have been granted by the program committee: Best Poster Award (first), Runner Up (second) and Best Poster designed entirely by a student or students.
York’s team won the Best Poster Award, an award that comes with a prize of $500, for their poster on “Studying Households and Tracing Cultural Practices in Northeast Spain (Second and Early First Centuries B.C.E.)”.
Ashwyn Grewal, Alejandro G. Sinner, Kimberly McCullough and Daniel Jankulovski at the AIA Awards Ceremony, San Francisco, Jan. 8, 2016
The poster was inspired by Sinner’s excavation project at the ancient archaeological site of Ilduro (Cabrera de Mar, Spain, 30 km east of Barcelona). His research focuses on redefining the perceptions of how each Roman provincial community had its roots in a unique and dynamic, culturally heterogeneous milieu and how this heterogeneous makeup of the local community allows us to trace a wide range of different cultural practices within the archaeological record.
The first prize award underlines the very fruitful collaboration that took place between students across various departments and programs, and highlights the appeal of history courses to students pursuing other majors, such as anthropology or classical studies.
The course Roman Spain: Archaeology & History (HIST 3136 / ANTH 3630), focused on the excavations at Cabrera de Mar, will be offered in summer 2016 as part of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) summer courses abroad program.
York Professors Lorne Foster and Les Jacobs lead Racial Profiling Policy Dialogue
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Veiled demonstrators at a march against racially disproportionate policing in New York City (image: Wikimedia Commons)
York Professors Lorne Foster and Les Jacobs, along with York’s Centre for Human Rights (CHR), are the primary organizers of the upcoming Racial Profiling Policy Dialogue sponsored by CHR, the School of Public Policy and Administration (SPPA), the Institute for Social Research (ISR) and the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC). Foster and Jacobs are well recognized as among the country’s leading scholars on racial profiling and have conducted large empirical projects on racial bias in policing.
Les JacobsLorne Foster
The policy dialogue on racial profiling will take place Feb. 16, 17, and 18 with the primary purpose to stimulate dialogue and generate relevant research to help inform the development of a new OHRC policy on racial profiling. The dialogue is an invitation-only event for about 75 of the country’s leading experts on racial discrimination and racial profiling, as well as key stakeholders from community organizations and civil society.
The Racial Profiling Policy Dialogue will include a public keynote lecture by Haroon Siddiqui on the evening of Feb. 16 in the Osgoode Law Building. This keynote address will be open to the York community and the general public.
Over the past two decades, issues of racial profiling as part of police practices in Canada have come to the forefront. Other sites in Ontario such as schools, universities, hospitals, and family services have also faced issues of racial profiling. Complaints about racial profiling and racial bias are increasingly brought to Canadian courts and human rights tribunals.
Allegations of “driving while black” and “flying while brown” have become commonplace. Public controversy currently surrounds issues regarding practices such as “carding,” “stop-and-search” procedures and “policing at borders” and has raised serious questions about the scope of police powers. Yet, unlike for example the United States or the United Kingdom, a relative lack of scholarly research has prevented a detailed portrait of the extent to which racial profiling is a systemic problem in Canada, and has thus inhibited the development of sound public policy.
Veiled demonstrators at a march against racially disproportionate policing in New York City (image: Wikimedia Commons)
The dialogue will engage five themes, including: the social and historical context and experience of racial profiling; definitions of racial profiling; types of racial profiling; new, emerging or contested forms of racial profiling; and, preventing and responding to issues of racial profiling.
The event is designed to produce the first comprehensive study of a range of topics on racial profiling in Canada based on a wider perspective on racial disparities in treatment for enforcement of ostensibly legal purposes in different social environments including: education, the workplace, and the service sectors – not just police.
York University has established strong ties with members and organizations in the Jane-Finch catchment and surrounding areas. Addressing issues of race and racism are long-standing concerns for the community.
This timely and important research and community engagement endeavor is a continuation of York’s efforts as an innovator in building bridges to the external communities that we serve.
Karen Murray awarded Killam Visiting Professorship in Canadian Studies
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Political science Professor Karen Murray, who also is appointed to the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, is in the United States for the winter term holding a Killam Visiting Professorship in Canadian Studies at Bridgewater State University (BSU) in Bridgewater, Mass.
Karen Murray
Established in 2006, this Killam Professorship is the only endowed chair in Canadian Studies at a public university in the United States. The Killam endowment allows Bridgewater’s 43-year-old Canadian Studies Program to bring prominent scholars and public intellectuals from Canada to its university classrooms and, through public speaking engagements, to enhance understanding of Canada in southeastern Massachusetts. Murray is the fifth holder of the Killam Professorship at BSU.
“We are thrilled to have scholars of Professor Murray’s caliber joining us at Bridgewater through this professorship,” said Program Director Andrew Holman. “Our students are the most direct beneficiary, but the whole scholarly community at BSU grows from exchanges like these.”
Over the course of her academic career, Murray has focused her research on the governmental character and political implications of normalized inequalities with the aim of opening up avenues to challenge them. BSU is an ideal place for Murray to pursue her work. It was founded on the core values of social justice, and continues in this tradition, most recently with the creation of the Martin Richard Institute for Social Justice.
“It is such a privilege to have this opportunity to collaborate with students and faculty at BSU,” said Murray. “It’s especially exciting to be teaching in Bridgewater my flagship course on Governing Urban Poverty that I developed at York. Students always play a crucial role in helping me shape my thinking. I’m learning from these students in southeastern Massachusetts. They have unique and important perspectives on social justice causes.”
Murray’s current work elaborates upon the concept of bio-gentrification, which she introduced to critical urban studies in an article published in 2015 in Urban Geography. The bio-gentrification lens extends democratic theory by evaluating the relationship between contestations over land and governmental interventions framed as securing space for disadvantaged peoples in gentrifying neighbourhoods.
Murray’s core argument is that bio-gentrification is part of larger transformations that naturalize poverty; these changes, she maintains, have implications for democratic governance that require more sustained empirical, theoretical and political attention.
Phillip Hansen, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Regina and the author of Reconsidering C. B. MacPherson: From Possessive Individualism to Democratic Theory and Beyond, said: “Murray’s critique of bio-gentrification puts into focus the limits of an account of democracy” that severs property relations from questions relating to the governmental targeting of the biological existence of humans as living beings.
Her “research values, methods, and practices embody a commitment to engaged social science that builds upon and reinforces the participants’ perspective, where [they] aid the process of defining and elaborating their interests, concerns, and projects,” he said.
Murray’s writings include publications in leading journals in Canada and internationally. The Killam Professorship is one of three major scholarly awards received by Murray in recent years. In 2013, she held a Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Canadian Studies at Kennesaw State University in Greater Atlanta. In the fall of 2016, she will hold an Eakin Visiting Fellowship in Canadian Studies at McGill University’s Institute for the Study of Canada in Montreal. Murray said she is “grateful for the encouragement and assistance from colleagues at York that helps to make research opportunities such as these possible.”
Two-day conference explores history and understandings of humanities
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A two-day interdisciplinary conference interrogating historical understandings in humanities will be presented Feb. 19 and 20 by the Humanities Graduate Student Association (HuGSA) and the Graduate Program in Humanities at York University.
“Now and Then: Historical Understandings in the Humanities” will take place at Black Creek Pioneer Village and will explore the critical questions arising around historical, contextualized understandings and subjective, humanities meanings.
The event features two days that include breakfast followed by a day of panel discussions, lunch and a presentation by a keynote speaker. The final day includes a dinner.
Friday, Feb. 19
Panel: Seeing the World Anew in Media Studies
David Hollands, Trent University “Hollywood’s Spectacle in the Age of New Media”
Andrew Brown, York University “Sexual Circumspection: Experiencing Pornography”
Justin Thompson, University of Maryland Title TBD
Panel: Truth or Legend? “Reading” Fantastic Literature
Ido Govrin, Western University “Legends and Fairytales: The Truth in Art”
Cat Ashton, York University “Writing from the Outside In: The Ethereal Imperial Material of British Fantasy”
Deborah Herman, York University “Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass as Subjective Humanist Texts”
Panel: This is How We Learn: Methodology & Education
Stacey Bliss, York University “Beyond Levinasian Facing of Alterity: Abstract Art, the ‘Here and Now’, and Shunyata (Emptiness) as Radical Teachers”
Farra Yasin, York University “Socio-Cultural and Historical Perspectives of Adult Literacy Education in Canada”
Aaron A. Weiss, York University “Our School” with special documentary film presentation, school founder, and TDSB guest
Keynote speaker: Professor David Cecchetto from York University will present a lecture on “Aurality and Critical Posthumanism: Listening Away from the Contemporary in Technoculture”
Saturday, Feb. 20
Panel: Complex Histories and Geographies
Alevtina Naumova, York/Ryerson University “Stories that Live in Houses: History Contextualized within a Historic House Museum Site”
Brittany Watson, Carleton University “Writing Visual and Object Histories: Responding to Photographs from the Byron Harmon Fonds”
Kavita Reddy, Simon Fraser University “Being-in-the-Anthropocene: A Place-Based Understanding of Anthropogenic Climate Change”
Panel: Tensions in Art and Film
Claudia Tavernese, University of Durham “The Artistic Fight for Peace: Picasso and the Korean War”
Forrest Johnson, York University “Felix Faust: the Transformative Process of DC’s Faustian Villain”
Michael Sherbert, York University “Habeas Corpus: Posthuman Liberty and Robot Artificial Intelligence”
Panel: Past, Present, Future: Looking at Modernity
Lindsay Weinberg, University of California, Santa Cruz – Skype-In “The Rationalization of Leisure: A New Approach to Historicizing Commercial Surveillance”
Rebecca Robinson, McGill University “All Roads Lead to Rome, but All Routers Lead to the NSA: Information, Networks, and Imperialism in the Ancient and Modern Worlds”
Jonathan Vigor, York University “Revolutionary Subjectivities: the Birth of Non-Capitalist Modernity in the Middle East”
Panel: Space, Place, and Transnational Identities
Sydney Neuman, York University “Stonewalled: Mobilizing Queer Mythologies”
Barry Torch, York University “Writing a Reign as Roman: Pope Pius II and his Commentaries (1464)”
Josh Trichilo, York University “Irasshaimase, Toronto: Translation and Place in Toronto’s Ramen Shops”
Panel: Understanding Philosophy, Today
Connie Phung, York University “Sociology of Knowledge and its Discontents”
Jennifer Guyver, McGill University “Dialectical Ways: Understanding Charles Taylor’s Hegelian Epistemology”
Christopher Satoor, York University “The Pauline Figure and Universal Subjectivity as Truth and the Return of Militant Fidelity”
Panel: Otherness in “East”/“West” Dynamics
Jing Xu, York University “Seeing the Past in the Present”
Janelle Kitlinksi, University of Texas, San Antonio “The Monstrous, the Barbaric, and the Turk: The Language of “Otherness” in Imperial Discourse”
Sean Steele, York University “Now and Zen: Exploring the Uses and Abuses of Chan Buddhism in China and America”
Panel: Literature: Here and There, Now and Then
Miruna Craciunescu, McGill University “Textualizing Medievalism in Contemporary Literature: a Study of Small World (1984) by David Lodge”
Sean McPhail, University of Toronto “Et in Arcadia Eram: the Escape to the English Pastoral in Great War Poetry”
Vanessa Evans, York University ““Humanizing Infinitude”: Affiliation and Deep Time in Clear Light of Day”
Yiwen Liu, Chinese University of Hong Kong “Lost in History: Reading Contemporary Chinese Literature After the 1990s”
Panel: Colonial Canada: Disavowal & Diaspora
Travis Hay, York University ““The Daughter of a White Man”: The Making of the Modern Settler Subject and the Gendered Violence of Canada’s Inception”
Alexander Manzoni, York University “The Psychology of Disavowal: Canada’s Rationalization of Colonial Domination”
Angie Wong, York University “Spectral Humanity: The Present Absence of Chinese Women in Canadian History”
Keynote speaker and dinner: Professor Arne Kislenko from Ryerson University, Title TDB
York University gains six new and two renewed Canada Research Chairs
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Vari Hall in the sunshine
York University has gained six new Canada Research Chairs and two renewed Canada Research Chairs. The announcement of the Canada Research Chair (CRC) appointments was made by the Minister of Science Kristy Duncan on Feb. 9.
Tier 1 CRCs will receive $1.4 million over seven years and Tier 2 CRCs will receive $500,000 over five years.
In all, the government announced an investment of $260 million to fund the appointment of 305 new and renewed Canada Research Chairs at 53 Canadian degree-granting postsecondary institutions. In addition, Duncan announced $342 million through the Research Support Fund to cover the indirect costs of research at Canadian institutions, as well as $17 million in infrastructure support for the Canada Research Chairs Program through the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
“York is delighted to welcome six new Canada Research Chairs and two successful renewals. The CRC program which helps to support some of the world’s best researchers in building their innovative research programs continues to make a strong contribution to the development of research at York,” said Robert Haché, vice-president research and innovation at York University.
Peter Backx
Peter Backx, professor in the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, is the Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Biology (Tier 1). His research program focuses on atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common arrhythmia, which severely impairs heart function, contributes to heart disease progression and is the major cause of stroke. Although exercise provides enormous cardiovascular benefit, excessive exercise can also induce AF. Backx’s research program will determine the molecular and genetic mechanisms involved in AF induction by cardiovascular disease, reveal the modulating influences of exercise, and identify novel approaches for treating and preventing AF.
Rosemary Coombe
Rosemary Coombe, professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Social Science, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS), is the Canada Research Chair in Law, Communication, and Culture (Tier 1). She will continue to build a larger research program exploring the proliferation of cultural rights in international policy fields that simultaneously enable new forms of informational capital, afford new opportunities for communities to exercise political autonomies on cultural grounds, and enable the revitalization of living and customary law in resource management. While mapping an unexplored transnational political actor network that has institutionalized new understandings of bio-cultural rights and responsibilities, Coombe considers the development of new technologies for community environmental and political self-government.
Christopher Kyriakides
Christopher Kyriakides, associate professor in the Department of Sociology (LA&PS), is Canada Research Chair in Socially Engaged Research in Race and Racialization (Tier 2). Kyriakides’ “Racialized Reception Contexts” research program focuses on configurations of racialization in relation to the meaning of East/West, South/North, and the articulations of racism and nationalism in the reception of refugees in Europe, North America and the Middle East. His research, which is guided by the understanding that racialization, particularly in light of the post-9/11 “war on terror,” works with the historical conditions of racism specific to a given national formation, but in a dynamic global context. The initial five-country analysis of Canada, the United States, Italy, Greece and Jordan, will examine the extent to which policy instruments and media discourse related to the global refugee crisis negatively impacts racialized communities in each reception context.
Deborah McGregor
Deborah McGregor, associate professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and the Faculty of Environmental Studies, is Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Justice (Tier 2). McGregor is working to advance the theory and practice of environmental justice scholarship by engaging with Indigenous intellectual traditions. McGregor’s research program seeks to develop a distinctive environmental justice framework based on Indigenous knowledge systems and the lived experience of Indigenous peoples. Her research will provide a much deeper understanding of environmental injustices facing Indigenous peoples, and even more importantly, lead to viable approaches to addressing such challenges.
Doug Van Nort
Doug Van Nort, assistant professor in the Digital Media Program and the Department of Theatre in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD), is Canada Research Chair in Digital Performance (Tier 2). Van Nort’s research focuses on the exploration of collective expression and creation in digitally mediated performance. His work examines questions of instrumentality, gesture and human/machine agency in the context of envisioning new forms of interdisciplinary creative expression. He develops international cross-disciplinary collaborations as case studies and new software/hardware interactive technologies as support mechanisms in the pursuit of new forms of embodied aesthetic knowledge. Van Nort is the founding director of AMPD’s new DIStributed PERformance and Sensorial immersion (DisPerSion) Lab, a space featuring reactive, intelligent digital media where researchers and practitioners in experimental music, dance, theatre and computation come together to explore how we sense, process and interact with the performing arts in the post/digital age.
Sean Tulin
Sean Tulin, assistant professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, Faculty of Science, is Canada Research Chair in Particle Physics and Cosmology (Tier 2). Tulin is interested in the existence of dark matter, which is one of the Universe’s great mysteries. All stars, planets, and interstellar gas are made from atoms and yet atomic matter represents only 15 per cent of the total matter in the Universe. The remaining 85 per cent is dark matter. Dark matter provides the cosmic foundation for galaxies to form, but its microphysical properties remain unknown. Tulin’s research provides new directions toward discovering dark matter’s elusive particle nature. By combining astrophysics, particle theory and cosmology, he is developing new ideas to illuminate dark matter’s particle dynamics through its effect on cosmic structure.
Graham Wakefield
Graham Wakefield, assistant professor in the Department of Visual Art and Art History and the Digital Media Program (AMPD), is the founding director of the Computational Worldmaking Lab. Wakefield is Canada Research Chair in Interactive Information Visualization (Tier 2). His research will advance content creation and interaction design of immersive experiences in virtual and augmented realities, which are becoming ubiquitous in media, entertainment and the arts, by intensifying dynamic visualization and rich participation in increasingly open-ended worlds. Cutting across work in generative art, computer graphics, human-computer interaction, artificial life, complex systems and compiler technology, Wakefield’s research program reinforces influential work being done at York in augmented reality, computer vision, stereoscopic cinema and ubiquitous screens, and will result in transferable research, open-source tools and novel creative works.
Jianhong Wu
Jianhong Wu, professor in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics, Faculty of Science, and the director of the York Institute for Health Research, is Canada Research Chair in Industrial and Applied Mathematics (Tier 1). Wu’s research investigates disease modelling through mathematics. His fundamental research is inspired by and applied to real life applications in pattern recognition of complex data, prediction of transmission dynamics and spatial spread of communicable diseases, evaluation of mitigation strategies for controlling disease spread and biological invasion. His research program will incorporate the training of highly qualified personnel into its highly interdisciplinary research projects and outreach activities so that curriculum development, industrial outreach, policy impact, interdisciplinary collaboration and development of fundamental research are well integrated.
York U grad students get additional scholarship funds for foreign research
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Six York graduate students have received scholarship supplements to conduct some of their research abroad through the Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplements (MSFSS).
Doctoral students Lauren Fournier (English), Kyle Gibson (Environmental Studies), Gdalit-Aviella Neuman (Dance Studies), and Laura Pin (Political Science), and Master’s students Cara Goldberg (Critical Disability Studies) and Brittany Rosenbloom (Psychology) have all been awarded up to $6,000 for their research.
“Beginning this summer, with the assistance of a Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement award I will be traveling to Israel as a Visiting Research Fellow at Hebrew University’s Rothberg International School,” said Neuman, a second-year PhD student in Dance Studies. “I am investigating a dance which was choreographed by the late Yehudit Arnon, (Israel’s) Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company’s founder, in 1946 in a camp for child holocaust survivors run by Hashomer Hatzair Zionist Youth Movement just outside of Budapest. Her research is titled “From Victimized to Victorious: Re-Imagining Identities through Dance.”
“This research [will help] demonstrate the power of an embodied experience in the transmission of ideas,” she said.
Brittany Rosenbloom
Rosenbloom is a second-year Master’s student in the Clinical Psychology Program under the supervision of Professor Joel Katz, Canada Research Chair in Health Psychology. Her research focuses on the mechanisms involved in the development of paediatric post-surgical chronic pain. With the support of the MSFSS, she will be conducting a project titled, “Utilizing patient- and family-centered care principles to develop a perioperative psychosocial intervention targeting pain and quality of life.” This project will take place in Seattle during the summer months under her host supervisor, Tonya Palermo.
Fournier, a third-year PhD student in English received her award supplement to travel to Cardiff University in Wales. Her research proposal is titled “Theorizing hysterical voices: vocal performance and the death drive in contemporary feminist cultural production.”
Gibson, fourth-year PhD student in Environmental Studies, will travel to Seoul National University in South Korea. His research proposal is titled “Food Regimes, Ecology, and the South Korean ‘Miracle’.”
Goldberg, second-year Master’s student in Critical Disability Studies, will travel to Rice University in Houston, Texas. Her research proposal is titled “The ‘Right’ Touch: Negotiating (Non-Apparent) Impairments With/In Embodied Interactions.”
And Pin, who is a fourth-year PhD student in Political Science, received her award supplement to travel to the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research proposal is titled “Participatory Budgeting in Canada and the United States: Neoliberalism, Governmentality and Democracy.”
All applicants forwarded by York University to the Tri-Council (CIHR, SSHRC and NSERC) were successful. The two Master’s and four doctoral students, already holders of major national scholarships, were awarded the additional funds to support building global linkages and international networks through the pursuit of exceptional research experiences abroad.
By accessing international scientific research and training, MSFSS recipients will contribute to strengthening the potential for collaboration between Canadian universities and affiliated research institutions and universities, or other research institutions outside of Canada.
New book illustrates how women transform cultures through religion
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In Canadian Women Shaping Diasporic Religious Identities, a collection of essays edited by Humanities Professors Becky R. Lee and Terry Tak-ling Woo, researchers explore how women who hail from a variety of religious and cultural backgrounds contribute to Canada’s multicultural society.
This collection focuses on “how Canadian women have simultaneously carried and conserved, brought forward and transformed their cultures through religion,” said Lee.
Terry Tak-ling Woo
“The essays in the collection examine the religious beliefs and practices of Canadian women in the context of the history of migration and settlement of their communities,” said Woo. They created this book, “to offer a collection focused on the personal religious beliefs and practices of Canadian women and the challenges they face in order to better explain and thus move towards a fuller understanding of religious developments in Canada beyond religious institutions.”
This collection of nine essays is subdivided into three sections. The first covers Christianity and Judaism in Newfoundland, Ontario and Alberta. The second section explores new religions in Canada, and the third delves into South Asian religions in Southwest Ontario. Some of the topics covered include mothering and feminist engagement in Roman Catholic Canada, progressive and inclusive practices in Toronto synagogues, rural Albertan Mormons, Theosophy, Bahá’i women and Hinduism in Hamilton.
Becky Lee
“The religiosities of women serve as locations for both the assertion of self-identity in diaspora and resistance to old and new institutions, within and without their faith traditions,” Lee said.
The essay authors come from a variety of academic disciplines, including religious studies, sociology, women’s studies, history, applied linguistics and humanities. Lee authored chapter 3, “On the Margins of Church and Society: Roman Catholic Feminisms in English-Speaking Canada.”
“It examines three Roman Catholic feminist movements: women’s religious communities, the Catholic Women’s League and Canadian Catholics for Women’s Ordination and the Catholic Network for Women’s Equality,” said Lee. “I chose this topic because feminism is not the first thing people usually think of when Roman Catholicism is mentioned. Secondly, relatively little attention has been paid to Roman Catholicism in English-speaking Canada where Protestantism dominated.”
With very few books in existence about women’s religious beliefs and practices in Canada and the lack of literature on the intersection of religion, gender and diaspora dynamics, this book fills a void, said Woo.
“That lack reflects two intersecting tendencies. The first is that women often play supporting roles in institutional religion, so it is difficult to see or to find evidence of their influence and experiences, or it is overlooked,” said Lee. “The second is the tendency of women’s studies to overlook religion and, conversely, of religious studies to overlook women. Focusing on women’s religiosity, the feelings and experiences of individual believers enables us to uncover and examine women’s roles in the dynamic interactions inherent to diaspora.”
She adds that often it is assumed that Canadians women’s experiences mirror American women, when in reality the religious history and migration and settlement patterns of both countries greatly differ.
“The essays in Canadian Women Shaping Diasporic Religious Identities represent an early and modest effort at capturing the religious experiences of women in Canada, both historic and contemporary. It is our hope that the works of these authors will inspire and encourage further research about the religiosities of women in Canada,” said Lee.
She and Woo will work on a follow-up volume with another colleague in Humanities, Sailaja Krishnamurti. Tentatively titled, “Religion and Women in Diaspora: Canadian Experience,” it will focus on women and religious beliefs and practices in groups not historically dominant in Canada or globally during European imperialism.
Global Labour Speaker Series explores research on workplace health and safety
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The next event in the Global Labour Speakers Series (GLSS) will explore how science benefits from worker input in the context of health and safety in the workplace.
The event “Pain, Prejudice and Working Postures: How A University-Union Agreement Allowed Researchers To Understand Musculoskeletal Problems Among Low-Paid Workers” will run on Feb. 10 from 2 to 3:30pm in the Sociology Common Room, Vari Hall 2101.
Karen Messing, professor emerita of ergonomics in the Department of Biological Sciences and the CINBIOSE research center at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) will present the talk. During the event, she will explore how 40 years ago UQAM signed agreements with Québec’s major trade unions providing for education and research support.
UQAM professors’ labour contract provides for released time and seed funding for such projects, financed primarily by UQAM. Although the agreements have been and are threatened by pressure from the right, they have continued to provide fertile ground for a large number of occupational health and safety research and training projects.
She has been involved in a number of related projects, most at the request of the union women’s committees and health and safety committees.
Most of Messing’s research arises from agreements between her university and community groups, and it deals with applications of gender-sensitive analysis in occupational health, constraints and demands of work in the health care and service sectors, especially prolonged static standing, and how workplace conditions affect work-family interactions
In 2014, she published Pain and Prejudice: What Science Can Learn about Work from the People Who Do, describing the consequences, for workers, of social class bias among health scientists.
She has received the Governor General of Canada’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case (2009), the 2014 William P. Yant Award from the American Industrial Hygiene Association, in addition to various other academic awards.
Refreshments will be served. All are welcome. For more, visit yorku.ca/glrc.
The Global Labour Speakers Series at York University is a collaboration of the Global Labour Research Centre, the Work & Labour Studies Program, the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy, and the Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy of Gender & Work.
The event is co-sponsored by York University’s Departments of Social Science, Sociology, Geography, Equity Studies, and Political Science, the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, the Office of the Dean – LA&PS, Osgoode Hall Law School, and the Office of the Provost.
UC Berkeley Professor Irene Bloemraad to deliver special lecture at Glendon on Feb. 22
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Irene Bloemraad
University of California, Berkeley, Sociology Professor Irene Bloemraad will give a talk at Glendon on Feb. 22, from 2 to 4pm in the BMO Conference Centre. Titled “Unity out of Diversity or Utter Failure? Debating and Evaluating Policies of Multiculturalism and Immigration,” the talk will draw upon Bloemraad’s internationally recognized expertise, which is focused on the nexus between immigration, politics and national identities.
Bloemraad’s talk will assess the attacks on “multiculturalism” by political decision-makers and commentators in immigrant-receiving countries, as well as the academic debate. She asks: Can immigrant-generated diversity lead to unity, or are we fated for fragmentation? Synthesizing across a number of published studies, she will evaluate whether policies that recognize and accommodate ethno-racial and religious diversity help or hurt integration.
Among Bloemraad’s many publications is Becoming a Citizen: Incorporating Immigrants and Refugees in the United States and Canada, which examines immigrants’ acquisition of citizenship and political participation in the United States and Canada, comparing the impact of government settlement and multiculturalism policies. Her current projects examine the link between immigration-driven diversity and public-minded engagement, the visibility and influence of immigrant organizations, and the political socialization of immigrants and their native-born children.
The Thomas Garden Barnes Chair of Canadian Studies at Berkeley, Bloemraad received her PhD in Sociology from Harvard University. She is a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.
Bloemraad’s talk will help to set the stage for an international conference Cultural Diversity and Liberal Democracy: Models, Policies & Practices, which will take place at York University’s Glendon campus on April 19 and 20. Organized by the Glendon School of Public & International Affairs, the conference will feature keynote addresses by Danielle Juteau (Université de Montréal), David Miller (Oxford), Alan Patten (Princeton) and Ratna Omidvar (Global Diversity Exchange, Ryerson University). More than 30 scholars and researchers from Canada, the United States and Europe, will present reports on their research.
Mostra of Portuguese Cinema events co-hosted by York
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Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian Studies at York (DLLL), together with Camões Institute and the Portuguese section at the University of Toronto, will host the Mostra of Portuguese Cinema in February and March, with the first event taking place Feb. 2.
The Mostra includes several film screenings from renowned film directors, mainly from Portugal, as well as a panel to pay tribute to Manoel de Oliveira, and a Portuguese Cinema Exhibition.
The first event, on Feb. 2 at 7pm at Robarts Library’s Media Commons Film Theatre (U of T), is a free screening and debate on the film Ronaldo. The discussion will be moderated by York alumni Joe Correia, who graduated from the University’s Linguistics MA program and a minor in Portuguese Studies.
Ronaldo was filmed over 14 months with unprecedented access into the inner circle of one of the most celebrated figures from Portugal, Cristiano Ronaldo, and the sport of football. This is the first official fully authorized film on Ronaldo, and gives viewers access to vividly candid and un-paralleled behind-closed-doors footage on the footballer, father, family-man and friend.
Other events in the Mostra include:
O Grande Kilapy– Media Commons Film Theatre (U of T), Feb. 9, 7pm
A screening of this film by Zézé Gamboa with an introduction by José Curto, professor of history at York University and member of the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on Africa and its Diasporas.
Homage to Manoel De Oliveira – Media Commons Film Theatre (U of T), Feb. 23, 7pm
This event is an homage to the Portuguese film director and screenwriter Manoel de Oliveira – the oldest film director in activity before his death at the age of 106. Scenes from Manoel de Oliveira’s films will be presented and discussed in a panel moderated by Hudson Moura with Miguel Rocha (York alumni, MFA in Film Production) and Aida Jordão (course director for York U’s Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian Studies).
O Patio das Cantigas – Media Commons Film Theatre (U of T), March 1, 7pm
A screening of this film by Leonel Vieira with an introduction by Nuno Cristo, York alumni (MFA).
Opening of exhibit “Portuguese Cinema” and screening of Sangue do meu sangue – Scott Library’s Sound and Moving Image Screening Room (York University), March 9, 2:30pm
An exhibit celebrating Portuguese cinema will run from March 9 to 25, and will showcase its history and evolution. The exhibit opens with a screening of Sangue do meu sangue, a film by João Canijo. It will be introduced by Aida Jordão, course director for York U’s Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian Studies.
A Q&A session will follow all screenings in the event, and screening will have English subtitles. All events are free to attend.
“That lack reflects two intersecting tendencies. The first is that women often play supporting roles in institutional religion, so it is difficult to see or to find evidence of their influence and experiences, or it is overlooked,” said Lee. “The second is the tendency of women’s studies to overlook religion and, conversely, of religious studies to overlook women. Focusing on women’s religiosity, the feelings and experiences of individual believers enables us to uncover and examine women’s roles in the dynamic interactions inherent to diaspora.”
