A panel discussion exploring media reporting on labour issues will be the focus of the Nov. 19 Global Labour Speaker Series.

The event, running noon to 2pm in Ross Building S701, will examine how the media covers the dynamics of the workplace and the labour market; what is and what should be the role of media in reporting on work; and, what impact media reporting can have on raising awareness on critical workplace issues and in affecting progressive social change.

Guest speakers participating in the panel discussion “Labour and the Media/Labour in the Media” include Sara Mojehedzadeh of the Toronto Star, David Bush of RankandFile.ca, and Nora Loreto and Nadine Tkatchevskaia of the Canadian Association of Labour Media.

Mojtehedzadeh is the Toronto Star‘s work and wealth reporter, covering issues including precarious employment and the changing nature of work. Previously, she worked for the BBC World Service covering African current affairs. She also reported for a year on development and human rights issues from Nairobi, Kenya through the Aga Khan Foundation of Canada. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto’s peace and conflict studies program.

Bush is an editor at RankandFile.ca, a Canadian labour news website. He is a former union organizer with the Service Employees International Union Local 2. Currently, he is working on his PhD at York University in the social and political thought program. He is also an editor at the magazine Canadian Dimension.

Loreto is editor at the Canadian Association of Labour Media. She is a writer, musician and activist based in Québec City with expertise in media literacy, social media and government relations. She is the author of From Demonized to Organized, Building the New Union Movement and regularly writes for Rabble.ca and progressive magazines. She has a BA in public administration and minors in journalism, history and politics from Ryerson University, and a master’s of education at the University of Saskatchewan. She was editor-in-chief of the Ryerson Free Press and was involved in the student movement for almost a decade.

Tkatchevskaia is Canadian Association of Labour Media’s assistant editor. She is a political organizer and activist based in Toronto who specializes in campaigns and digital engagement. She got involved in the student movement during her undergraduate degree and has since branched out to progressive organizing more broadly on municipal, provincial and federal levels. She holds a bilingual honours BA in international studies with a minor in women’s studies from Glendon College at York University. She earned her master’s of arts in gender studies and feminist research from McMaster University.

The Global Labour Speakers Series at York University is a collaboration of the Global Labour Research Centre, the Work and Labour Studies Program, the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy, and the Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy of Gender and 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.

Refreshments will be served, and all are welcome. For more about the Global Labour Research Centre, visit yorku.ca/glrc; for the Facebook event page, visit facebook.com/events/538924019597841/.

Award-winning historian James Daschuk will present a lecture on Sir John A. Macdonald’s policies toward First Nations of the Great Plains when he is featured in the annual Melville-Nelles-Hoffman Lecture in Environmental History at York U on Nov. 18.

“Clearing the Plains and Clearing the Air: Environmental History and National Memory in 2015” will explore how Canadians can integrate indigenous history into commemorative events for the 150th anniversary of our Confederation.

It runs from 4:45 to 6:45pm in the private dining room in the Schulich Executive Learning Centre.

In light of these commemorative celebrations, Daschuk says that “our understanding of this environmental history has taken on new meaning.”

Daschuk is the author of the bestselling book Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life, which received the John A. Macdonald Prize and the Governor General’s Award for Canadian history.

The book was written as an environmental history of indigenous health and disease in western Canada, and it considered the interrelationship of climate, species and other aspects of environmental change on the Great Plains.

Audiences across Canada were drawn to this national bestseller, finding new and troubling insights into Canada’s history of colonial expansion in the Prairies.

Daschuk is an associate professor at the University of Regina.

This event is open to all members of the public. A reception will begin at 4:15pm, with the lecture at 4:45pm.

Celebrated poet, novelist, non-fiction writer and documentarian Dionne Brand will deliver the final Diana Massiah Lecture in Caribbean Studies, to be held on Nov. 19 from 5 to 7pm.

Presented by the Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean (CERLAC), the talk will take place at Founders Assembly Hall, 152 Founders College.

Brand’s talk is entitled “The Language of the Blue Clerk” – a meditation on what poetry offers to “being” in the diaspora; a consideration of poetry’s diacritical possibilities in diaspora.

The event will begin with a reception at 5pm, followed by the Grace & David Taylor Graduate Scholarship Award in Caribbean Studies at 5:45pm. The lecture is scheduled to begin at 6pm.

This year’s recipient of the award is Savitri Persaud, who will receive a $5,000 award for her work on a project called “ “Madness’ and the Caribbean Psycho-Spiritual: Understanding Gender, Psychiatric Disability, and Violence in Guyana.”

The event is co-sponsored by the Department of Humanities, Founders College, the departments of English and Equity Studies, the School of Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, Harriet Tubman Institute and York Centre for Education & Community.

This lecture is the last in a series that was presented in Diana Massiah’s name.

About Diana Massiah

Diana Massiah, originally from Barbados, settled in Toronto in the mid-1980s. She maintains close ties with the Barbadian community locally and back home, and has been a director of the Barbados Ball, an organization focused on raising funds for postsecondary scholarships and health care. She is also involved with the Harrison-Queens College Alumni Association, Toronto Chapter. The Diana Massiah Lecture Series in Caribbean Studies was a three-year lecture series established in celebration of Massiah’s 65th birthday.

On Nov. 3, York’s Canadian Writers in Person course presented Greg Hollingshead reading from his latest collection of short stories, Act Normal. York teaching assistant Dana Patrascu-Kingsley sent the following report to YFile.

When Greg Hollingshead visited York University to read from his latest collection of short stories, Act Normal (2015), he selected the short story “Sense of an Ending” for his presentation. It is a story about a young woman’s uneasiness with what she feels is the “weird” comfort and acceptance in her husband’s family. What she thinks of as strange interactions are just brushed off by her husband. A grandmother goes down on all fours to tear away a steak from the dog that stole it, and that is all ‘normal’ to the family. Meanwhile, the young woman, Micheline, is always expecting something terrible to happen because in her world, something has to be wrong. This uncovering of the unusual in everyday life is part of all of Hollingshead’s stories in this volume in which people act anything but “normal.”

Hollingshead has written six other short story collections and novels. In 1995, his third story collection, The Roaring Girl, won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. In 1998, his novel The Healer won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. His 2004 novel Bedlam was long listed for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In 2012, he was awarded the Order of Canada.

Act Normal came out to excellent reviews. “Every sentence in Act Normal is a surprise. In fact, the stories are the sentences, each one veering into the next shock, until you’re far from the expected territory. Greg Hollingshead gives us what all great short story writers do: the pleasure of breaking with pattern for the wild and strange,” said author Tamas Dobozy. “I found myself rereading every paragraph, amazed, not wanting to leave behind a single word.”

Hollingshead said he writes down on six by four inch cue cards the stories he hears from friends and acquaintances, and he has boxes of these cards. Every once in a while, he goes through them, and “some of the stories are still alive” and then Hollingshead says that he knows he’ll have to transform those into short stories. He explained that he “thinks of fiction as framing true things in a way that makes them credible.”

For Hollingshead, the beauty of writing short stories is that you don’t need to work thematically. “You start with a feeling. From that you get a voice, an image, a scene, and then you go from there,” he said, noting that he writes for the pleasure of telling a story and getting it right.

On Nov. 17, Sean Michaels will read from and talk about his novel Us Conductors. Readings are free and open to any member of the public. For more information, contact Professor Leslie Sanders at leslie@yorku.ca or Professor Gail Vanstone at gailv@yorku.ca. All readings are held Tuesdays from 7 to 9pm in 206 Accolade West Building, Keele campus.

The next instalment of the Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series takes place on Nov. 17, from 7 to 10 pm, and features award-winning novelist, music critic and blogger Sean Michaels.

The lecture will be held at 206 Accolade West Building, and will include a reading and discussion with the Quebec-based writer.

Michaels’ debut novel, Us Conductors, is the winner of the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize. The book is a national bestseller, exploring the true life and loves of Russian scientist and inventor Lev Termen.

The story is based on a letter written by Terman while imprisoned on a ship travelling from Manhattan back to Leningrad; a letter addressed to his one true love, Clara Rockmore, that outlines his life story.

The novel was a finalist for the 2014 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, as well as the 2014 Concordia University Book Prize.

Michaels is the founder of one of the earliest music blogs, “Said the Gramaphone.” His written contributions are many, and include publication in the Guardian, McSweeney’s, The Believer, Pitchfork, Maisonneuve, the Observer, The Wire and the National Post. He also appears in a weekly music column, “Heartbeats,” in the Globe and Mail.

He was born in Scotland in 1982, raised in Ottawa and settled later in Montreal.

The Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series, presented by the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS), is bringing 11 Canadian writers to campus this year for an up-close and personal event.

More events in the series include:

Dec. 1 – Lee Maracle, Celia’s Song

Jan. 12 – Heather O’Neill, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night

Jan. 26 – Gregory Scofield, Louis: The Heretic Poems

Feb. 9 – Colin McAdam, A Beautiful Truth

March 1 – Sue Goyette, Ocean

March 15 – Aisha Sasha John, Thou

For more information, email gailv@yorku.ca or leslie@yorku.ca.

Two forthcoming books by Patricia Keeney, professor of creative writing and English at York University, have garnered international attention.

The first book is Keeney’s new take on classical material called Orpheus in our Time, which is based on some of the oldest Greek poetry in existence, pre-dating even the Greek pantheon that informs so much of western culture. The Orphic Hymns – the ancient work that inspired this manuscript – were sung by star-gazers and priests who composed lyrics to the evolution of life in cosmological, philosophical and psychological terms. The hymns take us through the earliest expressions of creation, time and power. As ancient manifestations of natural forces, human psychology and universal ideas, they still connect intimately with us today.

Keeney, the first English language poet to attempt a recreation of these ancient works, has produced modern lyric renderings of them along with contemporary, often humorous response in dialogue from an anonymous “He” and “She” commenting on the core ideas as familiar as love, war, work and health.

Keeney was invited to Athens in June, for preliminary discussions with National Theatre director Gina Kapetanaki, classical actor Rasmy Tsopelas and composer Dimitris Maragopolos regarding a theatrical version of the manuscript. These initiatives have already led to interest from other Greek, Swedish and Canadian theatre professionals.

The second book is a novel, One Man Dancing.

In July, Keeney – also a theatre critic – was invited to the African Theatre Association conference held at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles to read from the manuscript for her upcoming novel One Man Dancing, built around the life of an actor who worked closely with Robert Serumaga and his legendary Abafumi Theatre Company in Uganda in the 1970s.

During two years of intensive conversation, Charles Tumwisigye shared with Keeney his early experiences in colonial Uganda (including the beginnings of a lifelong passion for drumming and dance), his first meetings with the charismatic Serumaga, the high-profile international tours and the narrow escape from assassination by Amin. After all this, the actor emigrated to Canada, where he was almost destroyed by a monster tornado.

One Man Dancing is a unique story of theatre, political intrigue, heroics the size of myth and ultimate human endurance.

Both books are due for publication next year.

The School of Human Resource Management has launched the latest issue of its industry magazine, HR Edge. With content produced by experts from York and elsewhere, this alumni-edited magazine brings the latest research and news on the evolving world of HR to professionals across Canada.

HR Edge was first launched in 2008 and is published annually. The Fall 2015 issue is the first to be edited by alumni. With the support of former editor Professor Len Karakowsky, this year’s co-editors are graduates of the Master of Human Resources Management program, Althea Gordon and Tanya Magloire.

“This issue’s overarching theme is that the practice of HR is changing,” says Marie-Hélène Budworth, director of the School of Human Resource Management in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. “While the combination of articles is eclectic, [the magazine] is built around this theme of the changing world of work. There are a lot of forces that are impacting how we work today, such as our changing values around the role of work in life and family, technology and globalization. It’s much easier to work across national boundaries.”

Under its umbrella theme, the Fall 2015 issue focuses on high-quality mentoring in an article by human resource management Professor Jelena Zikic.

“Supporting and encouraging the creation of valuable relationships between people within work settings is an important antecedent to success,” says Budworth.

Zikic’s article “considers the role of mentoring for newcomers to Canada,” she says. “It speaks to the importance of supportive relationships for job search in today’s global workforce and provides clear guidance on what can make these mentoring relationships work.”

Workplace change includes the trend of pet-friendly workplaces. In “Who let the dogs in?,” professors Christa Wilkin, Paul Fairlie and Souha Ezzedeen look into organizations that have pet ownership policies to improve work life for employees.

“People have a need to blend, to bring their life into the workplace,” says Budworth. “The article on pet friendly workplaces is an interesting look at how this is happening, how people are bridging their work life and their home life.”

This issue also announces the retirement of Professor Monica Belcourt, founding director of the School of Human Resource Management.

“Monica Belcourt has been a driving force for HR at York University and nationally. She has been a visionary and really was instrumental in setting us up to allow the creation of the school of HR at York,” says Budworth. “As a school, we have a great deal of gratitude towards what she’s created and the legacy that she’s left us.”