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Monday, October 23, 2006

SFU, Harbour Centre, Room 1600
5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

In the context of its ongoing project “Imagining Citizenship”, The Institute for the Humanities at SFU presents its first lecture on issues related to "Citizenship and the City."

Marcel Hénaff, Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, has published widely in the areas of Continental Philosophy and Cultural Anthropology and has taught in universities in Europe, Japan, and the United States. Apart from about sixty articles, he is the author of the following books:
Sade, the invention of the libertine body, University of Minnesota Press, 1999 (orig, French PUF, 1978;  Spanish tr., Barcelona, Ediciones Destino, 1980;  Russian tr.  in press)
Claude  Lévi-Strauss and the  making of  structural anthropology, U of  Minnesota Press, 1998 (orig. Fr. Belfond 1991, Pocket Agora 1999).
Public Space and  Democracy,  Editor  (with T. Strong), University of Minnesota Press, 2001 (contributions by international scholars).
His latest, much acclaimed, work, Le Prix de  la Vérité. Le don,  l'argent,  la philosophie, (Paris, Seuil, 2002; Italian trans. in progress, Ed. Città  Aperta) received the prestigious Grand Prix de Philosophie de l'Académie Française as well as the Prix de l'Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques).

Gandhi Jayanti and the Thakore Visiting Scholar Award

October 2, 2006

SFU, Burnaby, Images Theatre
7:30 p.m.

Sponsored jointly by the India Club of Vancouver, the Thakore Charitable Foundation and the Institute for the Humanities.

Mahatma Gandhi and his legacy have been honoured at Simon Fraser University since the unveiling of his memorial bust in the Simon Fraser Peace Square in l970. Each year, on his birthday (October 2), the Gandhi Jayanti celebration brings members of the local Indo-Canadian community together with others who wish to salute his memory and honour his ideals.

This year, we are presenting at the Gandhi Commemorative Programme the 20th Annual Gandhi Peace Award and the 16th annual presentation of The Thakore Visiting Scholar Award to Roy Miki for his long and outstanding work and achievements in the Japanese Canadian redress movement

For more information on this program visit: www.gandhijayanti.com.

Urban Citizenship: Literary Incursions

May 25, 2006

Spartacus Books, 319 West Hastings (www.spartacusbooks.org)
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.

A reading sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University (www.sfu.ca/humanities-institute), and hosted by David Chariandy and Jeff Derksen (co-directors of the citizenship and culture study group).

This public reading of recent literary works by Oana Avasilichioaei, Wayde Compton, Anne Stone, and Meredith Quartermain will explore the question of citizenship in urban spaces.  In modern times, citizenship has typically been conceptualized and imagined at the level of the nation-state.  The wager of this reading is to return, with very new eyes, upon the ancient practice of conceptualizing citizenship at the level of the polis or city.  How are the old questions of civic belonging and responsibility complicated and renewed in light of the heterogeneities and intensities of contemporary city life?  How are writers today both recuperating and newly imagining alternative spaces and ethos within the city?  What specific events and pressures contribute towards the mainstream grammar of the city, and how might this grammar be sidestepped or swindled.

Each writer will offer a reading of ten to twelve minutes before a question and answer period.

Oana Avasilichioaei lives in Montreal where she teaches Creative Writing at Dawson College and organizes the Atwater Poetry Project, a monthly reading series that features poets from all over Canada (www.atwaterlibrary.ca/poetry).  In the fall of 2005, her first, full-length collection of poems, Abandon, was launched with Wolsak & Wynn (Toronto). A collection of translations of Romanian poet Nichita Stanescu, Occupational Sickness, is being published by BuschekBooks (Ottawa) this spring.

Wayde Compton is a Vancouver writer and editor whose books include 49th Parallel Psalm , Performance Bond and Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Orature. Compton is also a co-founding member of the Hogan's Alley Memorial Project, an organization dedicated to preserving the public memory of Vancouver's original Black community, and Commodore Books, a series dedicated to Black Canadian writing.  Wayde Compton lives in Vancouver and teaches in Simon Fraser University's Writing and Publishing Program, where he is a creative writing instructor in The Writer's Studio.  He also teaches English composition and literature at Coquitlam College.

Anne Stone is a contributing editor of Matrix Magazine.  Together with Amber Dean, she is guest-editing an upcoming special issue of the journal West Coast Line on representations of murdered and missing women. Her first novel, jacks: a gothic gospel (DC 1998), is experimental, conveying aspects of the story through the book's design. Her second novel, Hush (Insomniac 1999), explores violence, complicity and sites of  resistance.  A third novel, still in the works, is about Streetsville girls, sisters, one of whom is missing.  In part, this novel takes its cue from the forensic sciences, exploring how our identities exist in the traces we leave behind.  Stone currently teaches at Capilano College, where two of her courses critically explore representations of murdered and missing persons in contemporary texts, films, and photos.

Meredith Quartermain’s most recent book isVancouver Walking (NeWest Press); it won the 2005 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.  Other books include  A Thousand Mornings (about Vancouver's oldest neighbourhood), and Wanders (with Robin Blaser).  Her work has appeared in Prism International, The Capilano Review, West Coast Line, filling Station, Raddle Moon, Canadian Literature, the Literary Review of Canada and other magazines.  With husband Peter Quartermain, she runs Nomados Literary Publishers in Vancouver. She also edits the west coast literary website The News.

Lecture on Religion and Citizenship

May 17, 2006

Segal Centre, SFU Harbour Centre
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver
7:30-9:30pm

Lecture Title: Religion and Citizenship from a European Perspective

Speaker: Professor Tomas Halik (Charles University, Prague)

Tomas Halik, professor of sociology at Charles University (Prague), is a Roman Catholic priest. He was a leader in the Velvet Revolution and an advisor to President Havel. Since the mid-1990s he has been active in promoting dialogue and understanding between religions and cultures, both within and beyond the European Union. He is a prolific writer. Dr. Halik will be speaking about the transformation of the Czech Republic from a totalitarian regime to a post-totalitarian nation state and his understanding of the place of religious liberty, conviction, and tolerance in a 21st century democracy.

Dialogue on Environmental Citizenship

May 11, 2006

Great Northern Way Campus
555 Great Northern Way, Vancouver
8:30am-6:00pm

Presented by the Environmental Citizenship Working Group & the Summer Institute in Environmental Education at SFU.

Speakers:

Jeanette Armstrong - Director of the En'owkin Centre. Jeannette is from the Okanagan Nation, a well-known author and the recipient of the Buffet Award for her work in conservation education.

Chet Bowers - wrote his first book on the connections between education, cultural ways of knowing, and the ecological crisis in 1974. Since then he has written over 90 articles and 16 books that examine how language reproduces pre-ecological ways of thinking, the connections between emancipatory and transformative ways of thinking and the globalization of the West's industrial culture.

Lecture: Michel Serres- The Idea of The Natural Contract

May 4, 2006

Segal Centre, Harbour Centre
Lecture and Discussion 4:30-6:30pm
Reception 6:30-8:00pm

The Enviromental Citizenship group hosts a seminar exploring the work of the French philosopher and mathematician Michel Serres. Mr. Serres will present a paper on his book The Natural Contract and a panel will offer responses.

Michael Serres, born 1930, is one of the most provocative French philosophers of the present. Unlike much recent philosophy from France, which simply ignores science, Serres draws on the discoveries of the sciences, especially thermodynamics and chaos theory, for inspiration. His understanding of philosophy is, as he puts it, "encyclopedic," weaving together a syncretic tapestry from a variety of sources including history, painting, literature, mathematics, sciences, and philosophy itself.

Inaugural Lecture: Douglas Todd - Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanities

May 2, 2006

Room 1400 , SFU Harbour Centre
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver
7:30-9:30pm

Lecture Title: Journalists Versus Academics: So Suspicious, So Alike.

Journalists and academics strongly distrust each other's approach to researching and disseminating facts and viewpoints. Journalists stereotype academics as out-of-touch with the rough-and-rumble 'real world.' Scholars worry journalists play too fast and loose with information and knee-jerk opinion. But both scholars and journalists would benefit immensely from working more closely with each other. More importantly, so would the public.

Douglas Todd - spirituality and ethics writer for The Vancouver Sun -- is the first recipient of SFU's Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellowship in the Humanities and current resident scholar in the Institute for the Humanities at SFU. He is the author of two successful books and has received almost 50 journalism honours for his features, analyses and commentaries.

Roundtable on Religion and Citizenship

April 24, 2006

Room 7000, SFU Harbour Centre
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver
6:30-8:30pm

Panelists:  Landys Klyne (L'Arche Vancouver), Barry Morris (Longhouse Native Ministry), Petr Mucha (SFU), Itrath Syed (UBC).

The panelists explore some of the questions that arise regarding the place of religion in contemporary society. They will each raise one or two questions to consider when pondering religion, civil society, and the common good. This roundtable is intended to identify questions for further study and dialogue.

Book Launch:
Hera, or Empathy: A Work of Utopian Fiction. By William Leiss

April 10, 2006 at 5 pm

Room 1415,  SFU Harbour Centre
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

For more information, please contact Richard Smith, smith@sfu.ca or Trish Graham, grahama@sfu.ca. Seating is limited. For reservations call (604) 291-5100 or e-mail cs_hc@sfu.ca

William Leiss has been a professor at seven Canadian universities: Simon Fraser, Calgary, Regina, York, Toronto, Queen‚s, and Ottawa. He is the author or co-author of eight previous volumes: The Domination of Nature, The Limits to Satisfaction, Social Communication in Advertising, C. B. Macpherson, Under Technology's Thumb, Risk and Responsibility, Mad Cows and Mother's Milk, and In the Chamber of Risks, all of which are in print. Visit www.leiss.ca

This event is jointly sponsored by The Institute for the Humanities, Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology, Applied Communication and Technology Laboratory, and the School of Communication.

Panel Discussion: Cartoon Controversy

March 19, 2006
7:00-9:00pm

2270 Sauder Industries Policy Room
SFU Harbour Centre
515 West Hastings, Vancouver

This event is free but seating is limited. Reserved seating is recommended. Please e-mail cs_hc@sfu.ca or telephone 604-291-5100.

How might it be possible to balance freedom of conscience or religious freedom, on the one hand, and freedom of expression on the other? Panelists will consider the following statement: "Any form of expression that insults or otherwise damages a religion or religious tradition ought to be legally proscribed."

Panelists:
John Dixon joined the faculty at Capilano College in 1972. In the early 80's he began working with the B.C. CivilLiberties Association and has served several terms as president.

Douglas Throop is the United Church of Canada Chaplain at SFU and minister with Ellesmere United Church.

Who's In? Who's Out? Social Justice and Citizenship in Canada

March 10 , 2006
9:30 am - 5:00 pm

Halpern Centre Lounge , Room 114
Burnaby Campus, Simon Fraser University

Seating is very limited for this event. Please e-mail grahama@sfu.ca or telephone 604-291-5855.

This symposium will present two panel discussions and a keynote lecture:

Panel 1: Psychiatry and the Legacy of Exclusion
Moderator: Douglas Todd (Author, Vancouver Sun spirituality and ethics writer, Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanities, SFU)
Presenters: Gary Nelson, Judy Shirley, Diane Nielsen

Panel II: Advocacy and the Struggle for Inclusion
Moderator: David Mirhady (Department of Humanities, Simon Fraser University).
Presenters: Avril Orloff, Katrina Pacey, Chris McDowell

Keynote Lecture
Moderator: Dorothy E. Chunn (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University)
Guest Speaker: Janine Brodie (Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Political Economy and Social Governance, University of Alberta), "The new social 'isms': Social policy reform in Canada."

The Grace MacInnis Visiting Scholar Lecture: Linda McQuaig

February 7, 2006

In honour of her citical writing and challenging inquiry, Linda McQuaig, Toronto based author and commentator, was selected the 2006 Grace MacInnis Visiting Scholar. Linda McQuaig has written for The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, Maclean’s magazine, and the National Post.

Bourgeois Philosophy? A lecture with Robert Pippin

February 20, 2006
7 - 9 p.m.

Room 1415 at SFU Vancouver
515 West Hastings Street, V ancouver

Robert Pippin is the Raymond W. and Martha Hilpert Gruner Distinguished Service Professor, Committee on Social Thought and Department of Philosophy. Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, 1974. He works on the modern German philosophical tradition (Kant to the present), contemporary Continental philosophy in general, moral theory, social and political philosophy, theories of modernity, and various topics in ancient philosophy. He also has a number of inter-disciplinary interests that involve philosophical issues in literature, art history and film.

Shared Sacred Space: A dialogue

February 9 , 2006
6:30 pm - 9:30 pm

Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, 580 West Hasting Street, Vancouver.

This three hour gathering will explore the meaning of 'sacred space' from the viewpoints of diverse spiritual traditions and rituals. Guests include: Amir Ali Alibhai, Heesoon Bai, and Douglas Todd. Call 604-268-7925 to register.

Writing Cultural Identity & Citizenship

January 25, 2006
7–9 pm

Room 7000, SFU at Harbour Centre
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

In this panel discussion, writers will examine the ways in which their work structures the connection between cultural identity and citizenship.

Speakers: Lorena Gale (actress, director, and writer), Daphne Marlatt (writer and the previous writer-in-residence in the English Department at SFU), Roy Miki(poet, critic and a professor of English at SFU) and moderator David Chariandy (professor of English at SFU).