Department of Humanities

Welcome

Welcome to the Humanities Department at Simon Fraser University!
In the Humanities Department at SFU, students read and study the great texts of Western and Eastern civilizations from Ancient Greece to Modern Germany, from Taoism to Christianity, from the Italian fresco to Chinese film. Humanities courses appeal to students who are curious about many diverse areas such as classical and medieval studies, modern thought and culture, Renaissance humanism, and eastern and western religions. Crossing disciplinary boundaries, students will learn to pose questions and address concerns central to understanding the human condition.

Departmental News

On a recent research trip to Asia, Dr. Shuyu Kong gave three invited talks and seminars at Peking University, Shanghai Normal University and Korea University in Seoul. Topics covered included the writings of the Dutch sinologist Robert van Gulik, and "Chinese Media and Public Discourse".

Prague Field School is going most historically!

Dr. Samir Gandesha in Open Democracy: Understanding Right and Left Populisms

Professor Emerita in the Humanities, Dr. Kathy Mezei, is enjoying a productive retirement with the publication of her third book, Living with Strangers: Bedsits and Boarding Houses in Modern English Life, Literature and Film. The book "examines the history and cultural representation of bed-sitting rooms and boarding houses in England from the early twentieth century to the present. Providing a historical overview, the authors explore how these alternative domestic spaces came to provide shelter for a diverse demographic of working women and men, retired army officers, gay people, students, bohemians, writers, artists, performers, migrants and asylum seekers, as well as shady figures and criminals."

Dr. Samir Gandesha in the Vancouver Sun on the extremism of first-past-the-post electoral systems.

PAUL TAI YIP NG MEMORIAL AWARD FOR 2017 BEST GRADUATE STUDENT PAPER

Congratulations to Ms. Maggie Tsang (MA), who won our 2017 Best Graduate Student Paper award. Before coming to Canada to expand her horizon in cultural comparisons, Maggie obtained a B.Sc. in Environmental Science & Management and an MA in Philosophy from Hong Kong. Being particularly interested in the cultural-philosophical background of Chinese medicine, she is now working on a research project “Chinese Medicine as Hermeneutic Knowledge?” in the Department of Humanities at Simon Fraser University. Apart from her thesis work, Maggie worked as a Museum Registrar at Burnaby Village Museum on archival materials and artifacts from a Chinese herbalist shop that was operated in Victoria’s Chinatown from 1900 to 1971. The winning paper examines the nature of knowledge of Chinese and Modern Medicine with a hermeneutic approach. It was completed as part of her thesis under the supervision of Dr. Paul Crowe.

We are delighted to announce that two of our M.A. Students, Alexis Wolfe and Stephanie Yu, have been awarded Tri-Agency Canada Graduate Scholarships. Ms. Wolfe, who comes to us from U.B.C, is working on a thesis entitled SYMBOLIC COLLISIONS: SHORT-CIRCUITS IN THE LIBIDINAL ECONOMY, and Ms. Yu, from the University of Alberta, is working on a thesis entitled THE FETISHIZATION OF THE "AUTHENTIC" IN AN AGE OF ANXIETY. Both students have been active presenting their work at conferences in the UK, Italy and Toronto.

A loving obituary for our dearly departed colleague, Rev. Donald Grayston.

Past Events

Centre A and The Cinematheque, with support from SFU David Lam Centre and SFU Department of Humanities, welcome renowned Vietnamese-born artist, writer, and scholar Trinh T. Minh-ha for a special two-night program of her acclaimed film work. Subjective, self-reflexive, and intellectual, infused with feminism and anti-colonialism, and offering a dizzying array of sights and sounds, the award-winning “anti-anthropological” films of Trinh represent a startling reinvention of the documentary form. Read More

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