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
Join HUM graduate and undergraduate students for a night of trivia and pizza on March 26th!
Congratulations to Dr. Shuyu Kong for the SSHRC Small Research Grant she received for 2020-2022 to support a project “Rediscovering Chinese Women Artists Studying in France (1910s-1940s)”!
Interested in higher scholarship in classical, medieval, and renaissance thought and culture, Asian literary and religious traditions, modernity and its critique? Explore the Humanities through cross-disciplinary, text and problem-based research projects in our thesis-based MA program! Apply by FEBRUARY 15, 2020 to be considered for the $15,000 BC Graduate Scholarship.
Read Dr. Shuyu Kong's article on Chinese Australian artist Shen Jiawei and his history paintings in Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Vol. 18 no. 5 (Sept/Oct. 2019)!
During her fall 2019 stay as Residential Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, Zhejiang University, Dr. Shuyu Kong worked on a research project on Taoist Influences on Chinese landscape poetry and painting. The above photo was taken at the talk she gave during her fellowship on teaching Chinese Classics as Great Texts in North America.
Read Dr. Samir Gandesha's "Canada’s Battle Against First Nations Shows Slide Toward Authoritarianism" here
Dr. Samir Gandesha will be presenting at the Annual Conference of the Yale Program for the Study of Anti-Semitism, "The Authoritarian Personality" next month.
Check out HUM MA Alum, Maggie Ka-ying Tsang's FASS 2020 News spotlight: "SFU researcher bridges Traditional Chinese Medicine with First Nations communities"! Congratulations Maggie as you continue building your research alongside and across communities!
Professor Samir Gandesha will be a commentator on the panel discussion "Palestine: The Settlers' Town is a Strongly Built Town: Fanon in Palestine" at Birkbeck College on Dec 8th. He will also speaking at the "Authoritarianism Today" conference at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin on December 12th and will be presenting a keynote address at the "Adorno and the Media" conference at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe on December 14th and talking about SFU's Institute for the Humanities as a model for critical public engagement at Vienna's Academy of Fine Art on December 16th.
Find information for the Saturday, November 16th Institute for the Humanities event "Kashmir: Photography as Witness and Memory" here
In celebration of a newly-painted mural, our Chair, Paul Crowe, is participating in this storytelling event, titled "Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea: Chinatown Community Engagement Events," on Saturday, October 5th.
Congratulations to Maggie Tsang on convocating this October! Maggie successfully defended "Chinese Medicine as Hermeneutic Knowledge? On the Role of Classical Works such as Huangdi neijing suwen in Chinese Medicine" in July. She stopped in after the ceremony to take photos with her senior supervisor, and Humanities Department Chair Dr. Paul Crowe. Maggie is now a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Health Sciences at SFU.
Congratulations to Alexis Wolfe on successfully defending "Symbolic Collisions: Short-Circuits in the Libidinal Economy"! Thanks to Dr. Paul Dutton for chairing and to the members of her examining committee Dr. Samir Gandesha (Sr. Supervisor), Dr. Gary McCarron (Supervisor), and Dr. Svitlana Matviyenko (Internal Examiner).
'Below the Radar' podcast - Episode 23 - SFU's Director of the Institute for the Humanities, Samir Gandesha, talks about the neo-liberal personality and the rise of authoritarianism around the world
Congratulations to HUM Professor David Mirhady for his July 2019 election as Vice-President of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric! He will succeed to be its President after the 2021 meeting in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and host the 2023 meeting in Vancouver. Keep tuned!
SAMIR GANDESHA
SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 2:00PM–4:00PM, ROOM 7000, SFU HARBOUR CENTRE
Co-sponsored by SFU's Institute of Humanities and South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD)
This lecture is free, however, the discussion following requires (free) pre-registration and has limited capacity.
FORGING DEMOCRATIC FUTURES: AMBEDKAR ON COMPLEX MARGINALITIES AND INCLUSION
Join us for a free public lecture by our visiting scholar, Dr. Valerian Rodrigues. This appointment is made possible through the Hari and Madhu Varshney Visiting Scholars Program in Indian Studies.
The event will take place on Monday, April 15 at the SFU Segal Building (500 Granville St, Vancouver), 5:30—8:00pm.
RESERVE YOUR SEAT NOW AT: democratic-futures.eventbrite.ca
On 21-22 March, Dr. Samir Gandesha will participate in an international workshop on "What is 'New' About the New Authoritarianism?" organized by the Department of the Sociology of Law, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
JOIN US IN CELEBRATING THE MARCH 27, 2019 BOOK LAUNCH OF DR VALERIAN RODRIGUES' CONVERSATIONS WITH AMBEDKAR: 10 AMBEDKAR MEMORIAL LECTURES. THE EVENT BEGINS AT 5:30PM IN 1600 HARBOUR CENTRE. FURTHER INFORMATION AND A LINK TO REGISTER ON THE DAVID LAM CENTRE WEBPAGE
JOIN US IN SURREY ON FEB 20TH for our visiting scholar's first free public lecture
Dr Rodrigues' "The Agonistic Engagement Between Ambedkar and Gandhi" will begin at 6pm in SFU Surrey 2600, with a reception to follow. Everyone welcome!
MEET OUR VISITING SCHOLAR!
Humanities Roundtable Discussion Series!
Please join us every first and third Thursday of the month in a graduate student-led series of presentations on current themes within the Humanities. Our next installment "Chinese Culture and the Lunar New Year" is Feburary 7th in AQ 5118 beginning at 12:30pm. See our roundtable event page for more information. Hope to see you there!
Dr. Samir Gandesha - Podcast Appearance
What does a socialist conception of free speech look like? Can we really trust the capitalist state to protect the free speech rights of socialist critics? As free speech has become an increasingly explosive issue within our liberal societies, Oats for Breakfast chatted with Samir Gandesha of Simon Fraser University to get a better sense of what’s going on. Along the way we talk about the politics of free speech, the hypocrisy of the Right on this issue, and what a potential socialist alternative may look like.
Listen HERE
Study the writing of various Latin authors and explores the interplay between Latin and vernacular literatures, their roots in the past, and their role in creating the Western canon!
EXPLORE INDIAN DEMOCRACY this spring THROUGH THE LITERATURE OF ONE OF ITS KEY CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORS with the preeminent Ambedkar scholar, Dr Valerian Rodrigues
An examination of Eastern and Western Christendom from Late Antiquity to the 12th-Century Renaissance emphasizing religious, political, cultural, and social change.
Immerse yourself in the world of Pieter Bruegel! Each class will concentrate on several of his paintings and drawings, and we shall approach his art through a series of different techniques and modes, trying to understand him and his time.
Join Dr Eleanor Stebner, J.S. Woodsworth Chair, in reading the biographical writings of Primo Levi, Jane Goodall, Muhammed Ali and more
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