Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre as part of the Robson Reading Series.

“In this fluid collection we enter a galactic expanse where absence, distance and fire repel and attract love-bodies in a winged-whirl of magnetic mad flight. Loss, emptiness, space, desire, blood, memory; all devour themselves in the combustions of love without self. The you/other may be interchangeable, never static or frozen or attainable. In these sharp-beaked bird-worlds there is “no going back” – at best, bodies meet only “flame to flame,” mutable and razor-like in feathery, impermanent forms. I find Hunter’s new work a rare melding of Blues, Kabbalah, and personal transcendence– a piercing, hard-won angelic love mantra. A blazing tour de force!”
- Juan Felipe Herrera, California Poet Laureate

“What lies here are the vagaries of a heart wounded, shattered, and redeemed by love. Such generosity of spirit deserves acclaim. A bravura work.”
- Richard Wagamese, author of Indian Horse”

Artist: Jong Jin Lee, In the Flower Field, Stone sculpture

Jong Jin Lee was born in Seour, South Korea in 1971 and immigrated to Canada in 2008. He graduated from the department of Sculpture and Seoul’s Hong-Ik University in 1997. His professional artist life started in year 1997; he participated in 7 solo exhibition and more than 60 group exhibition in Korea. After moving to Canada, Jong Jin continued to design sculptures with passion and participated in Korean Artists Association exhibition from year 2008 to 2012. He also shared his talent and skills by teaching students and had an exhibition From Across the Ocean at the Centennial Museum in Fort Langley in 2010. He was the president of Korean Artists Association in Vancouver between 2010 to 2011.

Artist: Evan Leung, Harmony III, ceramic

Evan Ting Kwok Leung was born in Hong Kong in 1977. Growing up with an artist father, Evan has been exposed to the arts and for as long as he can remember. During his secondary school period, he was fascinated by the potential and creativeness from pottery and ceramics. From 1995 to 1999, he learned further ceramic skills from an active potter, Ping-Kwong Wong, in Richmond, BC. Since 1998, he has been participating in certain solo and group exhibitions in Canada, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Later on from 2001 to 2005, according to the passion and interest of Ting Kwok, he studied varieties of visual arts theories, mediums and techniques at Kwantlen University College and Emily Carr Institute. Recently, his artworks have been selected in a few juried art exhibitions of ARTS 2010 – 2012 with Honorable Mention award, 2010 Tea Ware by Hong Kong Potters and 2012 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale Exhibition which the artwork is under the collection of New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum in Taiwan.

Artist: Ping-Kwong Wong, Dad, we’ll be empty nest , ceramics, oxidation glazed

Ping-Kwong Wong was born in China, moved to Hong Kong in 1956, and settled in Vancouver, Canada in 1994. Wong studied art education at Sir Robert Black College of Education, and  Grantham College of Education from 1969 to 1972 in Hong Kong. He studied studio ceramics at Hong Kong Polytechnic from 1981 to 1983. He graduated from University of Wolverhampton, U.K. with B. Ed degree in 1992. He studied the ‘Adult Education Instructor Training Program’ at the Vancouver School Board, B.C., in 1995. He has participated many exhibitions in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan,  United States, and mainly in B.C., Canada since 1995. He was the recipient of the Hong Kong Urban Council Fine Arts Award (Ceramics) in 1987. Now he is a studio potter and ceramic art instructor.

Artist: Ilsoo Kyng MacLaurin

Ilsoo Kyung MacLaurin immigrated to Canada in 1967 as a Registered Nurse. Retiring after 30 years of service, she studied fine arts and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of British Columbia in 2006. She is a member of the South Delta Artist’s Guild, the Delta Arts Council, the North Vancouver Artist’s Council and the Surrey Artist’s Council. This particular installation depicts an element of Ilsoo’s past. As with many of her works, it is grounded with in the natural world and visual visual appeal is at its roots. Ilsoo pays special attention to detail, structure and form; however behind this scene can there be more meaning? These dancers stir and spread the awareness of a past, which will allow the viewer a glimpse of the challenges that we must face together as a society. In her works, Ilsoo addresses the question of cultural identity and, in the process; a new synthesis is emerging through her own individual practice of creating art.

  Please let us know what you think of the art exhibition by using our virtual feedback form.

This seminar focuses on the potential and pedagogical possibilities of place/community/experience–based learning to act as a decolonizing force in teacher education. In this seminar, we will share the experience of an Indigenous educator who sought to work with a group of graduate students to understand how participation in place–based service learning could affect graduate students’ understanding of: a) local social and ecological issues (particularly those affecting local Indigenous groups), b) feelings of efficacy with respect to the work of social change, and c) motivation to be involved in such efforts. This research project fits within a larger strategy of the UBC–Community Learning Initiative (UBC–CLI) to encourage the engagement of students, faculty, staff, and community to work collaboratively on projects that seek to address complex community priorities in ways that also support student learning.

Speaker Biographies

Tracy Friedel’s research interests include First Nation and Métis experience in the realm of work and learning, decolonizing research at the intersection of health and education, Nehiyaw-Métis oral histories, and Indigenous-focused outdoor/land/place-based education. As part of this latter interest, she has engaged with community-based partners in the Lower Mainland of BC, and Haida Gwaii, to create meaningful academic service learning experiences for UBC graduate students.  In extending upon earlier research, she is the Principal Investigator of a community-based project focused on Indigenous youth leadership in the area of unintentional injury prevention.  Friedel is interested in pursuing inquiry via means of Indigenous methodologies, community-based participatory research, qualitative case studies, visual research methods, oral hi(stories), and critical race theory in qualitative research.

Mahtab Eskandari’s fields of interest are in curriculum and pedagogy.  She has been an educator as a Science, ESL, Arts and Anthropology teacher since 1998.  Eskandari started with the Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology and Genetics in Iran; and traveling as an international rural educator, she found interest in Anthropology, Social studies and Environmental education in international indigenous communities. She enjoys working with teachers in practicum settings and communicating and interacting with different generations and cultures towards improving learning and teaching.  Over the years Eskandari has researched active and dynamic integration of technology (with a focus on animation and decolonizing network systems) and museum learning in teacher education as well as multicultural education.

Allyson’s background in Early Childhood Development, Aboriginal Health, and Aboriginal Education focused on bridging the gap between academic research and community driven needs. Her work at the UBC-CLI aims to better understand the impacts of Community Based Experiential Learning on the three key stakeholder groups with whom we work: community organizations, students, and faculty.

Kyle Nelson is the the Community Based Experiential Learning Officer at UBC. Kyle is a big believer in the University’s role in building community capacity, and is a key player in strengthening and sustaining community based experiential learning (CBEL) opportunities for UBC students.  Kyle jointly reports to UBC’s Community Learning Initiative (UBC-CLI) and the Faculty of Land and Food Systems. The UBC-CLI helps to integrate CBEL into academic disciplines and to ensure that meaningful community engagement opportunities are available outside the context of coursework as well.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library 

Friedel, T.L. (2011). Looking for learning in all the wrong places: Urban Native youths’ cultured response to Western-oriented place-based learning. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Special Issue – Youth Resistance Revisited, 24 (5), 531-546.  Link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09518398.2011.600266#.UZZsBqKsiSo

Friedel, T. L. (2008). (Not so) crude text and images: staging Native in ‘big oil’advertising. Visual Studies, 23(3), 238-254.  Link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14725860802489908#.UZZtsqKsiSo

UBC Library Research Guides

Aboriginal Education

Aboriginal Studies

Education

In examining the “wall poems” written by early Chinese in the detention center in Victoria, B.C, to the huge Collection of Poetry in 1957 by the Chinese Times newspaper, her talk explores the major characteristics of these poems and particularly the incorporation of images in order to show the transformation of Chinese classical poetry in the diaspora.  As part of this program, tours of UBC’s cultural collections will complement this talk afterwards: (A) The Museum of Anthropology featuring the oral history lab and Cantonese Opera collection; and (B) The Chung Collection of early Chinese Canadian historical materials at UBC Rare Books & Special Collections.

Time/Location

Speaker Biographies

Dr. Laifong Leung taught Chinese literature, language, and calligraphy at the University of Alberta. Her publications include many books on classical Chinese poetry and post-Mao literature, and a Mandarin language textbook. Her current projects include developing the Chinese learning courseware Concise Interactive Chinese and working on a forthcoming co-authored book History of Literary Interactions between China and Canada. She is the co-founder and current Chair of the Chinese Canadian Writers Association and editor of the e-journal of the Canadian Teaching Chinese as a Second Language Association.   A UBC alumnus, Laifong Leung completed her MA and PhD at the University of British Columbia in Asian Studies.

Sarah Romkey graduated from University of British Columbia’s joint Masters in Archival Studies and Masters in Library and Information Studies program in 2008. She has since that time worked in UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections division initially as the Librarian and Archivist for the Chung Collection and since 2009 as the Rare Books and Special Collections Archivist. Sarah is responsible in this role for acquiring, providing access to and preserving the archives of individuals and organizations external to UBC

Allan Cho is Community Engagement Librarian at the University of British Columbia’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, where he is responsible for designing programs and services that support the broader community as well as variety of learners and instructors. Initiatives he is involved in include the Chinese Canadian Stories, working with twenty-seven communities across Canada, from Victoria, BC to St.John’s, Newfoundland in documenting and promoting the research of Chinese Canadian history.

Planning some late study sessions for the upcoming exam period? Then make sure to check out the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, where a range of study spaces will be open 24 hours a day.

Please note that “extended hours” DOES NOT include service points such as: the Chapman Learning Commons, Ike’s Cafe or access to the Library bookstacks.

During the 24/7 opening period, regular cleaning of study spaces will continue. Certain rooms in the Learning Centre will be closed for cleaning and/or exam preparation during the 24/7 study period.

If you’re planning to stay overnight at UBC or have an early exam, then check out the UBC Student Hostel, bookable online at http://www.housing.ubc.ca/student-residences-van/commuter-hostel

UBC AMS Safewalk – available 7 p.m. – 1 a.m. – call 604-822-5355

“Less than 10% of nurses in North America are male and I think the recruitment in nursing schools should reflect the diverse community that it serves,“ Kwon says. “But that’s not happening right now. There are enormous biases and stereotypes and I hope that this book will promote openness about the nursing profession to the students, instructors and the public.”

The book is already receiving critical acclaim. One Booming Ground author writes, “The anecdotes and stories [he] share as a student nurse offer a fascinating look at another world that is both different from what many experience, but relatable at the same time. We have all been in hospitals as patients or as visitors but have not often had a glimpse behind the curtain of health professionalism. We see nurses and doctors as confident and all-knowing and sometimes as cold or kind. [He’s] captured all of this!”  

For more information, please send an email to president(at)jykngroup(dot)com and for website it is http://www.jykngroup.com

To reserve a seat for this event, please register here.

Image courtesy, UBC Chung Collection

The New Treasures: Artifacts of Chinese-Canadian life and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company exhibition is a new exhibit on display in the Chung Collection Exhibition room.

New Treasures is a new exhibition that features artifacts from Chinese-Canadian life such as kitchen utensils, apothecary items and more. It explores the immigration and settlement of Chinese-Canadian people in B.C.

The Chung Collection Exhibition room also has some new additions, including a model locomotive, built by a CPR engineer as a retirement project.

If you have never been to the collection, or even if you are a frequent visitor, it is time to explore the New Treasures of the Chung Collection!

Location: Level One of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, inside Rare Books and Special Collections.

Open to the public Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Visit the Library website for the most up-to-date hours listing.

On until June 30, 2013.

About the Chung Collection
The Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection – a designated national treasure – was donated to the Library in 1999. Dr. Wallace Chung collected 25,000 items related to early B.C. history, immigration and settlement, and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. The fascinating collection now resides in Rare Books and Special Collections in the Chung Collection Exhibition room.

Many of the materials have been digitized and are available online.

For more information visit chung.library.ubc.ca.

In this presentation, Dr. William Wong discusses how principles from Cognitive Systems Engineering, CSE, might be used to design Visual Analytics systems to support intelligence analysts. In designing systems to control processes such as nuclear power generation, CSE has been used to determine and model a priori the functional relationships that relate the performance of the processes with system outcomes. Visual forms are then created to represent these invariant relationships in ecological interface designs. Can cognitive systems engineering be applied to the domain of intelligence analysis? And if yes, how might this be? And how should CSE principles be applied to the design of visual representations in intelligence analysis to take advantage of the benefits we have seen when CSE is applied to causal systems?

Biography

William Wong is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Head of the Interaction Design Centre at Middlesex University’s School of Science and Technology in London, UK.  His research interests are in Cognitive engineering, naturalistic decision making, and representation design, in complex dynamic environments; Cognitive task analysis methods; HCI and multimedia in learning, in virtual environments, and museums; Usability engineering and interaction design.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library 

Memisevic, R., Sanderson, P., Choudhoury, S., & Wong, W. (2005). Work domain analysis and ecological interface design for hydropower system monitoring and control. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics. Hawaii, USA, 10-12 October 2005.  Link: http://itee.uq.edu.au/~cerg/publications/IEEE-SMC2005MemisevicSandersonEtAl-HPS-EID.pdf

Blandford, A., & William Wong, B. L. (2004). Situation awareness in emergency medical dispatch. International Journal of human-computer studies, 61(4), 421-452.  Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581904000102

UBC Library Research Guides

Library and Information Science

Computer Science

This session presents two tales of Canadian multiculturalism in general and multicultural education in particular. One tale is of a common sense, dominant multicultural education that underscores multiculturalism as a symbol and premiere characteristic of Canada. There may have been some critiques from the left and the right in the past and there’s always the awkwardness of Quebec’s interculturalism and intercultural education but these are past and peripheral matters that do little to trouble the idea that Canada and its approach to diversity education are decidedly multicultural. A rather different tale emerges when we consider multiculturalism and multicultural education in the context of global developments such as “the death of multiculturalism” discourse, the emergence of European interculturalism and intercultural education and even national and local developments of a variety of school board approaches to diversity, all of which constitutes cracks in the façade of a completely dominant Canadian multiculturalism and multicultural education. The invitation is for us to consider what the future of diversity education ought to be locally and nationally given the contradictory state of affairs of complacently hegemonic Canadian multiculturalism and multicultural education on the one hand and passé, challenged and undermined multiculturalism and multicultural education on the other.

Andrew Kaufman’s Born Weird tells the tale of the Weird family who have always been a little off, but not one of them ever suspected that they’d been cursed by their grandmother, Annie Weird. Now Annie is dying and she has one last request: for her far-flung grandchildren to assemble in her hospital room so that at the moment of her death, she can lift these blessings-turned-curses. What follows is a quest like no other, tearing up highways and racing through airports, from a sketchy Winnipeg nursing home to the small island kingdom of Upliffta, from the family’s crumbling ancestral Toronto mansion to a motel called Love.

The title of Camille Martin’s latest book of poetry, Looms, signifies the weaving tool as well as the shadowing appearance of something, These “woven tales” were inspired by Barbara Guest’s statement that a tale “doesn’t tell the truth about itself; it tells us what it dreams about.” The strands of their surreal allegories converse, one idea giving rise to another, and the paths of their dialogue become the fabric of the narrative. In a second meaning, something that looms remains in a state of imminent arrival. Such are these tales, like parables with infinitely deferred lessons.

In Barry Webster‘s latest novel, The Lava in My Bones, a frustrated Canadian geologist studying global warming becomes obsessed with eating rocks after embarking on his first same-sex relationship in Europe. Back home, his young sister is a high-school girl who suddenly starts to ooze honey through her pores, an affliction that attracts hordes of bees as well as her male classmates but ultimately turns her into a social pariah. Meanwhile, their obsessive Pentecostal mother repeatedly calls on the Holy Spirit to rid her family of demons. The siblings are reunited on a ship bound for Europe where they hope to start a new life, but are unaware that their disguised mother is also on board and plotting to win back their souls, with the help of the Virgin Mary.”

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the UBC Reads Sustainability. The Art of Fermentation is the most comprehensive guide to do-it-yourself home fermentation ever published. Sandor Katz presents the concepts and processes behind fermentation in ways that are simple enough to guide a reader through their first experience making sauerkraut or yogurt, and in-depth enough to provide greater understanding and insight for experienced practitioners. While Katz expertly contextualizes fermentation in terms of biological and cultural evolution, health and nutrition, and even economics, this is primarily a compendium of practical information—how the processes work; parameters for safety; techniques for effective preservation; troubleshooting; and more. With full-color illustrations and extended resources, this book provides essential wisdom for cooks, homesteaders, farmers, gleaners, foragers, and food lovers of any kind who want to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for arguably the oldest form of food preservation, and part of the roots of culture itself. Readers will find detailed information on fermenting vegetables; sugars into alcohol (meads, wines, and ciders); sour tonic beverages; milk; grains and starchy tubers; beers (and other grain-based alcoholic beverages); beans; seeds; nuts; fish; meat; and eggs, as well as growing mold cultures, using fermentation in agriculture, art, and energy production, and considerations for commercial enterprises. Sandor Katz has introduced what will undoubtedly remain a classic in food literature, and is the first—and only—of its kind.

Come join us for a film screening of “The Broken Destiny of Poetry” by Rahmat Haidari and Sajia Hussain, a documentary about a young Afghan woman poet’s struggle to survive and write. Focusing on female poetry in Afghanistan, this documentary reveals how the few female poets often have to fight for their right to read and write their poems. The few female poets that do live in Afghanistan live in constant fear. Some of them, like Nadia Anjoman, have sacrificed themselves for their goal of writing. For other brave women like, Karima, a twenty-six year old woman who had graduated from Kabul University where she studied Dari literature faced serious retribution after her publication of a 47 page poem collection in 1990 and faces constant threats in her home province of Badakhshan in Afghanistan.

• Schedule of events also include: a First Nations welcome by Wanda John-Kehewin and poetry launch of “In the Dog House”
• Navaho flute music by Angelo Moroni
• World Poetry Peace Poetathon official launch
• Music release by Japanese composer Yoshifumi Sakura
• Music and poetry readings

This event is organized by the World Poetry Society as part of the World Poetry Canada International Peace Festival exhibition at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre during the month of April. While admission is free, please reserve space with Ariadne Sawyer by email at: ariadnes@uniserve.com

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Richmond Public Library as part of the “The Joy Of Reading: Chinese Literature Appreciation” lecture series. This talk focuses on living and writing between two cultures, Chinese and Canadian. Racial hybridity has informed most of Prof. Wah’s writing and that of many Chinese-Canadian writers. Wah will read and discuss his own book Diamond Grill (about growing up in a small town Chinese-Canadian restaurant), as well as writings by poets Rita Wong, Larissa Lai, Weyman Chan, and others. He will situate this writing within the recent historical context in North America of “writing through race.” Presented by Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, Professor Emeritus Fred Wah.

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS). Much of the research on how we encounter information tends to focus on linear models of intentional information search. Recently a number of studies and frameworks have suggested that not all information individuals encounter is through goal-oriented search, but rather that individuals often find information and connect with people accidentally, without purposefully looking. A wide range of terms and models have been proposed to describe the phenomenon. The present presentation has three goals. First, it provides an overview of the current debate around the phenomenon of serendipity, presenting and contrasting various models of how serendipity occurs. Second, it discusses how technology could affect serendipity and opportunities for designing digital tools that support innovation, creativity, and resource discovery. Finally, it presents current research findings on how serendipity impacts the work of scholars.

Live Webcast – Begins 12.00PM on March 20, 2013.  [Instructions: Please click on play button in the video screen to view the lecture.  For full screen view, click on upper right hand]

How can the meeting between “old” and “new” media become a fruitful encounter?  In the 20th century children’s literature research developed into a theoretically reflexive investigation of the relation between children, childhood and texts.  It could be said to have undergone the linguistic “turn”, which has often been seen as a parallel to the emergence of digital media.

Digital media, however, challenge the paradigm of print culture and the theories developed under previous media ecologies.  The field of New Literacy has emerged as an interdisciplinary movement aiming at analyzing the processes and “texts” of the emerging digital knowledge system.  New Literacy, from a Cultural Studies point of view, can be defined as socially recognized ways of creating, communicating and negotiating meaningful content, as mediated by texts and embedded in d/Discourses (Knobel & Lankshear).  The mediation between media, text and user is here studied from primarily a socio-cultural perspective.

The concept of aesthetics, as developed in theories of play, hermeneutics, linguistics, literature and “everyday” aesthetics, seems oddly absent in New Literacy research.  With picture books as a case, my paper suggests that children’s literature studies and New Literacy research should be seen as a converging theoretical field. Whereas children’s literature research needs to strengthen its concepts of materiality and mediation, New Literacy research should develop its concept of “text” to also encompass the aesthetic and critical view of knowledge following the linguistic turn

This lecture is inspired by my research in the concept of knowledge media (with colleagues at RSLIS) and by the current planning of a research network on advanced literacy skills and textual competences in the new media age with participation from researchers in children’s literature and literacy from Sweden, England, Germany and Denmark.  The lecture will also connect its theoretical points to trends in the development of library services for children and young adults in Denmark (e.g. based on the governmental committee work “Fremtidens biblioteksbetjening af børn” [Future Library Services for Children], in which Helene was a research member).

About the Speaker:

Dr. Helene Høyrup is Associate Professor in Children’s Culture, Department of Cultural and Media Studies, Royal School of Library and Information Science. As Professor of children’s culture and literature, Dr. Høyrup’s research interests are situated broadly in the fields of children’s literature and culture, cultural and media studies, and the sociology of literature, knowledge and media. Her research has explored the history, poetics, theory, sociology and communication of children’s literature; children’s literacy in the light of digital literature, and verbal, visual and digital epistemologies; children’s media and culture; and childhood studies in an interdisciplinary perspective.

Present research projects include “Children’s Literature, Text and Canon: Studies in the Sociology of Knowledge,” which combines studies in the history and poetics of children’s literature with the theory and sociology of knowledge.  A second project is “Children’s Library 2.0: Digital Communication, Innovation and Learning.”  She has published extensively in Danish and English on children’s literature theory and canonicity, the European tradition in children’s literature, digital literature and new literacies, folk and fairy tales, Hans Christian Andersen, Rowling, Pullman and Tolkien.

March 20, 2013, 12.00 to 1.00PM at the Lillooet Room (Room 301), Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (1961 East Mall, V6T 1Z1)

Are you interested in viewing more Irving K. Barber Learning Centre webcasts?   Please find here for our archived recordings.

Created by Ariadne Sawyer and Alejandro Mujica-Olea in 1997, the World Poetry Society is built upon respect, honor, support, peace and love for all. With a focus on recognizing multicultural and multilingual poets and writers, the society promotes its mandate through the power of arts and education. This is the Third Annual World Poetry Canada International Peace Festival. All events are free and open to the public. Please register at www.worldpoetry.ca and bring a poem on peace, a story about peace, a song, or a dance! Space is limited for all events, so please register early!

The Festival will feature:
1. International guests, local poetry groups, community partners, dancers, musicians, filmmakers and multimedia.
2. Display tables, Poetic Necklace display at Ike’s Art Gallery April 4th – 30th.
3. Extra event: World Poetry Youth Peace Poetathon World Wide.
4. The World Poetry Canada International Month, April 4th – 30th with our partner the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
5. World Poetry National Poetry Month Peace Display plus the display cases in the IKBLC foyer, April 4th – 30th
6. Gift poems!

Event Program:
April 4th, 7pm – 9pm, Grand Opening in the Peace River Room(Room 261) of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre

• First Nations Welcome by Godwin Barton
• World Poetry Peace E-Anthology launch
• Music by Rio Samay Band and performance by the Jasmine Dancers
• Empowerment Awards
• World Poetry Exclusive: “Silence,” a short documentary by Afghan filmmaker Sharif Saedi

April 11th, 7pm – 9pm in the Lillooet Room (Room 301) of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre

• Cross Country Tour of Penn Kemp’s Jack Layton, Art in Action; bring a story or read from the Jack Layton book
• Poetry readings by local poets
• International guests include Michael Kwaku Somuah and Kwame Yirenkyi

April 20th, 1pm – 4pm in the Lillooet Room (Room 301) of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre

• First Nations welcome by Wanda John-Kehewin and poetry launch of “In the Dog House”
• Navaho flute music by Angelo Moroni
• World Poetry Peace Poetathon official launch
• Music release by Japanese composer Yoshifumi Sakura
• World Poetry Exclusive: “The Broken Destiny of Poetry,” an Afghan documentary by Rahmat Haidari and Sajia Hussain
• Music and poetry readings

Sponsored by:

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College.  Dr. Barnor Hesse. Associate Professor of African American Studies, Political Science and Sociology, Department of African American Studies, Northwestern University.   ‘Raceocracy: How the racial state of exception proves the racial rule’.  The talk is based on the forthcoming: ‘Creolizing the Political: Race Governance and Black Politics’. It seeks to rethink the meaning of race and racism in relation to questions of western governance; and secondly, to identify a theoretical framework in which to understand ‘Black politics’ as a series of interventions and practices irreducible to the bodies of the populations who produce those practices and interventions.  This lecture is part of the ongoing Green College lecture series, “Law and Society.”

Live Webcast – begins at 12.00PM on March 13, 2013.  Please click on play button to view the lecture — for full screen view, click on upper right hand.

This iSchool@UBC colloquium presents results from a research project designed to engage elementary school students as active participants in their own science education, before, during, and after visits to a science museum. The Habitat Tracker project uses online and mobile learning technologies to integrate field trips to a wildlife center with a standards-based curriculum designed to help elementary students better understand the nature of science. Along with a series of integrated classroom activities, participating students use a custom-designed iPad application and website to collect, share, and analyze scientific data about north Florida wildlife and natural habitats while on a field trip to the Tallahassee Museum, a 52-acre, outdoor natural science museum. Students contribute their observations in real time to shared databases that can be accessed by other students online, and used to develop and answer scientific research questions, thereby helping students better understand the scientific inquiry process. This presentation will provide an overview of the information systems and science education modules developed for the project, and discuss results from pilot tests conducted with more than 1500 fourth and fifth grade students.

About the Speaker: Paul Marty is an associate professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at Florida State University. His research and teaching interests include museum informatics, information behavior, and user-centered design. His current research focuses on the evolution of sociotechnical systems and collaborative work practices, digital convergence and the evolving roles of information professionals, and involving users in the co-construction of distributed, digital knowledge.

Location: Dodson Room, Level 3, Chapman Learning Commons, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, 1961 East Mall, UBC – 12.00-1.00PM,      March 13, 2013

From March 1st to March 31st, photos taken by members of the UBC Photo Society will be available for viewing in the IKBLC foyer display cases and in Ike’s Café.

Live Webcast – begins at 11.00AM on March 8, 2013.   Please click on play button to view the lecture — for full screen view, click on upper right hand.

Jack Lohman is keynote speaker of the 4th Annual iSchool@UBC Research Day.   The theme of this year’s iSchool@UBC Research Day is Infrastructures of Knowledge: Mediating Memories, Representing Relationships, Framing Futures.  The iSchool@UBC, invites UBC faculty and students to join in sharing the depth and breadth of their research endeavours at the intersections of information, people and technology.

Jack Lohman is Chief Executive Officer of the Royal British Columbia Museum.  Prior to that, he served as Professor of Museum Design and Communication at the Bergen National Academy of the Arts in Norway and Chairman of the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland.   Before taking up his present appointment, Jack Lohman had been Director of the Museum of London since August 2002.  In 2000 He was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of Iziko Museums of Cape Town, South Africa, an organization consisting of fifteen national museums including the South African Museum, the South African Maritime Museum and the South African National Gallery where he led the creation of a new museum institution and the transformation of the national museum sector.  From 1985 to 1994 he worked for English Heritage, developing museums and exhibitions both nationally and internationally.

March 8, 11.00 a.m.-12.00 p.m at the Bralorne Room (rm 490) in the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS)

Address: School of Library, Archival and Information Studies
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
Suite 470- 1961 East Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1

voice: 604-822-2404
fax: 604-822-6006
email: SLAIS.Info@ubc.ca
webmaster: mss@mail.ubc.ca

“Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS). In April 1953, eleven-year old Brian McLaughlin wrote to psychiatrist Fredric Wertham in response to the latter’s article in Reader’s Digest, “Comic Books – Blueprints for Delinquency.” The boy asserted confidently: “Anybody that goes out and kills someone because he read a comic book is a simple minded idiot. Sound silly? So does your item.” McLaughlin was not the only young person to critique Wertham’s argument about comics: dozens more wrote him in 1953 and 1954.

In the late 1940s and culminating in 1954 with the publication of Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent and the televised hearings on comics held by a United States subcommittee, comic books were the most contested form of print. Young readers could not get enough of them, purchasing more than a billion new comic books issues a year in the early 1950s. Adult critics such as Wertham feared, that by reading these four-color pamphlets full of stories of superheroes, cowboys, and jungle queens, young people would stunt their cultural development, ruin their eyesight, and fall into lives of depravity.

This presentation draws in part from Wertham’s manuscript collection at the Library of Congress and the archival record of the 1954 Senate hearings to document and analyze some of the ways young readers challenged and protested adults’ understanding of comic book reading. Carol Tilley, Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, did not expect to find letters from young comics readers when she explored these collections. The discovery of these narratives has prompted me to extend this investigation into locating more descriptions of children’s reading experiences – many of which are unfiltered and unmediated by adults—that can serve as potent evidence to enrich scholarship in children’s print culture.”

Despite a presence in Canada that dates back farther than Samuel de Champlain’s first voyage down the St. Lawrence River, people of African descent are often absent from Canadian history books.  There is little mention of the fact that slavery once existed in the territory that is now Canada, or that many of the Loyalists who came here after the American Revolution and settled in the Maritimes were Blacks. Few Canadians are aware of the many sacrifices made in wartime by black Canadian soldiers, as far back as the War of 1812.

In an attempt to heighten awareness of black history in the United States, historian Carter G. Woodson proposed an observance to honour the accomplishments of black Americans. This led to the establishment of Negro History Week in 1926. Woodson is believed to have chosen February for this observance because the birthdays of the renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass (February 14) and former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln (February 12) fall in this month.  During the early 1970s, the week became known as Black History Week. It was expanded into Black History Month in 1976.  In December 1995, the House of Commons officially recognized February as Black History Month, following a motion introduced by the first black Canadian woman elected to Parliament, the Honourable Jean Augustine.

The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre is proud to host a display exhibition of resources for Black History Month located on the second floor foyer display case exhibition.

Here are some resources about Black History Month

Reading list compiled by the Toronto Public Library – Link

Hogan’s Alley Resource guide created by the Vancouver Public Library – Link

Black History in Canada Education Guide - Link

Live Webcast – Will begin shortly after 12.05PM on March 20, 2013.  [Instructions: Please click on play button in the video screen to view the lecture.  For full screen view, click on upper right hand]

Image Credit: Princeton University

What is the research library in the age of Google?  Dr. Anthony Grafton provides the perspective of a humanist scholar on recent changes in research libraries that have been brought about by increased digitization.  By examining changes that have occurred over the last forty years in the way that scholars conduct their research and where the library fits in, Grafton sees four crises that today’s academic libraries must face: financial, spatial, use, and accessibility.  According to Professor Grafton, a research library should provide not only physical space where scholars can pursue research in books, but also virtual space where they can collect, store, and exploit electronic resources – an ingenious way to pull humanists, teachers, and students alike back into public workspace, in an environment that has the open, collective quality of a laboratory, but also meets the needs of researchers who work with texts, images, and sounds.  This talk is hosted by Green College as part of its Cecil H. and Ida Green Visiting Professor lecture series.

Reference:

Grafton, Anthony. “Apocalypse in the stacks? The research library in the age of Google.” Daedalus 138.1 (2009): 87-98. [Link]

Speaker Bio

Professor Anthony Grafton is Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University.  His current project is a large-scale study of the science of chronology in 16th- and 17th-century Europe: how scholars attempted to assign dates to past events, reconstruct ancient calendars, and reconcile the Bible with competing accounts of the past. He hopes to reconstruct the complex and dramatic process by which the biblical regime of historical time collapsed, concentrating on the first half of the 17th century.  He has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses on art, magic, and science in Renaissance Europe and on the history of books and readers; undergraduate seminars on historiography; and the history components of the intensive four-course introduction to Western civilization offered to undergraduates by the Program in Humanistic Studies.

March 20, 2013, 12.00 to 1.30PM at the Victoria Learning Theatre (Room 182), Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (1961 East Mall, V6T 1Z1)

Are you interested in viewing more Irving K. Barber Learning Centre webcasts?   Please find here for our archived recordings.

at the Robson Reading Series

Thursday, March 14, 2013, 7pm

UBC Bookstore at Robson Square

Robson Reading Series events are free and open to the public but registration is recommended. To register for this event, please click here.

Photo credit Lee Towndrow

Born Weird (Random House of Canada) tells the tale of the Weird family who have always been a little off, but not one of them ever suspected that they’d been cursed by their grandmother.

At the moment of the births of her five grandchildren Annie Weird gave each one a special power. Richard, the oldest, always keeps safe; Abba always has hope; Lucy is never lost and Kent can beat anyone in a fight. As for Angie, she always forgives, instantly. But over the years these so-called blessings ended up ruining their lives.

Now Annie is dying and she has one last task for Angie: gather her far-flung brothers and sisters and assemble them in her grandmother’s hospital room so that at the moment of her death, she can lift these blessings-turned-curses. And Angie has just two weeks to do it.

What follows is a quest like no other, tearing up highways and racing through airports, from a sketchy Winnipeg nursing home to the small island kingdom of Upliffta, from the family’s crumbling ancestral Toronto mansion to a motel called Love. And there is also the search for the answer to the greatest family mystery of all: what really happened to their father, whose maroon Maserati was fished out of a lake so many years ago?

Camille Martin is the author four collections of poetry: Looms (Shearsman Books), Sonnets, Codes of Public Sleep, and Sesame Kiosk (out of print). A chapbook, If Leaf, Then Arpeggio, was recently released from Above/Ground Press.

She has presented and published her work internationally. One of her current poetry projects is “Blueshift Road.” She’s also working on “The Evangeline Papers,” a poetic sequence based on her Acadian/Cajun heritage and her participation in archaeological digs at an eighteenth-century village in Nova Scotia, where her finds included ancestral pipes and wine bottles. Martin earned an MFA in Poetry from the University of New Orleans and a PhD in English from Louisiana State University.

Photo credit Maxime Tremblay

In Barry Webster‘s latest novel, The Lava in My Bones (Arsenal Pulp Press), a frustrated Canadian geologist studying global warming becomes obsessed with eating rocks after embarking on his first same-sex relationship in Europe. Back home, his young sister is a high-school girl who suddenly starts to ooze honey through her pores, an affliction that attracts hordes of bees as well as her male classmates but ultimately turns her into a social pariah. Meanwhile, their obsessive Pentecostal mother repeatedly calls on the Holy Spirit to rid her family of demons. The siblings are reunited on a ship bound for Europe where they hope to start a new life, but are unaware that their disguised mother is also on board and plotting to win back their souls, with the help of the Virgin Mary.

Told in a lush baroque prose, this intense, extravagant magic-realist novel combines elements of fairy tales, horror movies, and romances to create a comic, hallucinatory celebration of excess and sensuality.

Barry Webster‘s first book, The Sound of All Flesh (Porcupine’s Quill), won the ReLit Award for best short-story collection in 2005. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award, the CBC-Quebec Prize, and the Hugh MacLennan Award. Originally from Toronto, he currently lives in East Montreal.

at the First Nations Longhouse

Wednesday, March 6, 2013, 6:30pm

Robson Reading Series events are free and open to the public but registration is recommended. To register for this event, please click here.

This event will take place at the First Nations Longhouse at UBC and is located at 1985 West Mall, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z2.

Photo credit Stephan Hoglund

“In this fluid collection we enter a galactic expanse where absence, distance and fire repel and attract love-bodies in a winged-whirl of magnetic mad flight. Loss, emptiness, space, desire, blood, memory; all devour themselves in the combustions of love without self. The you/other may be interchangeable, never static or frozen or attainable. In these sharp-beaked bird-worlds there is “no going back” – at best, bodies meet only “flame to flame,” mutable and razor-like in feathery, impermanent forms. I find Hunter’s new work a rare melding of Blues, Kabbalah, and personal transcendence– a piercing, hard-won angelic love mantra. A blazing tour de force!”
- Juan Felipe Herrera, California Poet Laureate

“What lies here are the vagaries of a heart wounded, shattered, and redeemed by love. Such generosity of spirit deserves acclaim. A bravura work.”
- Richard Wagamese, author of Indian Horse

Al Hunter is an Anishinaabe writer who has published poetry in books and journals around the world, taught extensively, and performed internationally, including, at the International Poetry Festival of Medellin.

A member of Rainy River First Nations and former chief, Hunter has expertise in land claims negotiations, and is a longstanding activist on behalf of indigenous rights and wellness, and environmental responsibility. Hunter lives in Manitou Rapids, Rainy River First Nations in Ontario.

Al is also the founder and president of Good Life for Young Peoples (www.goodlifeforyoungpeoples.com).

Photo courtesy of the Chung Collection

UBC Library is proud to unveil a documentary film and a book looking at the fascinating stories behind the Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection – a designated national treasure that was donated to the Library in 1999.

The book, Golden Inheritance: The Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection at UBC Library, provides an overview of UBC alumnus Dr. Chung and his family, profiles the dedication and dynamics behind the Chung Collection, and offers an in-depth examination of its three themes: early B.C. history, immigration and settlement, and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. Passage of Dreams: The Chung Collection is a documentary that features the stories of Dr. Chung’s childhood love of collecting Canadian Pacific artifacts and memorabilia.

The Chung Collection is housed in the Rare Books and Special Collections on Level 1 of UBC Library’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and is open to the public.

at the Robson Reading Series

Thursday, February 21, 2013, 7pm

UBC Bookstore at Robson Square

Robson Reading Series events are free and open to the public but registration is recommended. To register for this event, please click here.

    They have no maps. Ours, I’ll redraw.
    Isn’t itself, their neck of the woods;
    needs a rest – something more than a nap,
    and less than death, though death wouldn’t hurt.

In Divide and Rule, Walid Bitar delivers a sequence of dramatic monologues, variations on the theme of power, each in rhymed quatrains. Though the pieces grow out of Bitar’s personal experiences over the last decade, both in North America and the Middle East, he is not primarily a confessional writer. His work might be called cubist, the perspectives constantly shifting, point followed by counterpoint, subtle phrase by savage outburst. Bitar’s enigmatic speakers are partially rational creatures, have some need to explain, and may succeed in partially explaining, but, in the end, communication and subterfuge are inseparable – must, so to speak, co-exist.

Walid Bitar was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1961. He immigrated to Canada in 1969. His previous poetry collections are Maps with Moving Parts (Brick Books, 1988), 2 Guys on Holy Land (Wesleyan University Press, 1993), Bastardi Puri (Porcupine’s Quill, 2005) and The Empire’s Missing Links (Véhicule Press, 2008). From 1990 to 1991, he held a Teaching-Writing Fellowship at the University of Iowa. His newest work, Divide and Rule (Coach House Books, June 2012), is a collection of dramatic monologues. He lives in Toronto.

Basma Kavanagh’s debut collection, Distillō, engages the natural world and seeks to explore our relationship to it. Hers is a poetics of description which subverts scientific observation and the authoritative language of nomenclature for mythopoetic ends. In the opening section (“Moisture”), precipitation is dissected and categorized, but ultimately the deluge of “rain making rain, /making rain” overwhelms controlled interrogation and undulating imagery saturates everything. Nomenclature reappears elsewhere in the book, attempting to anchor object poems about west-coast flora and fauna–salmon, elk, bear, bigleaf maple, bog myrtle–which otherwise drift toward the mythworld and gesture in the direction of the ethereal and the totemic. Understanding that language can be most precise when it harbours ambiguity and surprise, Kavanagh experiments with pattern poems and the layering of multiple voices in her attempt to express “a fullness /an absence /of self.” This is a book which turns over rocks and looks under them in search of truth in its soft, damp hiding places, poems which instruct us to “[d]escend. Blend /your knowing with the breath of earth”.

Basma Kavanagh is a painter, poet and letterpress printer living in Kentville, Nova Scotia. She produces artist’s books under the imprint Rabbit Square Books. Her poems have appeared in the chapbook A Rattle of Leaves, published by Red Dragonfly Press, and included in anthologies in the United States.

Much of the research on how we encounter information tends to focus on linear models of intentional information search. Recently a number of studies and frameworks have suggested that not all information individuals encounter is through goal-oriented search, but rather that individuals often find information and connect with people accidentally, without purposefully looking. A wide range of terms and models have been proposed to describe the phenomenon. The present presentation has three goals. First, it provides an overview of the current debate around the phenomenon of serendipity, presenting and contrasting various models of how serendipity occurs. Second, it discusses how technology could affect serendipity and opportunities for designing digital tools that support innovation, creativity, and resource discovery. Finally, it presents current research findings on how serendipity impacts the work of scholars.

Anabel Quan-Haase is Associate Professor of Information and Media Studies and Sociology at the University of Western Ontario. Dr. Quan-Haase received her Masters degree in Psychology from the Humboldt-University in Berlin in 1998 under the supervision of Dr. Herbert Hagendorf and her Ph.D. in Information Studies from theUniversity of Toronto in 2004 under the supervision of Drs. Lynne Howarth and Barry Wellman.

The primary interests lies in the areas of Internet and society and computer-mediated communication. Her Ph.D. thesis examined how information flows in high-tech organizations employing a social network analysis approach. She also compared employees’ face-to-face, email, and instant messaging networks. She was also involved in a large-scale survey investigating the effect of the Internet on people’s social relations, sense of community, and political involvement. This talk is sponsored by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS) as part of its SLAIS Colloquium lecture series.

Professor Carl James

On February 8, 2013 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM, the Department of Language and Literacy Education and the Faculty of Education presents Dr. Anne Henry, Head of the Department of Language and Literacy Education (Faculty of Education) to celebrate Black History Month.  Dr. Annette Henry will host the conversation with Dr. Carl E. James about his latest book, “Life at the Intersection: Community, Class and Schooling“, and about his work regarding race, equity and education.

Carl James is widely recognized for his work in ethnically and racially diverse communities and for his role, nationally and internationally, in research around equity and identity as related to race, class, gender, racialization, immigration and citizenship. He has conducted research that examines the schooling, educational, social and athletic experiences of marginalized youth and racialized youth. He was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada as a fellow in 2012. Life at the Intersection: Community, Class and Schooling is his most recent book.

As Director of the York Centre for Education and Community, James has been a member of the Faculty of Education at York University since 1993 and is cross-appointed with the graduate programs in the Department of Sociology and the School of Social Work. He was formerly the Affirmative Action Officer at York University.

A former youth leader and community worker, he has extensive experience with critical ethnography, phenomenology, action research and government and institutional policy analysis. Dr. James is widely recognized for his work in ethnically and racially diverse communities and for his role, nationally and internationally, in research around equity and identity as related to race, class, gender, racialization, immigration and citizenship.

Carl James is known for his mentorship and is engaged in professional development with social service workers, community agencies and educators. On an international level, he has been working with teacher educators, teachers and teacher-candidates since 1997 at Uppsala University and Sodertorn University College in Stockholm. In January 2006, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University in Sweden for his contribution to social equity and anti-racism education

CONTACT: Laurie Reynolds (Assistant to Dr. Annette Henry)
laurie.reynolds@ubc.ca

VENUE:
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
1961 East Mall V6T 1Z1
DODSON Room in the Chapman Learning Commons (Third Floor)

As social creatures, our online lives just like our offline lives are intertwined with others within a wide variety of social networks. Each retweet on Twitter, comment on a blog or link to a Youtube video explicitly or implicitly connects one online participant to another and contributes to the formation of various information and social networks. Once discovered, these networks can provide researchers with an effective mechanism for identifying and studying collaborative processes within any online community. However, collecting information about online networks using traditional methods such as surveys can be very time consuming and expensive. The presentation will explore automated ways to discover and analyze various information and social networks from social media data.

About the speaker: Anatoliy Gruzd is Assistant Professor in the School of Information Management and Director of the Social Media Lab at Dalhousie University. His research initiatives explore how social media and other web 2.0 technologies are changing the ways in which people disseminate knowledge and information and how these changes are impacting social, economic and political norms and structures of our modern society. Dr. Gruzd is also actively developing and testing new web tools and apps for discovering and visualizing information and online social networks. The broad aim of his various research initiatives is to provide decision makers with additional knowledge and insights into the behaviors and relationships of online network members, and to understand how these interpersonal connections influence our personal choices and actions.

Naomi Beth Wakan reads at the Robson Reading Series. Photo credit: Elias Wakan  

For more than 10 years, the Robson Reading Series has helped the University share knowledge and engage communities at UBC and beyond. The series featured seasoned and debut writers reading from their works in various genres, and gave them a platform to discuss their works with the audience in a warm and welcoming environment – indeed, our motto has been “live literature and cozy conversation.”

We have been very fortunate to host Canadian talents such as Wayson Choy, Ian Ferguson, Annabel Lyon, Ray Tsu, Evelyn Lau, Esi Edugyan, Steve Burgess, C.E. Gatchalian, Alix Ohlin and Grant Lawrence. While the series is winding down, we encourage everyone to continue to support new and emerging works from Canadian writers. UBC Bookstore and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre remain committed to providing books by Canadian authors to the community. In addition, readings remain scheduled until the end of March – please visit the Robson Reading Series for more information.

We would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts for its generous support over the years, the wonderful authors who have charmed us with their works, the publishers for their invaluable contributions, and the staff at UBC Bookstore and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre who have worked tirelessly to bring fantastic talent to the Robson Reading Series. Lastly, we thank you – our audience – for attending the readings and making the series such a success.

Image: “Prince Uryel” by Uryel Cho

Uryel Cho was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea and received a BA in visual arts from Naropa University where he studied with Professor Robert Spellman and with Chinese art and calligraphy with a renowned master Chinese calligrapher, Harrison Xinshi Tu. Cho also received his BFA from Arizona State University where he acquired practical skills for fine wood carving and metal welding. Since receiving his degrees, his art has been selected for various exhibitions at college galleries, local art shows and at international exhibitions.

Drawing inspiration from Wassily Kandinsky’s style and from Francesco Clementé for their use of primary colors, geometric shapes, and subliminal approach, Cho has re-define his honorable identity, and was able to find a new spiritual connection and mutual respect with his legendary ancestors.

Cho is a member of the Federation of Canadian Artists Association. and currently teaches at the Sunset Community Centre in Vancouver, and will be teaching at the WestEnd Community Centre in March.

For more information about Uryel Cho, please click here.

This exhibit runs from January 24th to February 20th, 2013. Exhibit opening Saturday, January 26th, 2013 from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm in the Chilcotin Room (Room 256) located at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Exhibit opening is free and open to the public.

Where: Victoria Learning Theatre (Room 182), Irving K. Barber Learning Centre

SAAM is partnering with YWCA Metro Vancouver to offer a FREE screening of Miss Representation, the award-winning documentary film that exposes how mainstream media contributes to the under representation of women in positions of power and influence and how the degradation of women through the media leads to the sexualization of women and girls. The film challenges the media’s limited and often disparaging portrayals of women and girls, which make it difficult for women to achieve leadership positions and for the average woman or girl to feel powerful herself.  The film screening will be followed by an interactive panel discussion about issues of gender inequality.

Our Panelists:
Chantelle Krish, Manager of Advocacy and Public Relations at YWCA Metro Vancouver
Angela Marie MacDougall, Executive Director at Battered Women’s Support Services
Amanda Reaume, Associate Director of Advancement in the Dean of Science for Simon Fraser University

Seating is limited, so we encourage you to preregister for the free event tickets here.

In April 1953, eleven-year old Brian McLaughlin wrote to psychiatrist Fredric Wertham in response to the latter’s article in Reader’s Digest, “Comic Books – Blueprints for Delinquency.” The boy asserted confidently: “Anybody that goes out and kills someone because he read a comic book is a simple minded idiot. Sound silly? So does your item.” McLaughlin was not the only young person to critique Wertham’s argument about comics: dozens more wrote him in 1953 and 1954.

In the late 1940s and culminating in 1954 with the publication of Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent and the televised hearings on comics held by a United States subcommittee, comic books were the most contested form of print. Young readers could not get enough of them, purchasing more than a billion new comic books issues a year in the early 1950s. Adult critics such as Wertham feared, that by reading these four-color pamphlets full of stories of superheroes, cowboys, and jungle queens, young people would stunt their cultural development, ruin their eyesight, and fall into lives of depravity.

This presentation draws in part from Wertham’s manuscript collection at the Library of Congress and the archival record of the 1954 Senate hearings to document and analyze some of the ways young readers challenged and protested adults’ understanding of comic book reading. I did not expect to find letters from young comics readers when I explored these collections. The discovery of these narratives has prompted me to extend this investigation into locating more descriptions of children’s reading experiences – many of which are unfiltered and unmediated by adults—that can serve as potent evidence to enrich scholarship in children’s print culture.

About the Speaker: Carol L. Tilley is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she teaches courses in comics’ reader’s advisory, media literacy, and youth services librarianship. Part of her scholarship focuses on the intersection of young people, comics, and libraries, particularly in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. Her research has been published in journals including the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Information & Culture: A Journal of History, and Children’s Literature in Education. A former high school librarian, she is also co-editor of School Library Research, the peer-reviewed online journal of the American Association of School Librarians.

at the Robson Reading Series

Thursday, January 24, 2013, 7pm

UBC Bookstore at Robson Square

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by SLAIS. When seeking information, either within a document or in a large collection of materials, the contexts of collaboration and place have a strong influence on user performance. While those studying human behaviour have noted these factors, there is at present only a limited understanding of how to provide features that exploit these contexts in computer-based information discovery systems. In this seminar, Dr. Buchanan will report on a series of projects that have uncovered how each factor can be leveraged in new interactions between people and technology, and indicate how the interplay between social and location contexts can provide opportunities neither can on their own. George Buchanan is a Reader in the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design at City University London. His main areas of research encompass information seeking and mobile technologies. His work has received a series of best-paper awards, and he is currently Research Chair of the British Computer Society Special Interest Group (SIG) on Interaction.

The Reef, by Ian MacDonald

This is the second installment of this exhibition by a collective group of sculpture artists (featuring Olga Campbell, Ian MacDonald, Derek Stuart, and Susanna Blunt) at the Capilano Institute under the guidance of George Rammell.  This exhibition will run from January 5 to January 30, 2013.  The Art Institute, specializing in Sculpture, Media Art and Printmaking, is an artist-in-residence programs which offers advanced studies to artists with several years of experience in sculpture, media art, or printmaking, artists practicing in parallel media such as painting or photography, and recent university or art school graduates.  Sculpture studios include the necessary facilities for woodworking, steel fabrication, stone cutting, art foundry processes and paper casting. Areas of concern are often multi-disciplinary and various forms of media.

Ian MacDonald – A retired businessman and successful inventor with commercial products distributed around the world, Ian is currently in third year at Emily Carr University and is a member of the Capilano Sculpture Institute.  He is at the stage of his artist career where he wants to explore a wide variety of methods and materials – be it bronze, metal fabrication, wood, stone or synthetic materials.

Image courtesy, Susanna Blunt

Susanna Blunt – Having lived in the San Francisco Bay area for three years before returning to Vancouver, Susanna continued teaching in both private and public institutions, including three years on the faculty of the Fine Arts Department at the University of British Columbia. She has worked with Yoko Ono, assisting her with various art projects and was invited with David Hockney to jury a national art competition. She then moved to California and started a teaching career.

Susanna Blunt became known for her trompe l’oeil paintings and designed the optical illusion room for the Science World museum in Vancouver in 1988. In 1991 and 92, she lived in France and took part in five shows, group and solo, winning an award in an international competition.  She is widely acclaimed by a large international clientele who have commissioned her to paint their portraits.  Among the well-known people she has painted are Toni Onley, painter, Vancouver; George Woodcock, author, Vancouver; Stanley Donen, film producer, Los Angeles; Stephen Isserlis, Cellist, London; and was chosen in a nation wide competition, by Her Excellency, Gerda Hnatyshyn, wife of Governor General Ramon Hnatyshyn, to paint her portrait for Rideau Hall in Ottawa, Ontario. In 1997, she painted and personally delivered to Buckingham Palace a portrait of His Highness, the Prince Edward.  Please visit Susanna Blunt’s website for more information about her work.

Sculpture by Olga Campbell

Olga Campbell –  Olga Campbell has been creating art since 1993 when she graduated from Emily Carr School of Art and Design. Her work includes sculpture, mixed media, digital prints and photography. She has had numerous shows in Metro Vancouver throughout the years, including a solo exhibition on the Holocaust at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery in Vancouver. In her first book, Graffiti Alphabet, she has combined her passion for photography with her love of graffiti. Olga is currently a member of the Art Institute in Sculpture at Capilano University.  Please visit Olga Campbell’s website for more information about her art.

Derek Stuart - Derek is interested in creation/design, both artistic and technical.  He studied sculpture and bronze casting at the Vancouver School of Art under the late sculptor Jack Harman. During this period, he created a number of bronze sculpture maquettes and in 1977 received a commission to produce a one meter tall enlargement of one of the maquettes, “Freydal (The walking woman)”, for the Coquitlam Centre in Coquitlam, B.C.  In 1996 he was accepted into Capilano College Art Institute program where he studied sculpture and ceramic-shell casting of bronze, under the guidance of sculptor George Rammell, the facilitator of the casting of the large bronze sculptures of Haida sculptor, Bill Reid.  Subsequent to this two year study/work experience, Derek set up a home/studio space on Bowen Island, complete with bronze foundry.  The primal allure of light and colour combined with his sculptural inclinations, has drawn Derek to the world of “cire- perdue “ (lost wax) casting of glass. His studio now includes the specialized materials and equipment required to cast sculptural glass.  Please visit Derek Stuart’s website for more information about his work.

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College’s Principal’s Series: Interdisciplinarity In Action.  Bluesy, opinionated, sly, self-chastising and tender, UBC Creative Writing professor Rhea Tregebov’s All Souls’—her first  collection since 2004—commands a range of tones wider and bolder than anything in her previous six books. All Souls’ bracingly addresses the quandary at the heart of our present moment: the fear of change and the fear of standing still. Enriched by a sharp palate and crackling with confidence, Tregebov’s new poems capture life in all its rueful aspects, and do so with a lyricism of considerable beauty and power.  Rhea Tregebov, is professor at the Creative Writing Program, UBC.  This lecture is part of the ongoing Green College Principal’s Series: Thinking at the Edge of Reading: Interdisciplinarity in Action.

at the Robson Reading Series

Thursday, December 13, 2012, 7pm

UBC Bookstore at Robson Square

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by UBC Arts One. Shakespeare’s final, richly allegorical play has been subjected to widely differing interpretation. Shakespeare disguises these dangerous interests in a subtle allegory hinging on an established linkage between seamanship and rulership, and in the seemingly minor characters of boatswain, master, and ships crew. Dominant readings aside, this play has as much to do with statecraft as stagecraft.

A work of historical fiction, this graphic novel explores the technological imagination of the 19th century from the vantage of two extraordinary entrepreneurs. Readers encounter an alternate world that once existed: a bygone world of gaslight, sideshows and horse-drawn cabs to be sure, but also a forward-looking world shot through with experimental media, profit-oriented entertainments for the masses, and grandiose visions of the future. Written by media historian Jillian Lerner and illustrated by Marc Olivent, The Peerless Prodigies of P.T. Barnum entices us to recollect how identities were made and ideas were hawked in a pre-electronic age.

Nicholas Meyer is desperate to invent himself and meet the celebrated inventors of his day. It is 1857 and New York City is awash with young men who are comparably wily and determined. But Nicholas is something of a technical prodigy, with a background in clockmaking and a keen instinct for publicity. He jumps at the chance to work in the studio of celebrity portrait photographer Mathew Brady and acquaint himself with the outlandish attractions of P.T. Barnum’s American Museum. Spurred on by mentors and rivals, talking automatons and bearded ladies, Nicholas explores the emerging forms of photography, robotics, showbusiness and advertising.  In collaboration with Art, Architecture, and Planning (AArP), the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre is pleased to host Dr. Jillian Learning for her presentation, which will include:

• the media history of graphic novels: highlighting some of the 19th century forms of communication and commercial entertainment that are at the center of this book
• the how-to aspects of self-publishing, scripting and art-directing a graphic novel
• the trending phenomena of “steampunk” how does it relate to this book
• How does this retrofuturistic movement both venerate and repurpose Victorian visions of the future
• What insights and cautions this historian can offer about the political stakes of mining the past?

To register for this event, please find here.

About Dr. Jillian Lerner

Graphic Novel Presentation by Jillian Lerner

Come join us as Jillian Lerner will present on the Peerless Prodigies of P.T. Barnum on December 6, 2012, at 4.00 to 5.00pm at the Lillooet Room (Rm 301) of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (1961 East Mall, University of British Columbia)

• Recommended in the School Library Journal’s Graphic Novel Round-up by Brigid Alverson, April 2012.
• INTERVIEW with Dr. Lerner by Eisner Judge Brigid Alverson on Robot6, ”Jillian Lerner on the strange world of Barnum and Brady,”  April 2012
• Dr. Lerner’s professional reinvention featured on TopCoder’s Innovation blog, “The Invention of Innovation: What P.T. Barnum is About to
  Teach You, Again” by Clinton Bonner, May 2012
• Review on Steampunk Canada, by Lee Ann Feruga, April 2012.

For more information about this event, please contact Vanessa Kam or Allan Cho

Thursday, November 22, 2012, 7pm UBC Bookstore at Robson Square

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS).  Since the Enlightenment, we have built up a knowledge production system which assumes that prime form of expression should be the printed word. However, in a number of fields in the sciences, social sciences and humanities, this model is breaking down.  Geoffrey C. Bowker explores the contours of the break down and discuss possibilities for the future.  Geoffrey Bowker is Professor at the School of Information and Computer Science, University of California at Irvine, where he directs a laboratory for Values in the Design of Information Systems and Technology. Recent positions include Professor of and Senior Scholar in Cyberscholarship at the University of Pittsburgh iSchool and Executive Director, Center for Science, Technology and Society, Santa Clara Together with Leigh Star he wrote Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences; his most recent book is Memory Practices in the Sciences.

“Emerging Configurations of Knowledge Expression”

A musician of striking versatility, GRAMMY® Award winning conductor Bramwell Tovey is acknowledged around the world for his artistic depth and his warm, charismatic personality on the podium. Tovey’s career as a conductor is uniquely enhanced by his work as a composer and pianist, lending him a remarkable musical perspective. His tenures as music director with the Vancouver Symphony, Luxembourg Philharmonic and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestras have been characterized by his expertise in operatic, choral, British and contemporary repertoire.

Mr. Tovey who is entering his thirteen season as Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony, also continues his association with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and as founding host and conductor of the New York Philharmonic’s Summertime Classics series at Avery Fisher Hall. In 2008, both orchestras co-commissioned him to write a new work, the well-received Urban Runway, subsequently programmed by a number of orchestras in the US and Canada.

An esteemed guest conductor, Mr. Tovey has worked with orchestras in the United States and Europe including the London Philharmonic, London Symphony and Frankfurt Radio Orchestra. In North America, Mr. Tovey has made guest appearances with the orchestras of Baltimore, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Seattle and Montreal as well as ongoing performances with Toronto, where his trumpet concerto, commissioned by that orchestra received its premiere in winter of 2009 as a preview of his first full-length opera “The Inventor” premiered in Calgary in winter 2011. To his already busy summer schedule in 2011 he made a return visit to the Philadelphia Orchestra, this time in their summer series in Saratoga, NY and added debuts with the Cleveland Orchestra and Boston Symphony both of which led to immediate invitations to return in summer 2012..

With a profound commitment to new music, Mr. Tovey has established himself as a formidable composer and is the first artist to win a Juno Award in both conducting and composing. Prior to his music directorship in Vancouver, Mr. Tovey spent twelve years as music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, where he founded its highly regarded New Music Festival. A significant milestone in the ensemble’s exploration of new music, the festival premiered more than 250 works by diverse international and Canadian composers under Mr. Tovey’s leadership, with every performance broadcast on Canada’s CBC Radio. Mr. Tovey’s other accomplishments as a composer include receiving the Best Canadian Classical Composition 2003 Juno Award for his Requiem for a Charred Skull, performed and recorded by the Amadeus Choir and the Hannaford Band in Toronto.

Mr. Tovey has also built a strong reputation as an accomplished jazz pianist with two recordings to his name and has made memorable appearances on television, including two documentaries with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and a 1996 CBC TV broadcast of Victor Davies’ Revelation, a full-length oratorio based on the Book of Revelation, with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. He has an extensive back catalogue including recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra, Halle and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra He has also recorded several DVDs, of works including Holst’s The Planets Suite and Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony as well as a solo recording with distinguished guests such as percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, among many others. His recording with the Vancouver Symphony and James Ehnes of the Walton, Korngold and Barber concerti received both GRAMMY® and Juno Awards in 2007.

Awarded numerous honorary degrees, Mr. Tovey has received a Fellowship from the Royal Academy of Music in London, honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Winnipeg, Manitoba, British Columbia, and Kwantlen University College, as well as a Fellowship from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. In 1999, he received the M. Joan Chalmers National Award for Artistic Direction, a prestigious Canadian prize awarded to premier artists for outstanding contributions in professional performing arts organizations.

For more information, please contact Kirsten Walsh, Head of UBC Music Library

Assessing and incorporating teaching and learning resources by and about First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples is critical for librarians, educators and parents. Awareness of diverse epistemologies, notions of cultural authenticity and historical accuracy, and the influence of colonialism, are essential when considering books, films and interactive media for library and classroom collections. This panel will address challenges facing Indigenous and non-Indigenous librarians, educators and parents when drawing upon materials representing Indigenous peoples and cultures. They will offer insights about such issues as cultural appropriation, stereotypes, addressing colonialism and what to do with dated resources. This session is ideal for teacher candidates, classroom teachers, teacher-librarians, youth librarians and parents.

Convener: Jo-Anne Naslund, UBC Education Library
Moderator: Lisa P. Nathan, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the First Nations Curriculum Concentration, School of Library, Archival and Information Studies
Panelists: Debra Martel, Associate Director, First Nations House of Learning;
Allison Taylor-McBryde, Adjunct Professor, School of Library, Archival and Information Studies.

“In Flanders Fields” is a war poem in the form of a rondeau, written during the First World War by Canadian physician and Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae. He was inspired to write it on May 3, 1915, after presiding over the funeral of friend and fellow soldier Alexis Helmer, who died in the Second Battle of Ypres. According to legend, fellow soldiers retrieved the poem after McCrae, initially unsatisfied with his work, discarded it.

The first chapter of In Flanders Fields and Other Poems, a 1919 collection of McCrae’s works, gives the text of the poem as follows:

The programme will include music by Barber, Bloch, Richard Strauss, J.S. Bach, and Enesco.

The Dodson Music Series is organized and performed by students of the UBC School of Music. The Artistic Director is Chantal Lemire.

Admission is free.

The next concert in the Dodson Music Series 2012-2013 will be held on Friday November 9 at 12:00 pm in the Dodson Room of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

Robin Lugg – Woman and Bird

Poetic Representation is an art sculpture exhibitions curated by a collective of art sculpturists (including Parvin Peivandi, Linda Schmidt, Robin Lugg, and Veronica Aimone) trained at the Capilano Institute under the guidance of George Rammell. The Art Institute, specializing in Sculpture, Media Art and Printmaking, is an artist-in-residence programs which offers advanced studies to artists with several years of experience in sculpture, media art, or printmaking, artists practicing in parallel media such as painting or photography, and recent university or art school graduates. Sculpture studios include the necessary facilities for woodworking, steel fabrication, stone cutting, art foundry processes and paper casting. Areas of concern are often multi-disciplinary and may involve the media centre.

Artists Bios

Robin Lugg – Born in Canterbury, England his background has been varied, artistically working with oil and acrylic painting, music, and sculpting.  Currently at Capilano University, Studio Arts Department under the supervision of George Rammell, Robinʼs working mediums are, welded found objects, stone carving, and bronze casting, each of which components are found in this exhibit at the University of British Columbia , IKBLC Art Exhibition, at the original library at UBC, for the month of November 2012.

Image – Linda Schmidt

Linda Schmidt - An artist who works in 3-D, Linda is an artist that sculpts in bronze, glass, wood, concrete and polymers. Over the years she has created many paintings in mixed media, and has shown her work in a solo show and several group shows with the West Coast Clay Sculptors Society and the Sculptors Society of British Columbia. Currently, she am a member of the Sculpture Division of Art Institute at Capilano University.  Please visit her website to see more of her art works.

Parvin Peivandi – Parvin’s works are exhibited in solo and group shows around the world. In doing so, she won many awards including Olympic Academy’s award for her painting with the theme of sport.  Parvin Peivandi is a multidisciplinary artist whose work includes wide range of mediums: from painting, drawings to sculpture and ceramics. She has studied Fine Arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and Capilano University ,where she has learned diverse skills and more knowledge about the Contemporary Art.

Veronica Aimone – Veronica’s lifelong transformations inspire her to create art. Continuously changing her own life, from banker to teacher, surveyor and fisherman to the high tech industry and artist, she wants to take her emotions, an object, or a captured moment and feel it ‘materially’ transform.  She is strongly attracted to the sensuality of materials, to understanding their personalities, to the surprises they reveal and how by working with their natures, they challenge the way she thinks about representing her own life and society and the culture of our current lives. She draws to capture her moments in the everyday, her travels through Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and India.  Her art is inspired by Betty Goodwin, Amadeo Modigliani and Alberto Giacometti.

For more information, please contact Allan Cho, Program Services Librarian.

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College’s Principal’s Series: Thinking at the Edge of Reason: Interdisciplinarity In Action.  In 2011-12, an ad hoc group of UBC students and faculty convened at Green College an interdisciplinary speaker series on the use of animals at the university.  In the wake of this series, convenors report and reflect on pressing questions of how we govern nonhuman animals and their use at the university, and the challenge of critiquing governance and the university.

Speakers include:

• Laura Janara, Political Science, UBC
• Elisabeth Ormandy, Animal Welfare Program, UBC
• Darren Chang, Political Science, UBC

Saturday, December 15, 2012 – 1.00-3.00pm, Lillooet room 301, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre

FEATURE BIOS:

Wanda John-Kehewin is from the Kehewin Cree Nation in Alberta. She lives and works in North Vancouver. She has studied criminology at the NEC and Douglas College; Sociology and Aboriginal studies at Langara, and attended SFU’s TWS Creative Writing Program. She grew up on the Reservation and a huge part of her writing is created from the injustices she saw and experienced. Her work is published in UBC’s Aboriginal Anthology, Salish Seas, and elsewhere; she has shared her “truth” through many readings. Wanda has two daughters and two sons who definitely inspire her write and heal through the creative writing process. Her first book, “In The Dog House” will come out in April 2013.

Kagan Goh was born in Singapore in 1969. After years of traveling, he migrated to Canada in 1986 and now resides in Vancouver. He is an award winning documentary filmmaker, a spoken word poet, novelist, journalist and mental health activist. His work has been published in anthologies such as “Strike the Wok”: an Asian Canadian anthology of short fiction (TSAR Publications); “Henry Chow and Other Stories from the Asian Canadian Writer’s Workshop” (Tradewinds Books) and the Writer’s Studio 2010 emerge (Simon Fraser University). “Who Let In the Sky?” is his first book.”

Angelo Moroni is an actor/musician/composer/social theatre workshop facilitator. Was part of the Latino Theatre Group that specialized in Theatre of the Oppressed (1993-2000). He acted in “The Dying Game” (1998), and studied the techniques of Theatre for Living, Headlines Theatre. In Mexico City he participated as an actor, musician, performance artist and composer in theatre and modern dance companies: U.N.A.M. Theatre, Ballet Neoclasico de Latino America, Poliglotas del Cuerpo, He also has credits on six C.D. Productions: musician and composer in freejazz ensembles: Jazzorca Records. He also gave social theatre workshops in Montessori schools, Cultural Centers and to Amnesty International (Mexico 2000-08). Back in Vancouver (09-present), Angelo has given social theatre workshops to children at Neighborhood Houses along with Social Theatre-Performance Art workshops. He collaborates with Theatre Terrific; Water, Pantaloon’s Pawnshop(2012) and Waterlution as a social theatre facilitator, musician and performer. He also acted in the antagonist role in “Conversations with Willie; it’s complicated”, Scotia Dance Centre (2012). He is now creating S.I.T.E. Theatre, that combines social theatre, performance art, modern dance and street theatre(2012).

Ibrahim Honjo was born on April 16, 1948 in the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Herzegovina). Since January 1995 he has lived in Canada.
Honjo is a poet-writer, sculptor, painter, photographer who writing in his native language and in English. He was introduced in many magazines, newspapers, and radio stations in Yugoslavia where he worked as an economist and journalist, also books and newspapers editor, and marketing director. He organized many poetry events and festivals. Honjo received several prizes for his poetry.
He is author 13 published books and represented in seven anthologies. His poetry was translated in: Korean, Slovenian and German language.

Diane Laloge is a poet and author. World Poetry Director Diane Laloge was born in Oxford University in England among tall spires and undergraduates. It was in the Canadian village of Ponce Coupe (Cut Thumb) , northern BC, Canada that Diane began her love affair with language. In the little one room library, she read everything on the shelves. The family moved to Vancouver in the mid fifties and she began writing poetry under the tutelage of her English teacher Mr. E.C. Barton. After going to UBC for a year she met the Tish poets and made the pilgrimage to San Francisco’s North Beach Beat scene. Although she never stopped writing, began to share her muse with folk music which she performed for the next 30 years. Her first collection of poems The Dreams of a Private Woman” was published in 1995. She was the co=host of the co-op radio program Wax Poetic for thirteen years. Her latest book is Am A War, Poems by Diane Laloge.

Farina Reinprecht is a person of color and a survivor of the South African Apartheid regime. Farina lived in “hiding” for over a decade due to her cross-racial “marriage” considered illegal. Farina knows too well the significance of racism and the ongoing adverse consequences and legacies of oppression which include low self esteem, frustration, anger, disease and violence.

Farina has worked passionately on diversity, cultural, racial and religious collaboration, mental health and safe schools through social support programs.
To demonstrate her firm belief in prevention, she worked as a coordinator, program planner, promoter, public speaker, recruiter and co-facilitator of a schools based program. She utilized her artistic and storytelling skills in elementary schools, to promote cross-cultural understanding and collaboration. In 1997, she used alternative materials, chapter Choices from The Seat of the Soul to promote life skills in high schools.
Farina worked with non-profit service providers and schools, the public sector and served on various community, municipal, non-profit and government advisory committees since her settlement in Canada in 1994. She served on the FamilyCourt Committee of the City of Richmond, BC and on the BC Advisory Council on Multiculturalism. She has also served on the BC Selection Committee, End Racism Awards in the year 2000. She further served on the Van./Richmond Health Board, Children/Youth Population Health Advisory Committee, Richmond Women’s Resource Centre board of directors and the Richmond Parent Association.

Her extensive community volunteering and activism led to her appointment to the B.C. Advisory Council on Multiculturalism in 2002.
She turned to the silent but effective mode of communication – the arts, facilitated free form visual art workshops on paper sculpture, participated in a popular theatre workshop development with the Headlines Theatre­ to promote issues of concern to her. In 2006, she was one of the emerging artists selected to celebrate Mosaic’s 30 Anniversary, in a partnership with the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. Farina’s poem Love of Mankind published in the Anthology of Verse in 2002 by the Poetry Institute of Canada. Additional poems have been presented at the World Poetry Gala at the Vancouver Public library in 2006 and other events. She is a past guest of World Poetry Radio Cafe.

Kumar Bhujel is a traditional singer of Bhutani ethnicity.

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS).  Once undertaken primarily by museum professionals, the activity of  curatorship has  been  popularized via the Web. Social media tools, such as YouTube playlists and Pinterest Web bulletin boards, enable users to curate a diverse range of materials for personal use and for broader publication.  But what makes one set of “curated” items more interesting than another? In this paper, we show how findings from an initial humanistic  inquiry led to a lab-based user  experiment, and how combined insights from these studies have illuminated new research streams in both humanistic and design research modes.

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College’s Population Health lecture series.  Health is a societal resource to be produced in everyday life based on the (unequally distributed) resources people have individually and collectively available. In regard to such resources, economic and social forms of capital have been studied extensively, whereas the effects of cultural capital are much less well understood. Using examples from an ongoing health survey in Switzerland, Thomas Abel will argue that particularly in societies with comprehensive social security systems in place, people’s cultural capital may occupy a central role in the production of health. He will present examples of measures of cultural and social capital currently tested in an ongoing health survey in Switzerland and address questions on measurement and/or issues on theoretical-conceptual challenges around cultural capital and health. Thomas Abel is a visiting Professor at UBC Vancouver. He joined UBC in March and will continue his research until October 31st, 2012. Thomas is a Medical Sociologist and Full Professor for Health Research at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine of the University of Bern, Switzerland (http://www.ispm.ch ). In Bern he is chair of the division of Social and Behavioural Health Research. Applying a structure-agency perspective, Thomas Abel’s major research program addresses issues of social stratification and inequalities in health and health behaviours.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012, 4:30-6:00pm

Dodson Room, 302 IK Barber Learning Centre

Assessing and incorporating teaching and learning resources by and about First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples is critical for librarians, educators and parents. Awareness of diverse epistemologies, notions of cultural authenticity and historical accuracy, and the influence of colonialism, are essential when considering books, films and interactive media for library and classroom collections. This panel will address challenges facing Indigenous and non-Indigenous librarians, educators and parents when drawing upon materials representing Indigenous peoples and cultures.  They will offer insights about such issues as cultural appropriation, stereotypes, addressing colonialism and what to do with dated resources. This session is ideal for teacher candidates, classroom teachers, teacher-librarians, youth librarians and parents.

Convener: Jo-Anne Naslund, UBC Education Library

Moderator: Lisa P. Nathan, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the First Nations Curriculum Concentration, School of Library, Archival and Information Studies

Panelists:

• Debra Martel, Associate Director, First Nations House of Learning
• Jan Hare, Assistant Professor, Department of Language and Literacy Education
• Alison Taylor-McBride, Adjunct Professor, School of Library, Archival and Information Studies.

For more information, please contact School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies’ Eric Meyers or Aaron Loehrlein

UBC Community Learning Initiative / AUCC Students for Development

Saturday, October 20, 2012 from 12:00 PM to 5:30 PM (PDT)

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS). The School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, the iSchool at The University of British Columbia, cordially invites you to the first of our Fall 2012 Colloquium Series, where Julienne Molineaux will present “Library and Archives Canada, Ten Years After the Merger.” Integration of collections and institutions in the libraries, archives and museums sector is almost commonplace now, but in the early 2000s the merger of Canada’s National Archives and National Library to create Library and Archives Canada /Bibliothèque et Archives Canada (LAC-BAC), was novel. Ten years since that process formally began it is worth asking, how is this institution faring? Restructuring does not always solve the problems it sets out to solve. Additionally, new problems are created along the way. This talk addresses two questions: have the problems that prompted the LAC merger been solved, and what new problems have emerged?

The Cross-Cultural Dialogue, October 27th, Saturday, 2:00-5:00 p.m. Closing Night and Art Sale, October 27, Saturday, 5:00-8:00 p.m. Room 261, Peace River Room, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre

The October 27 cross-cultural symposium, pecha-kucha style, brings together artists, community organizers, youth leaders, planners and city residents to address questions about the role of arts, culture and artistic expressions in community capacity-building within and across multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, multi-religious diasporic communities, marked by increased internal diversity and interactions with indigenous and settler communities, both old and new. What role do arts and culture play in citizenship building and community development within multicultural cities such as Vancouver? What can the arts, culture and artistic expressions do to engage multicultural communities in inter-cultural dialogues about social justice and sustainability in our cities that aim for greater social cohesion and inclusivity? How do Vancouver’s multi-cultural communities interpret, interrogate and interact with the City’s “green” and “sustainable city” vision and mandate, given these communities’ existing environmental knowledge and previous experiences with environmental agendas? What can the City of Vancouver and other Canadian cities, as well as the arts and community development community do to respond to these multiple voices and values to make our cities even more sustainable, just, inclusive, innovative, and creative?

Speakers and presenters include:

• Judith Marcuse, LL.D. (Hon.), Founder and Co-Director, International Centre of Arts for Social Change; Simon Fraser University Faculty of Education
• Alden Habacon, founder Schema Magazine; UBC Director, Intercultural Diversity and Strategy Development
• Diana Leung, cultural planner, City of Vancouver, Cedar-Bamboo
• Kamala Todd, social planner, City of Vancouver, Storyscapes
• Callista Haggis & Claire Robson of Quirke (Queer Imaging, Riting Kollective of Elders)
• Melanie Schambach, Emily Carr University
• Norma-Jean McLaren, facilitator, artist, social planner
• Raul Gatico, Mexican-Canadian poet and former political prisoner
• Alejandra Lopez and Youth, La Boussole’s The Illustrated Journey Project
• Honey Mae Caffin and JR Guerrero, CPSHR, Anti-Mining and Multi-Media experience
• Metha Brown, film-maker, Peace It Together, Palestinian-Israeli-Canadian dialogues
• Mutya Macatumpag, dancer, poet, singer, actor, founder of MoonpulsE Productions

This event is organized by Migrante BC, Canada-Philippine Solidarity for Human Rights, Multi-cultural Helping House Society, Tulayan, Kensington Community Office of MLA Mable Elmore and UBC Professor Leonora Angeles, are jointly sponsored by the City of Vancouver’s Community and Neighbourhood Arts and Development Grants Program 2012; University of British Columbia Irving K. Barber Learning Centre; Department of Asian Studies; Institute for Asian Research; Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice; Liu Institute for Global Issues; and the School of Community and Regional Planning.

Weyman Chan author eading and discussion of Chinese Blue, Chilcotin Room (Rm 256), Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, October 30, 3.30-4.30 p.m.

On October 30,  the Learning Centre will feature poet Weyman Chan for an author reading and talk.  Drawing on more than two thousand years of ancient Chinese tradition that present diverse philosophical modes of being, whether it be the spiritual teachings of Kong Zi or Lao Tzu, the military dicta of Sun Tzu or the complex sensibilities expressed by poets such as Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, Li Bai, Du Fu and Wang Wei in the wake of a tumultuous imperial government, Weyman Chan restates these concerns of the past while addressing other “first world problems” in our own contemporary era.

In Chinese Blue, the poet “character” sifts through the earth’s long history of geological layering and forgetting, grappling with the perpetual fragmentation of identity. The poet struggles with the prospect of any inky blots that suggest the finished work of a creator, subject to expediencies—ambition, romance, betrayal—that leave us flawed and human, taking the reader on a spiritual quest burdened by an endless sea of flotsam.

In a stoic attempt to reconcile biological drives with a stance of non-presence and to find a place beyond “perpetual worry” where he can accept ancestral mistakes while tentatively channelling the voices of advertising that condition our vernacular and massage our minds—offering a cliché happy ending to what remains of our physical existence—the poet finds himself wading through jazzily visionary delineations of the modern city, numbed and soundly crushed between “the word and the thing.”  To attend this event, please register here.

Join us at 7pm, on Thursday, October 11, for a reading by Darren Bifford and Grant Lawrence at Robson Square. Doors open at 6:45. Admission is free and books will be available for purchase and signing.

Darren Bifford is originally from Summerland, BC. His work has been published in a variety of journals across Canada. He’s also the author of Wolf Hunter, a chapbook published by Cactus Press (2010). Wedding in Fire Country is his first collection of poetry. Darren currently lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Grant Lawrence hosts the popular CBC Radio 3 Podcast with Grant Lawrence, and Grant Lawrence Live on CBC Radio 3 and Sirius 86, and can also be heard on various CBC Radio One programs such as DNTO, Spark, All Points West and On The Coast. He still spends much of each summer at his cabin in the Sound.

India is on the brink of enacting a law to guarantee subsidised food to about two-thirds of its population. The proposed ‘right to food’ is contentious for its cost, coverage and efficacy. This lecture is about what reforms offer the best prospects. Bharat Ramaswami, Planning Unit, India Statistical Institute and Ashok Kotwal, Economics, UBC. This reading is part of the ongoing Green College Principal’s thematic series, “Public Health Law and Policy in Asia.”

The role of libraries will be examined — specifically the Education Library, First Nations House of Learning Xwi7xwa Library, and more broadly, school libraries. The re-imagined teacher education program has inspired revision in the role Education librarians play to respectfully and meaningfully integrate First Nations history, content, and world-views; commit to inquiry and research oriented education; and emphasize diversity and social and ecological justice. Our libraries can support teacher candidates as they acquire theoretical understandings for teaching and apply those theories in their practice. We bring teacher candidates and ideas together in library spaces that offer unique learning environments, where inquiry, collaboration, the role of Indigenous Knowledge, relationships and ways of knowing are celebrated. This session will be interactive: we present our re-imagined roles and seek feedback and ideas to further ensure our relevance for faculty and teacher candidates.

Speakers include: Jo-Anne Naslund, Acting Head, Instructional Programs Librarian, Education Library; Education Library; Sarah Dupont, Aboriginal Engagement Librarian, First Nations House of Learning—Xwi7xwa Library.

A collaboration between Woodward Library, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, and Fraser Valley Regional Library, the Health Information Series presents Anthony Kupferschmidt. Hosted by the Fraser Valley Regional Library’s Ladner Pioneer Library, Anthony Kupferschmidt will be giving an important presentation on alzheimer and some of the work done by Alzheimer Society of BC. Healthy aging is important for everyone, and it is essential not to forget the health of your brain as well! This workshop encourages participants to actively engage in protecting and maintaining their brain. Learn more about Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, as well as strategies for improving the health of your mind, body and spirit. Anyone interested in brain health is welcome to attend. As the Support and Education Coordinator at Alzheimer’s Society of B.C, Anthony Kupferschmidt leads educational sessions for persons with dementia, their family members and friends, and the general public. He also leads support groups for caregivers and persons with dementia, and offers one-on-one support for those in his community touched by dementia. Formally educated and deeply experienced with the functions of the aging brain, Anthony uses that education in his support for those living with dementia as well as their caretakers and on their journey. Anthony received his Masters degree in Gerontology at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and was Neuropsychometrist in the Clinic for Alzheimer Disease and Related Disorders at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Hospital.

Hosted by the UBC Reads Sustainability Lecture Series. Ozzie Zehner is the author of Green Illusions and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. His recent publications include public science pieces in Christian Science Monitor, The American Scholar, The Humanist, The Futurist, Women’s Studies Quarterly and The Economist as well as educational resources in Green Technology (Sage, 2011) and Green Culture (Sage, 2011). Zehner’s research and projects over the previous two decades have been covered by CNN, MSNBC, USA Today, Science News Radio, The Washington Post, Business Week and numerous other media outlets. He also serves on the editorial board of Critical Environmentalism. Zehner primarily researches the social, political and economic conditions influencing energy policy priorities and project outcomes. His work also incorporates symbolic roles that energy technologies play within political and environmental movements. His other research interests include consumerism, urban policy, environmental governance, international human rights, and forgeries.

My works of art is a process of examining the future and rediscovering the past to build the present, to envisage complex challenges in order to link between different culture, places, times and events.

The basis of my thought is concerned with the balance of high technology and indigenous life, and the growing rediscovery of the importance of indigenous environment as component and significance to the modern times in order to relate and communicate socio-economic and environmental problems.

My works are strongly influenced by social, cultural, religious, spiritual and political norms. Hence my works, whatever their forms and motives reflect the magical ritualism of my rich indigenous roots.

My ideas and inspirations come from my daily observation of the environment and events and interaction with the different people and culture. But I’m also inspired by things that may seem irrelevant to others as my ideas and energies constantly activated my mind and heart for a creative art work.

I believe that art as a ritual has a healing capacity and the artist as a healer will give valuable contributions to balance the mind for a meaningful future.

– Bert Monterona

Program of Events

Opening Night Reception, September 21st, Friday, 6:30-9:00 p.m. Rm. 256, Chilcotin Boardroom, UBC Irving K. Barber Learning Centre

After a Ribbon Cutting Ceremony – with Dr. Leonora Angeles and IKLBC Assistant Director — at the IKBLC foyer, the evening’s event will include guest speakers Dr. Henry Yu and Alden Habacon, UBC.  Bert Monterona will give an artist’s response as the closing speech to the evening.  Food and light beverages will follow.

The Cross-Cultural Dialogue, October 27th, Saturday, 2:00-5:00 p.m. Closing Night and Art Sale, October 27, Saturday, 5:00-8:00 p.m. Room 261, Peace River Room, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre

The October 27 cross-cultural symposium, pecha-kucha style, brings together artists, community organizers, youth leaders, planners and city residents to address questions about the role of arts, culture and artistic expressions in community capacity-building within and across multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, multi-religious diasporic communities, marked by increased internal diversity and interactions with indigenous and settler communities, both old and new. What role do arts and culture play in citizenship building and community development within multicultural cities such as Vancouver? What can the arts, culture and artistic expressions do to engage multicultural communities in inter-cultural dialogues about social justice and sustainability in our cities that aim for greater social cohesion and inclusivity? How do Vancouver’s multi-cultural communities interpret, interrogate and interact with the City’s “green” and “sustainable city” vision and mandate, given these communities’ existing environmental knowledge and previous experiences with environmental agendas? What can the City of Vancouver and other Canadian cities, as well as the arts and community development community do to respond to these multiple voices and values to make our cities even more sustainable, just, inclusive, innovative, and creative?

The events, organized by Migrante BC, Canada-Philippine Solidarity for Human Rights, Multi-cultural Helping House Society, Tulayan, Kensington Community Office of MLA Mable Elmore and UBC Professor Leonora Angeles, are jointly sponsored by the City of Vancouver’s Community and Neighbourhood Arts and Development Grants Program 2012; University of British Columbia Irving K. Barber Learning Centre; Department of Asian Studies; Institute for Asian Research; Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice; Liu Institute for Global Issues; and the School of Community and Regional Planning.

A courageous and timely novel, Tears of Mehndi explores the rich, complex and often heartbreaking lives of a tight-knit community in Vancouver’s Little India. Through the perspectives of several women whose lives intertwine over a generation, Raminder Sidhu deftly exposes the shrouded violence within the Indo-Canadian community, a difficult and often dissembled subject. Sidhu’s characters are women caught between two cultures, struggling to understand the traditions they are obliged to follow while still embracing and often welcoming the fundamentally different values of the West. Through the perspectives of several women whose lives intertwine over a generation, Raminder Sidhu deftly exposes the shrouded violence within Canada’s South Asian community, a difficult and often dissembled subject. Sidhu’s characters are women caught between two cultures, struggling to understand the traditions they are obliged to follow while still embracing and often welcoming the fundamentally different values of the West. “Tears of Mehndi” captures the family struggles of South Asians in British Columbia, and tells the stories of women caught between tradition and western culture. Sidhu was born and raised in Mackenzie, BC.

Hosted by Green College’s Human Evolution, Cognition and Culture: The Evolution of Religion, Morality and Cooperation lecture series. Religion and spirituality are often discussed as “big” philosophical and scientific questions, but they also need to be understood in the context of everyday life. The small city of Binghamton, New York, includes almost 100 religious congregations, along with many non-churchgoers with their own religious/spiritual/secular beliefs. The city can be studied as a “cultural ecosystem” using the same theories and methods that are used to study biological ecosystems. This approach to religion and spirituality can be employed at other geographical locations and provides a new perspective on the “big” philosophical and scientific questions. David Sloan Wilson is Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University.

Shyam Selvadurai, the Canada Council Writer-in-Residence at Green College for 2012 was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He came to Canada with his family at the age of nineteen, and has a BFA from York University in Toronto. Funny Boy, his first novel, was published to immediate acclaim in 1994, was a national bestseller, and won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association. Cinnamon Gardens, his second novel, was shortlisted for the prestigious Trillium Award and has been published in the US, UK, India, and Europe. Selvadurai is also the author of an acclaimed novel for young adults, Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Shyam will be reading from two of his novels and discussing his work as a diasporic writer. This reading is part of the ongoing Green College Principal’s lecture series, “Thinking at the Edge of Reason: Interdisciplinarity in Action.”

Social Media Week is one of the world’s most unique global platforms, offering a series of interconnected activities and conversations on emerging trends in social and mobile media.  How do you attend?  Attendee Registration for the September 2012 conference will begin on August 28, 2012.  Over 90% of events hosted during SMW are free.  Where an event session has a fee associated with it, it will be clearly stated.  Here is a schedule of events happening around the city of Vancouver in 2012.  Social Media Week 2012 in Vancouver is organized and hosted by Socialized, who helps organizations to effectively socialize by equipping them to profit and prosper using social media.

The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, in support of Social Media Week, is actively involved in promoting its programs and services using social media.  Here is a following of some of the social media that we are currently using right now.  Check it out!

• Twitter is a platform for communication and information dissemination as well as social networking in real-time thus bearing similarity to status updates in Facebook.   @ikblc_ubc  @sba_bc  @UBCLearn

• Facebook social networking service launched in February 2004, and as of June 2012, Facebook has over 955 million active users!   Come check out the IKBLC Facebook page and “like” us!

• QR Codes are placed throughout IKBLC – “Virtual Guestbook” which will award a prize to those who sign into the online guest book and leave their thoughts and comments about the current exhibition at IKBLC.

• YouTube - UBC and IKBLC-based lectures, seminars, conferences and performances, the Learning Centre selects programs to be recorded which communicates and promotes UBC-based lectures and events as part of the IKBLC and UBC Library’s outreach activitie

• Photo-Sharing - Google’s Picasa is an image organizer and viewer for organizing and editing digital photos. It is also an integrated photo-sharing website and used to embed images on the carousel slide viewer for the IKBLC homepage.

• WordPress blog has been used as a social media channel to promote timely news & events, encourage dialogue with users, and also to share UBC Library/IKBLC resources (such as the latest webcasts).

• Foursquare is a combination of Twitter, gaming, and Yelp.  When a user “check-ins” to a location, options include pushing the checkin to Twitter, Facebook, or keeping it just for foursquare users.

• Augmented Reality - After selecting a “layer” to launch on the application, one can see the digital information displayed on top of the camera view simply by holding the phone over a specific area.  By turning around, a user can point his or her phone toward the various “Points of Interest” (POI).

• Event Brite Eventbrite provides an effective suite of smart technological fixes for the issue of event management. Facilitates dissemination of information via a custom event webpage with unique URL

• LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere.  Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next.

The third annual Culture Days weekend will take place September 28, 29 and 30, 2012, and will feature thousands of free, hands-on, interactive activities that invite the public to participate “behind-the-scenes,” to discover the world of artists, creators, historians, architects, curators, designers and other creative people in their communities.

As part of the Robson Reading Series, the Learning Centre is pleased to host Raminder Sidhu for an author reading and book discussion on her latest book of fiction.  A courageous and timely novel, Tears of Mehndi explores the rich, complex and often heartbreaking lives of a tight-knit community in Vancouver’s Little India. Through the perspectives of several women whose lives intertwine over a generation, Raminder Sidhu deftly exposes the shrouded violence within the Indo-Canadian community, a difficult and often dissembled subject. Sidhu’s characters are women caught between two cultures, struggling to understand the traditions they are obliged to follow while still embracing and often welcoming the fundamentally different values of the West.

Through the perspectives of several women whose lives intertwine over a generation, Raminder Sidhu deftly exposes the shrouded violence within Canada’s South Asian community, a difficult and often dissembled subject. “Tears of Mehndi” captures the family struggles of South Asians in British Columbia, and tells the stories of women caught between tradition and western culture. Sidhu was born and raised in Mackenzie, BC.  Raminder Sidhu was born and raised in Mackenzie, BC, and now resides in Surrey, BC. She holds a B.Ed. from the University of British Columbia and a BBA from the University of the Fraser Valley. Tears of Mehndi is her debut novel. To attend this event, please register here.

Here are the complete listings of Culture Days events in British Columbia.

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Culture Days is just around the corner.

How will you celebrate during your Culture Days weekend?

Well, to start, we sure hope you plan to go to an official registered activity!

Tip: You can search for activities near you by entering your postal code, or use the clickable map to zoom in to see what’s happening your area. You can also search by keywords, date and time, or categories.

Here are 3 reasons and ways to get out there and make your Culture Days weekend an unforgettable one:

1.  Reconnect with an old friend or long lost love.
Know how to play an instrument, but haven’t tried in years? Never been to the local museum before? Always wanted to write a story or a script? Been meaning to take a pottery or dance class? Saw a show last month and wanna give the director your critique? Seize the day!

Get out during the Culture Days weekend and pay a visit to the local library, museum, gallery, park, theatre, cultural centre – whether there’s an official registered activity going on or not! Indulge yourself in an artistic or cultural experience. Join the local choir, register for an acting class, treat yourself to tickets to an upcoming show, or pick up that book of poetry or architecture that you’ve been eyeing.

Celebrate arts and culture by celebrating the artist or creator in you.

2.  Connect with real people in real life.
Spend Culture Days with friends you haven’t seen in a while. Round up a few people and let each person pick one activity for the group to go to together. Don’t forget to snap some photos and share them on Flickr or Facebook.

Going to a Culture Days activity can also be a great way to meet new interesting people. All official activities are interactive, so you can be sure that there will be lots of conversations happening.

Come to think of it, Culture Days is an awfully good time for couples to reconnect too. Shake up that Friday night or weekend routine – try something new. Surprise your partner with something he or she would never have thought of doing, or never thought you would do!

3.  Capture the action with your videos, photographs and words.
Capture the action. Culture Days is the largest public campaign to celebrate and promote cultural participation. Not only is it the largest, but we think it’s the first of its kind ever launched in Canada, and quite possibly the world. Document this massive grassroots movement. Let everyone know how your city or town rocked this Canada-wide celebration.

Post photos and videos, tweet, or write a story about what’s happening in your community during the Culture Days weekend. We’re on Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter.

In Chinese Blue, the poet “character” sifts through the earth’s long history of geological layering and forgetting, grappling with the perpetual fragmentation of identity. The poet struggles with the prospect of any inky blots that suggest the finished work of a creator, subject to expediencies—ambition, romance, betrayal—that leave us flawed and human, taking the reader on a spiritual quest burdened by an endless sea of flotsam.

In a stoic attempt to reconcile biological drives with a stance of non-presence and to find a place beyond “perpetual worry” where he can accept ancestral mistakes while tentatively channelling the voices of advertising that condition our vernacular and massage our minds—offering a cliché happy ending to what remains of our physical existence—the poet finds himself wading through jazzily visionary delineations of the modern city, numbed and soundly crushed between “the word and the thing.”

Here is Weyman Chan at his most fiercely ironic, tracing a lineage he interprets subconsciously and through the intricacies of its raw genetic material, with keenly biting language that echoes the rhythms of Qu Yuan in contemplation of his own mortality beside the flowing waters of impermanence:

I would prefer to jump into the river and be entombed in the stomachs of fishes than to bow while purity is defiled by vulgar pestilence.

To register for this event, please find here.

“Interwoven like richly suggestive translucent overlays of nerves, muscles, and bones, Chinese Blueilluminates the forces of fathering, masculinity, Chinese heritage, and global commerce scripting a body struggling to resist and redefine its source codes. The text hovers between the seen and the imagined, interrogating both, as it runs a tight line from the jazz of a blue toy piano to the blues of life in oil-greedy Alberta to a Guangdong blue-jeans factory to Dad’s blue cocoon. This poetry vividly sounds the cross-currencies and necessary entanglements of the lyric in times of famine, polar meltdown, carbon credits and the massive production of media trivia.”
—Meredith Quartermain

“There are many things in the world to love. Weyman Chan’s poetry is one. Chinese Blue is a virtuoso performance by a poet who looks deep inside himself, others, and the distant rumblings of the world. He pronounces disquiet over their wordings—Lady Gaga, Arab Spring, G.I. Joe, Kurt Cobain, Two Small Men With Big Hearts and all the other brandings we are forced to carry in our hearts. Chan paints with the eyes of classical Chinese painter, whose brush strokes carry many meanings.”
—George Melnyk

“These poems are marvels of the gone but ever-sighted, every moment in/out simultaneous. Read Chinese Blue in your hover-alls. Peel the world true-gappy.”
—Gerald Hill

“Jackson Pollock, mahjonggroceries, Patty Hearst, Joplin and Monk, Wang Wei (albeit as insect), Robert Kroetsch andNHLer Dion Phaneuf (as a Flame)—populate this poet’s wide world that starts from his Calgary home. A kind of collage familiar to my own hyphenated-Canadian’s tale. Decades of cultural markers come in lush poems back-lit with shimmery quiet that can veritably glow in his respect towards Chinese immigrant parents. With textured, varied diction, Chan tracks imagination’s lyrical moments and its vivid disjunctive trajectories. His fluid, orally driven abandon and heartbeat rambling lines form linear narratives that, while reassuring, can abruptly shift gears at unusual challenging perceptions. Equally, Chan’s gentle lyrical pulse propels energetic shifts that capture and confer due attention to the discontinuous story that forms our quotidian. This is art as hopeful act with a big heart—exemplified in poems about the father, free of self-flexing sentimentality.”
—Gerry Shikatani

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Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Richmond Public Library. Dr. Kwok-Chu Lee has been a good friend and strong supporter of Richmond Public Library since 1995. His generosity has ranged from donating books and money to conducting many successful informational seminars and fundraising activities. In 2011, Dr. Lee donated 47,000 Chinese language books. This new donation is described as a “national treasure.” To date, the total value of his cash and book donations exceeds $1.53 million. In this ceremony, Richmond Library honoured Dr. Lee for his generous donation and acknowledged his extraordinary contributions to Richmond Public Library.

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The Small Business Accelerator is an Irving K. Barber Learning Centre Initiative.