Friday, October 22, 2010

A talk by Dr. Kevin Foster called: "Confronting Genocide: Latin America, British Adventure Fiction and the Moral Crisis of Imperialism"

at 3:30 p.m., Arts 133, U of S Campus
Admission is free. Everyone is welcome.

Dr. Foster is a Associate Professor, Department of English, Communication and Performance Studies at Monash University in Australia. He completed his M.A. in English at the University of Saskatchewan, has written extensively on the construction and articulation of national identity in literature, media and film. He is the author of Fighting Fictions: War, Narrative, and National Identity (Pluto Press, 1999), Lost Worlds: Latin America and the Imagining of Empire (Pluto Press 2009), and What are We Doing in Afghanistan? The Military and the Media at War (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009).

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Professor Rosemary Jolly will present a public lecture "'Men not Feeling Good': the Dilemmas of Hypermasculinity in the Era of HIV/AIDS in South Africa"

4 p.m., Arts 133 (under Neatby Timlin Theatre)
Admission is free. Everyone is welcome.

Dr. Jolly is a University of Saskatchewan alumna, and Professor and Executive Member of Queen's University's Southern African Research Centre. She is the author of Colonization, Violence, and Narration in White South African Writing: Breyten Breytenbach, André Brink, and J. M. Coetzee (1996) and co-editor, with Derek Attridge, of Writing South Africa (1997.) Her essays have appeared in PMLA, Ariel, MATATU, and World Literature in English. Dr. Jolly is currently completing a manuscript on violence in South African narratives, including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She is principal investigator on a Canadian Institutes of Health research program on Gender Based Violence and the Spread of HIV/AIDS in rural KawZulu/Natal, and winner of the Frank Knox Award for excellence in Teaching.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Seminar on Testimony with Dr. Rosemary Jolly and Dr. Sam McKegney called: "Jeopardizing Reconciliation through 'Partial' truth, 'Partial' Responsibility: Canada's truth and Reconciliation Commission in National and International Context

at 4 p.m., Arts 1007 (ICCC seminar room), U of S Campus
Everyone welcome.

Rosemary Jolly is a University of Saskatchewan alumna, and Professor and Executive Member of Queen's University's Southern African Research Centre. She is the author of Colonization, Violence, and Narration in White South African Writing: Breyten Breytenbach, André Brink, and J. M. Coetzee (1996) and co-editor, with Derek Attridge, of Writing South Africa (1997.) Her essays have appeared in PMLA, Ariel, MATATU, and World Literature in English. Dr. Jolly is currently completing a manuscript on violence in South African narratives, including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She is principal investigator on a Canadian Institutes of Health research program on Gender Based Violence and the Spread of HIV/AIDS in rural KawZulu/Natal, and winner of the Frank Knox Award for excellence in Teaching.

Sam McKegney is a scholar of Indigenous and contemporary Canadian literatures (and their precursors), Indigenous governance and its pursuit though art, multiculturalism as an ideal and practice, hockey culture, masculinity theory, and literary activism.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Humanities Research Unit presents a Public Lecture by Dr. Ibio Nzunguba.

Carnage, Vendetta and Cannibalism within the Tribal War in Congo-Zaire

12 noon, Snelgrove Gallery
Admission is free. Everyone is welcome.

With independence from Belgian colonial rule, the Congolese people hoped for real liberty, prosperity and a new beginning. Instead, they have experienced nothing but political mismanagement, military rule, economic misery, brutal repression, corruption, and senseless and devastating tribal wars. The tribal conflict in Ituri, a Congolese province located in the North East between 1999 and 2005 has caused the death of over three million people. Despite the intervention of United Nations peacekeepers in order to contain the spiral of death, multiple human rights violations were committed during this terrible war. Would we be right in concluding that the colonial era was better than the postcolonial one?

Dr. Ibio Nzunguba taught in Congo-Zaire before completing his Ph.D. at Laval University. He has published extensively on the life history and works of Congolese popular painters, and on connections between culture and inter-ethnic war.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Mansel Robinson will present a talk called: "Shhhhhh!: A Selection of Readings from Challenged Works."

2 p.m., Reading Room, Frances Morrison Library
Admission is free. Everyone is welcome.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Humanities Research Unit presents a Public Lecture

In Defence of Reading: R. v. Sharpe to R. v. Leugner by Professor Lorraine Weir from UBC.

4 - 6 p.m., Arts 146
Admission is free, everyone is welcome.

Lorraine Weir is a theorist with interests in Postructuralist and Indigenous Epistemologies, and a focus on expressive freedoms and discursive regulation in Canada. She has served as Expert Witness in key expressive freedom cases including Little Sister's (1996), Surrey School Board (1998), R. v. Sharpe (2002) and R. v. Leugner (2009, pending). Concerned with the social and political impacts of censorship, particularly when deployed as a limit to the expressive freedoms of minority communities, she is currently working on a book length analysis of cross cultural concepts of 'story' in First Nations land claim cases and expressive freedom cases in Canada with a view to theorizing the struggle for sovereign interpretative power together with moral and territorial regulation at stake in cases from Delgamuukw and Butler to the present. She is a Professor in the English Department at the University of British Columbia.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Humanties Research Unit presents a Public Screening and Discussion by

Professor Dorit Naaman from Queen's University: "Between Diary and Documentary: Video Perspectives on the Palestinian Conflict."

4 to 6 p.m., Arts 146
Admission is free and everyone is welcome.

Dorit Naaman is a film theorist and documentary film maker from Jerusalem who is now Alliance Atlantis Professor in the Department of Film and Media at Queen's. Her research focuses on Israeli and Palestinian cinemas, primarily from post-colonialist and feminist perspectives, and she is currently working on a book on the visual representation of Palestinian and Israeli women fighters in Israeli visual media. She will show then lead discussion of examples from her DiaDocuMEntary video series, which uses intimate forms and 'looks' to offer alternative views of human and political situations too often reduced to inevitable episodes in a "centuries old un-resolvable conflict."

Friday, November 6 & Saturday, November 7, 2009

The Humanities Research Unit at the University of Saskatchewan in colloboration with the Mendel Art Gallery presents the symposium:

Whose History? Reconstructing Indigenous & Settler Pasts on the Canadian Plains

Mendel Art Gallery Auditorium
Free admission, no registration required

DAY 1: Keynote Talks

Gerald McMaster
THE NEW RE-INSTALLED CANADIAN GALLERY AT THE AGO

Neal McLeod
RETHINKING INDIGENOUS HISTORY: JAMES HENDERSON'S PAINTINGS AS MNEMONIC ICONS

November 6th: 2:00 to 4:30 p.m., Reception to follow

Speakers:
Gerald McMaster, a distinguished visual artist and scholar, is Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto;

Neal McLeod, a painter, award-winning poet, entertainer and historian, and is Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.

DAY 2: Panel Discussion

Mary Longman, Dan Ring, Grant McConnell, Neal McLeod, Gerald McMaster
November 7th: 2:00 to 4:30 pm, Reception to follow

Panelists:
Mary Longman, a visual artist and award-winning sculptor, teaches Aboriginal art history at the University of Saskatchewan;

Dan Ring, Chief Curator at the Mendel Art Gallery, is the curator of a series of acclaimed exhibitions examining the relationship between art making and place;

Grant McConnell, a noted painter of Canadian historical themes, teaches studio and art history at St. Peter's College, Muenster and the University of Saskatchewan;

Neal McLeod, a painter, award-winning poet, entertainer and historian, and is Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.

Gerald McMaster, a distinguished visual artist and scholar, is Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

About the Symposium:
This 2-day symposium is held in conjunction with two exhibitions at the Mendel: James Henderson: Wicite Owapi Wicasa: the man who paints the old men, co-curated by Dan Ring and Neal McLeod; and Mary Longman: New Work, curated by Jen Budney.

These two exhibition-events on the work of Scottish-born artist James Henderson (1871-1951) and Mary Longman, born in Fort Qu'Appelle of Saulteaux descent, open up a space to reflect upon the overlapping and contested histories, geographies, and cultural narratives of Indigenous and Settler pasts on the Canadian Plains.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Humanities Research Unit presents

a Book Launch and Reception

Selling Out: Academic Freedom and the Corporate Market
(McGill-Queen's University Press)

4:30 to 6 p.m., Window Room at the Faculty Club

Come join the author, Dr. Howard Woodhouse, Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations and Co-Director of the Process Philosophy Unit at the University of Saskatchewan to launch this important and timely scholarly achievement.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The Humanities Research Unit and Departments of History and English Present a public Lecture by TOM CLARK entitled "Discourses of Ethnic Obligation and National Reconciliation: Close Readings of 2008's Parliamentary Apology Resolutions in Canada and Australia".

3:30 p.m., 108 Arts, Everyone Welcome. Refreshments will be served.

Dr. Clark is currently on sabbatical from the School of Communication and the Arts at Victoria University (Melbourne), Australia, where he is a Senior Lecturer specializing in discourse analysis and rhetorical studies. In 2009 he is a Visiting Fellow at the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, York University.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Flicks International Film Festival for Young People and the Humanities Research Unit of the University of Saskatchewan are proud to present award-winning filmmaker ALANIS OBOMSAWIN.

Please join us for a guest lecture by Ms. Obomsawin followed by a screening of Gene Boy Came Home with Q & A session on February 10, 2009 @ 1:00 pm at the Neatby-Timlin Theatre (formerly Place Riel), located at the University of Saskatchewan, Room 241 Arts Building. A reception will follow at 3 pm. All are welcome. Admission is free.

Alanis Obomsawin, a member of the Abenaki Nation, is one of Canada's most distinguished documentary filmmakers. Obomsawin began her career as a singer, writer and storyteller and started making films in 1967. Since then, working at the National Film Board of Canada, Obomsawin has made more than 30 documentaries on issues affecting Aboriginal people. Obomsawin's films have won dozens of international awards and have been seen on television and at festivals around the world. In 2002, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada, in recognition of her dedication to the well-being of her people and the preservation of the First Nations' heritage through her filmmaking and activism. In 2008, Obomsawin was awarded the Governor General's Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement in the Performing Arts. Her best known work, Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance on the 1990 Oka crisis as told from behind the barricades, has won 18 awards worldwide. Her latest film is the 2007 National Film Board of Canada documentary Gene Boy Came Home, in which Obomsawin turns her camera on the ugliness of war as seen through the eyes of one survivor, Vietnam War veteran Eugene "Gene Boy" Benedict, from her home community of Odanak.

Saskatoon, SK: The Flicks International Film Festival for Young People has partnered with the Humanities Research Unit of the University of Saskatchewan for their second annual Industry Film Forum. The theme this year is Social Action Documentary, a mode that epitomizes the work of award-winning Canadian filmmaker, Alanis Obomsawin.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Please join us for an illustrated talk by Tasha Hubbard called "ACADEMIC FILMMAKER OR FILMMAKER WHO READS LOTS?: NEGOTIATING A DUAL CAREER"
on Monday, February 9, 2009 from 3 to 5 p.m., Arts 241 (Neatby Timlin Theatre, formerly Place Riel).
Everyone is welcome to attend. Admission is free.

A member of the Peepeekisis First Nation of Southern Saskatchewan, and with ties to the Thunderchild Cree Nation, Tasha Hubbard is currently completing a Ph.D. in International Indigenous Literature and Visual Culture at the University of Calgary. She has extensive experience in the making of documentaries with the National Film Board of Canada, with Blue Hill Productions, and independently. Her NFB film about starlight tours in Saskatoon, Two Worlds Colliding won Gemini and Golden sheaf awards in 2005. In this talk Tasha will show clips from this work and from two others, Circle of Voices and Donna's Story, as she explores the competing demands of film and academic studies on her time and energy.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

FREE Film Showing and Discussion
"The U.S. and Us"
by Quinn at Neatby-Timlin Theatre, Arts 241, U of S, 12:30-2:30 p.m.
Award-winning documentary filmmaker and performance artist Quinn will be present, with film participant David Orchard, to help facilitate discussion. "I can't imagine a better time to screen my film and discuss the issues it presents than now - in the wake of both the Canada and U.S. elections," says Quinn. The U.S. and Us is an intellectual romp through the changing landscape of Canada- U.S. relations. Featuring interviews with Canada's best known activist Maude Barlow and best-selling political authors Linda McQuaig, David Orchard and Mel Hurtig, among others, the film documents growing Canadian concerns over everything from the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the fine print of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). Vignettes of Quinn's performance art humourously illustrate mounting tensions over serious issues of energy, water and national security to question the future of Canadian sovereignty when American interests are at stake. "A concise, informative, amusingly illustrated film on a topic that should be of concern to everyone in North America, " says Mark Achbar, co-director of multi-award-winning Canadian documentaries, Manufacturing Consent and The Corporation. Quinn's previous documentary short, Standing Still, was a touching piece about her relationship with four elderly women from Vancouver Island. This film won Best Western Canadian Short at the 1996 Vancouver International Film Festival and a Golden Sheaf Award at the Yorkton Short Film & Video Festival in 1996.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Book Launch and Reception.
Indigenous Diplomacy and the Rights of Peoples: Achieving UN Recognition by James (Sa'ke'j) Youngblood Henderson,
Director of Research at the Native Law Centre.
4:30 to 6 p.m., Faculty Club, U of S.
Please join Sa'ke'j in celebrating an extraordinary accomplishment: the publication of his third book in the past two years. In 2006 appeared First Nations Jurisprudence and Aboriginal Rights: Defining the Just Society. In 2007 Carswell brought out in more than a thousand magisterial pages his Treaty Rights in the Constitution of Canada. Now Sa'ke'j has renewed his collaboration with Purich Publishing whose list of works on Aboriginal issues is already so strong. A key figure in the development of the Indigenous Humanities at the University of Saskatchewan, Sa'ke'j's national and international work on Aboriginal legal orders and human rights, on constitutional law, and on Indigenous Knowledge and ecological stewardship, has resulted in awards such as Indigenous Peoples' Counsel (2005) and the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Law and Justice (2006).

PRIMARY SITE: COLLEGE BUILDING LOWER LEVEL GALLERY, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon

Orientalism and Ephemera, Jamelie Hassan et al. pay tribute to Edward Said and possible peace in the Middle East: Exhibition runs from October 23 to December 19, 2008

Jamelie and Ron will arrive 20 October to assist with the installation of the exhibition: on 22 October, 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the Mendel Gallery, there will be a prairie launch of the book of essays on Ron's work, Ron Benner: Gardens of A Colonial Present; participants and format TBA (in consultation with Melanie Townsend of Museum London)

Exhibition opening: evening of Thursday, October 23 in gallery, 8 p.m.: public reception and promo for the events planned around the exhibition: words of welcome from Kent Archer and Jamelie. Refreshments served.

Friday, October 24, 2008, 2 events:

Symposium: 2:30 pm to 5 pm in gallery: Legacies of Edward Said: participants: Jamelie Hassan, Ron Benner, Julia Emberley, Amira Wasfy, and Jen Budney (Associate Curator, Mendel Gallery). Refreshments served.

Free showing and discussion of Sato Makoto's documentary film Out of Place: Memories of Edward Said (138 mins.): 7 to 10 pm, Neatby Timlin Theatre, Room 241, second floor, Arts Building. Students especially welcome.

Saturday, October 25: 1 event