Humanities and Social Sciences
On October 29, students, staff, faculty and community members came together to discuss peacebuilding efforts locally and globally with area directors Cesar Flores and Lizzette Miranda from the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
“It’s very important to see faculty, students and people from the community interested in this big topic because there are realities that the world is facing,” said Flores.
Date: Monday, July 9 at 8:30pm 2018
Location: Memorial Hall
Tickets: Adult $28.00 ($25 til June 22nd) Student/Senior $25.00 ( $23 til June 22nd)
UFV’s Literary Café at the Harrison Festival of the Arts offers an intimate opportunity to get up close and personal with some of the West Coast’s brightest writers and poets.
This year’s theme Eyém Sqwà:l : Strong Words, celebrates the voices of two powerful Stó:lō multi-media artists and their oral, performance-based style, along with world-renowned spoken word artist, Shane Koyczan who has been called the “poet of our generation.”
KELIYA
Keliya is a poet, screenwriter, filmmaker and hip hop artist from the Stó:lō Nation. She is also a graduate from the UBC Film Studies Bachelor of Arts program and aims to tell stories about her people that are not only modern and traditional, but also from an Aboriginal perspective.
Keliya has travelled across Canada and the US performing for communities and youth. These are the people for whom she makes her art and she is passionate about spreading messages of empowerment and love in this way.
OSTWELVE
Ronnie Dean Harris aka Ostwelve is a Stó:lō /St’át’imc/Nlaka’pamux multimedia artist based in Vancouver, BC. He has worked as an actor and composer on the APTN/Showcase TV series, Moccasin Flats, toured internationally as a hip-hop performer, been a director, programmer and producer for the Vancouver Indigenous Media Arts Festival and is now the Program Director for “Reframing Relations.” This Community Arts Council of Vancouver initiative allows Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists to interface with students and youth in schools and communities around the concept of reconciliation. Check out his website @ www.ronniedeanharris.com
SHANE KOYCZAN
Shane Koyczan is an extraordinary talent who has blown the dust off the traditional designation “poet.” He is a writer and multi-media spoken word artist whose work has appeared in print, viral videos, opera and his own furiously-honest, award-winning performances. His first published collection, Visiting Hours, was the only work of poetry selected by both the Guardian and the Globe and Mail for their Best Books of the Year lists in 2005. Koyczan followed up on that success with Stickboy, a novel in verse that chronicled the dark journey of a bullied child. From these words of helpless rage, he was asked to produce the libretto for a full operatic produced by Vancouver Opera in 2014.
Our Deathbeds Will be Thirsty was released in 2012. The book features the piece, “To This Day,” a poem about bullying that went viral on Youtube, receiving over a million views in a matter of days. Most recently Koyczan embarked on a journey to discover his own origin story. One result is the documentary, Shut Up and Say Something, in which he meets his father for the first time. For more information check out: shanekoyczan.com
Helping high school students navigate racial identity
Anecia Gill, Socio
logy BA 2017
By creating an anti-racism mentorship workshop that she intends to deliver at Abbotsford high schools this fall, Anecia Gill was able to combine her passions for social theory and her hometown.
Gill’s family has lived in Abbotsford for over 100 years and she feels a strong connection to this place. She is also drawn to sociology thanks to her mother, who took a degree in the same field and had all of her old textbooks on the family bookshelf. Gill completed her own Bachelor of Arts in Sociology at UFV this spring and in her final year she created the workshop in a directed study with Dr. Katherine Watson.
Inspired by critical race theory (DuBois, Fanon), which outlines the complexities of non-white racial identity, she wanted to help young people in Abbotsford navigate this complicated terrain.
“The root of this is the racism they face,” she says. “I’m hoping that I can help explain . . . and legitimize their experiences so that they can better understand themselves and how they fit within society.” Gill notes that when people have theoretical knowledge and vocabulary, they can better articulate their experiences and advocate for themselves within their communities.
Schools, she says, have had a long history acting as gatekeepers for legitimate knowledge, so offering an after-school workshop that attempts to critique power structures seemed like the ideal place. Her intention is for the program to help decolonize and validate non-white identity by legitimizing and supporting the lived realities of non-white students, in particular, Indo-Canadian youth, whom the program targets.
She admits that she can’t teach high school students the ins and outs of critical race theory in five days, but she wants to spark their interest. And in doing so, she hopes to give youth some helpful tools to understand and negotiate their racial identity.
For a taste of what students will learn, check out Gill’s course outline:
Day one: Cultural hegemony and power knowledge – Gramsci and Foucault
Day two: Critical Race Theory – Du Bois and Fanon
Day three: Brown experiences of racism – Said
Day four: Intersectionality of race and gender: a critique of imperialist feminism
Day five: Wrap-up discussion
There is a new scholarship available to UFV College of Arts students kindly donated by arts enthusiast Eero Sorila to commemorate his parents Henrik and Alice Sorila.
DEADLINE: May 10, 2018
AVAILABLE TO: Students enrolled in any program in the College of Arts (*Preference will be given to Chilliwack students)
AMOUNT: Varies
HOW-TO APPLY: Apply on-line at MyUFV (Log into MyUFV, click on Student Information, click on Student Services, then the tab for Financial Aid.
To learn more, visit: https://goo.gl/GgHS5A
Find inspiration through Eero’s journey in the UFV blog https://goo.gl/7BH8ix.