February Success Stories

Seasonal Sociology announced as a 2021 PROSE Awards finalist

Social, Cultural & Media Studies (SCMS) Professor Emeritus Dr. Elizabeth Dennis recently co-authored a book chapter in Seasonal Sociology with colleague, Alison Thomas, from Douglas College. On January 21, Seasonal Sociology was announced as a 2021 PROSE Awards finalist in the Social Science Textbook category.

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5 Tips on How-To Create a Podcast

A podcast can be used to not only showcase and spread the word about your work and make new connections, but it is also a great tool to use in online courses.

As we adjust to the new normal of physical distancing, the time to create a podcast has never been better. It can easily be done online and from a distance.

Below is a listicle highlighting five basic tips to know when creating a podcast.

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Mapping Ancient Flood Deposits in the Langley Bog: A Student Research Program

J Hughes

Dr. J Hughes, UFV Associate Professor, Geography and the Environment, 2018 

“When I first got to UFV in 2006, retiring professor, Don Tunstall, had left this box of Kodachromes on my desk,” says UFV associate professor Dr. J Hughes, a bio-geographer and paleoecologist in the department of Geography and the Environment.

First used in the 1930s, a Kodachrome is a 35 mm slide used for professional colour photography. “I started looking through them thinking these are kind of interesting” says Hughes. Hughes discovered that the Kodachrome slides had originally come from a local farmer during the 1948 flood, who had recorded images and field notes of damaged properties in the Matsqui and Hatzic areas.

Read moreMapping Ancient Flood Deposits in the Langley Bog: A Student Research Program

Eyém Sqwà:l – UFV’s Literary Café at the Harrison Festival of the Arts

Eyém Sqwà:l = Strong Words @ the Harrison Festival of the Arts

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

UFV History Instructor, Dr. Ian Rocksborough-Smith, featured at Illinois Press Book Exhibit

Dr. Rocksborough-Smith, a sessional faculty member in UFV’s History department, holds his newly published book Black Public History in Chicago at the University of Illinois Press book exhibit on April 12, 2018.

What did you do?

“This is my first book. It represents nearly ten years of archival and oral history research from my PhD studies through my early years as a history instructor at UFV (2013-present). It focuses on how black Americans, many of them school teachers in Chicago, used public history projects to engage with struggles for civil rights and citizenship over the middle decades of the 20th Century. These projects included things like curriculum reforms for public schools, local history organizations and societies, and efforts to build museums and institutions, like the DuSable Museum of African American History – which is alive and well today. For my research, I was very fortunate to interview the now deceased founder of the DuSable Museum, Dr. Margaret T.G. Burroughs, who is considered an artistic and cultural icon of 20th Century Chicago and especially its African American community. I am thankful for all the support I received from UFV History Department colleagues and associates over the years as well as colleagues at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, where I have also taught.”

What’s next?

“My primary research interests include the study of late 19th and 20th Century United States history, urban studies, and histories of race, religion, and empire in the Atlantic world. In particular, my future work will continue to look at how local and public history methods can help to uncover these aspects of the past, particularly in cities like Chicago which became almost “laboratories” for how the “modern” North American city evolved. Currently, I am working on a new project about how white Catholic liberals engaged in anti-racism in the 1950s in northern U.S. cities like Chicago. Indeed, many North American cities became the site of successive immigration of Catholic Europeans over the early decades of the 20th Century and I am fascinated with how these groups on the one hand experienced discrimination themselves but came to in turn discriminate against black Americans and other people of color who moved to the city.”

“I am excited to be returning to teach as a LTA history instructor with UFV. In the courses I have been privileged to teach here, I have learned a lot from my students who are deeply engaged in local issues in the Fraser Valley community as well as global issues of significance, such as the forces that have given rise historically to developments like Brexit or the current presidency of Donald Trump. I’m particularly excited to be teaching a new course on Populism in America (History 396Q), which looks at the ways populism has informed American political culture from the administration of Andrew Jackson through the present.”

Dr. Rocksborough-Smith sits on a panel at the Organization of American Historians in Sacramento.

Stefan featured at NYC’s Infinite Archive: NYPL art exhibit

Shelley Stefan’s work will be housed in a vintage card catalog at the upcoming Infinite Archive: NYPL art exhibition in New York City.

What will she do?

Visual Arts associate professor Shelley Stefan is set to be featured as a guest artist in the upcoming Infinite Archive: NYPL art exhibition in New York City from April 5 to September 3, 2018. The exhibition will introduce a diverse group of 30 artists, each responding to a book, poem, periodical or other archival material from The New York Public Library’s vast collection.

Artworks included span across a wide spectrum of media ranging from:

  • Paintings
  • Printmaking
  • Photography
  • Assemblage
  • Sculpture

Each artwork presents a complex dialogue between the artist and the selected text and will be housed in a vintage card catalog. Visitors will be encouraged to discover a variety of artworks as they open each drawer. Many artworks will include interactive elements, such as solving a puzzle, exploring a maze or unfolding an abstract painting. To see pictures and learn more, visit: https://www.infinitearchive.art/infinite-archive-nypl/

What’s Next?

You can find Stefan in her art studio working on a new series of figure paintings based on her time in Bologna, Italy. This body of work will culminate her arts-based sabbatical research from Northern Italy.

Faculty Accomplishment: Dr. Lenore Newman

Dr. Lenore Newman gives a keynote speech to 240 attendees at The 2018 Urban Agriculture Forum in Melbourne, Australia on February 23 and 24, 2018.

What Did She Do?

The College of Arts’ Dr. Lenore Newman, a Canada Research Chair in Food Security and the Environment and faculty member in the Department of Geography and the Environment, embarked on a speaking tour of Australia (February 2018) to discuss the subject of farmland’s role in food security.

While in Australia, Dr. Newman spoke at a variety of events and toured several innovative farms and not-for-profit organizations, which included:

  • A keynote speech at the Blueprint for future food systems in regional Victoria in Bendigo, Australia on February 20, 2018 (organized by the City of Greater Bendigo).
  • A keynote speech at the Grampians Food Forum: strengthening food security in the Grampians Pyrenees region in Ararat, Australia on February 21, 2018 (organized by Sustain and the Grampians Food Alliance).
  • A keynote speech and panel discussion at The 2018 Urban Agriculture Forum in Melbourne, Austrailia on February 23 and 24, 2018 (organized by Sustain).
  • A presentation at the Urban Farming: Feeding the Future in Sydney, Australia on February 26, 2018 (organized by the Sydney Environmental Institute at the University of Sydney).
  • A half-day workshop presentation for graduate students and policy members at the Urban Agriculture Workshop in Sydney, Australia on February 27, 2018.
  • A panel presentation at the Healthy Soils, Healthy Communities: Pathways for regeneration from farm to fork in Perth, Australia on March 1, 2018 (organized by Edith Cowan University and the Heart Foundation).

She also made guest appearances on several radio and podcast interviews:

  • An Interview with Steven Martin from ABC Radio Ballarat on February 21, 2018.
  • The Conversation Hour with John Faine from ABC Radio Melbourne on February 22, 2018.
  • Greening the Apocalypse (podcast recording) with Adam Grubb on February 23, 2018.
  • Late Night Live with Phillip Adams from ABC Radio Sydney on February 27, 2018.
  • A radio interview with Tara De Landgrafft from ABC Radio Perth on March 1, 2018.

What’s Next?

Dr. Newman made a number of connections on the Australian tour, which could result in the following future collaborations: sharing data, co-writing a paper, developing a case study in Melbourne with a role for students, and working with the City of Greater Bendigo.