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FAQ Mongolia: Some Answers to the Most Frequently Asked Questions on (Mining) Policy

January 5, 2012

(a) “How have recent policy shifts in Mongolia shaped environmental management in the mining sector?” by Kirsten Dales, MSc Candidate, Master in Environmental Management, Royal Roads University

(b) “What role are environmental movements playing in Mongolia’s civil society?” by D. Byambajav, PhD Candidate, Sociology, Hokkaido University, Japan

(c) “How is the mining boom affecting the macroeconomic stability and competitiveness of Mongolia?” by Dr. N. Bolor, Freelance Consultant, Toronto, Canada, Formerly Associate Professor, National University of Mongolia and Policy Analyst, Mongolian National Mining Association

(d) “How is China viewed in Mongolia?” by J. Mendee, MA Asia Pacific Policy Studies, MA Candidate, Political Science, UBC

(e) “The Mongolian government wants to overcome charges of corruption. How can governance be improved?” by Hon. Jim Abbott PC, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Cooperation (retired)

(f) “How stable is Mongolian democracy? What likelihood is there for radical change in the political context of economic development?” by Julian Derkes, Dr. Julian Dierkes, Associate Professor and Coordinator, Program on Inner Asia,UBC

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, and hosted by the Mongolia Lecture Series at the Institute of Asian Research, UBC and supported by Prophecy Coal Corporation.

Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library

Barton, K., & Ellard, C. (2012). Insight into human navigation in urban environments from Mongolian gerbils (meriones unguiculatus). Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology-Revue Canadienne de Psychologie Experimentale, 66(4), 291-292. [Link]

Yamamura, N., Fujita, N., & Maekawa, A. (2013). The Mongolian ecosystem network: Environmental issues under climate and social changes (1. Aufl. ed.). Springer Japan. [Link]

Neupert, R. F. (1999). Population, nomadic pastoralism and the environment in the mongolian plateau. Population and Environment, 20(5), 413. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Sustainability

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Kevin McNeilly's Robson Reading at IKBLC (with Percussionist Nicholas Jacques), January 26th

January 4, 2012

We are excited to announce that Kevin McNeilly and percussionist Nicholas Jacques will be performing from McNeilly’s latest work, Embouchere on January 26, 2012 – 2.00pm to 3.00pm at the Lillooet Room (Rm 301) of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

Kevin McNeilly’s debut poetry collection, Embouchure, compiles the intertwined lineages of trumpet players who came to prominence in the States during the “pre-bop” era, loosely defined as the period between 1890 and 1939. This series of vignettes betrays a broad and detailed knowledge of the players’ lives and work, yet reads like a collection of conversational anecdotes shared between the musicians and those around them. Rather than focusing on the solid facts of their lives, McNeilly brings to life the characters they inhabited and stories that surrounded them, all in a vibrant, slangy dialect that adeptly reproduces the feel of the period.

Within the course of Embouchure’s thirty-seven portraits, Buddy, Satch, Bix, Jabbo, Cootie, Cat and the rest are resurrected in their smoky, brassy, sepia-toned glory as figures deeply steeped in their own mythos. Despite embracing the fictional aspects of their lives, however, McNeilly styles these remarkable men and women with pure love and admiration, not only for their shared history and contribution to the evolution of jazz, but also for the pure, loud, messy beauty of the music itself. In this stunning and highly readable debut, McNeilly boasts finely honed poetic chops, proving that heart remains the first and finest ingredient in any truly virtuosic solo.

To register for this event, please go to: http://kevinmcneilly.eventbrite.com/

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Michelle Frisco – Obesity and Women's Fertility Trajectories

December 20, 2011

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College’s Population Health Series. This study asks whether obesity is associated with young women’s life course childbearing experiences. Weight is a physical status with important biological and social components that is linked to several proximate determinants of fertility. As such, negative consequences of obesity may accumulate over the life course leading obese young women to be stratified into disadvantaged positions for childbearing. This leads to hypotheses that obese young women have fewer children, a higher risk of remaining childless and later timing of first birth than their non-obese counterparts. Twenty-three years of data from a sample of NLSY79 female respondents who were ages 20 to 24 in 1981 are analyzed to test these hypotheses, which are all supported. In fact, obese women’s predicted probability of remaining childless is almost the same as their probability of winning a coin toss. Their estimated probability for giving birth in each study year is even lower. Results confirm obese young women’s position of disadvantage for childbearing and suggest that negative consequences of obesity accumulate across a life domain that is incredibly important for the vast majority of American women.

Biography

Michelle Frisco is an Assistant Professor of Sociology & Demography at Penn State University. Her research focuses on intersections between family life, education, and health/health risk-behavior during adolescence and the transition to adulthood. Much of her previous scholarship identifies the ways that family structure, family structure transitions, and different aspects of parenting influence adolescent health and well-being. Her most recent research, has examined the consequences of body weight for adolescent mental health and family formation trajectories with an eye towards understanding the complexities in these associations.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Frisco, M. L., & Weden, M. (2013). Early Adult Obesity and US Women’s Lifetime Childbearing Experiences. Journal of Marriage and Family, 75(4), 920-932. [Link]

Frisco, M. L., Weden, M. M., Lippert, A. M., & Burnett, K. D. (2012). The multidimensional relationship between early adult body weight and women’s childbearing experiences. Social Science & Medicine, 74(11), 1703-1711. [Link]

Kane, J. B., & Frisco, M. L. (2013). Obesity, school obesity prevalence, and adolescent childbearing among US young women. Social Science & Medicine. [Link]

UBC Research Guides

Family Studies

Population and Public Health

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Daphne Marlatt and Meredith Quartermain – Play Chthonics: New Canadian Readings

December 6, 2011

Daphne Marlatt lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is an iconic Canadian poet, novelist, theorist, little-magazine editor, and itinerant university instructor (creative writing, women’s studies, and contemporary literature). She is the founding co-editor of Tessera, the bilingual journal of feminist theory, and has co-edited several other magazines. Since the 1980s, she has served as writer-in-residence at numerous universities across Canada and mentored at Sage Hill (Saskatchewan) and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Author of ten collections of poetry, her most recent book is The Given (McClelland and Stewart, 2008). Meredith Quartermain is best known as a writer of urban spaces and as an innovator of poetic form. Her Vancouver Walking (2005) won the BC Book Award for Poetry, and Nightmarker (2008) was a finalist for the Vancouver Book Award. Her poetry also includes the inventive and critically acclaimed Matter (2008) and Recipes from the Red Planet (2010). Her work appears regularly in magazines such as The Walrus, Canadian Literature, Matrix, and Prism International, and she is cofounder of Nomados Literary Publishers, which has published more than 30 books of contemporary writing.

Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library

Marlatt, D., Muse, P., & Project Muse University Press eBooks. (2014). Rivering the poetry of daphne marlatt Wilfrid Laurier University Press. [Link]

Anonymous. (2004). Eras eros: Erotic collages by meredith quartermain. Windsor Review, 37(1), 109. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

English

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The Search for the Beginnings of Wisdom: Agency, Intentionality and Responsibility in Childhood

December 6, 2011

Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, and hosted by Green College. In searching for explanations of children’s behavior—including successes and failures in life and in the school—researchers and policy makers have focused primarily on causal factors whether inside or outside of the child, factors over which the child has no control and hence no responsibility. David Olson’s attempt is to turn the table and explain children’s behavior in terms of actions and experiences within a moral framework of responsibility and accountability. As agents of their own actions, children are not only the causes of their behavior but they are also responsible for their behavior. The nature and development of agency in children and the implications of neglecting childhood agency in explanations of learning and development are examined. It is argued that the development of a sense of responsibility is an important step in the gaining of wisdom.

Select Articles and Books from UBC Library

Main, F. O. (1996). David Olson: On assessment and families. The Family Journal, 4(2), 174-179. doi:10.1177/1066480796042015 [Link]

Olson, D. R. (2007). Self-ascription of intention: Responsibility, obligation and self-control. Synthese, 159(2), 297-314. doi:10.1007/s11229-007-9209-2 [Link]

UBC Library Guides

Early Childhood Education

Psychology

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Joy Kogawa and Maggie Devries – An Evening with Acclaimed Canadian Authors Joy Kogawa and Maggie DeVries

December 6, 2011

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Sponsored by the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) and Vancouver Children’s Literature Roundtable. Joy Kogawa (Naomi’s Tree) and Maggie DeVries (Hunger Journeys and Chance and the Butterfly) will discuss the ways in which contemporary children’s literature can address the effects of social conflict in the world, and at the same time inspire hope and a desire to bring about positive change. This event, presented in conjunction with MOA’s exhibition ひろしま hiroshima.

Speaker Biographies

Joy Kogawa is a poet and novelist. She is best known for her award-winning novel OBASAN (1981), one of the Literary Review of Canada’s 100 Most Important Canadian Books. She is a Member of the ORDER OF CANADA and of the ORDER OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. She has received honourary doctorates from many Canadian universities and was the recipient of a NAJC National Award from the National Association of Japanese Canadians (2001). In 2008 she was awarded the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, honouring an outstanding literary career in British Columbia.

Maggie de Vries has taught children’s literature courses in the department of Language and Literacy Education at UBC, and has taught at Simmons College in Boston, and Langara College. She has also been a children’s book editor at Orca Book Publishers, and a Writer in Residence at the Vancouver Public Library.

Select Books Available at UBC Library

Kogawa, Joy. (2008). Naomi’s Tree. Markham, ON: Fitzhenry & Whiteside. [Link]

Kogawa, Joy. (2003). Obasan. Toronto, ON: Penguin Canada. [Link]

De Vries, Maggie. (2011). Somebody’s Girl. Victoria, BC: Orca Book Publishers. [Link]

De Vries, Maggie. (2010). Hunger Journeys. Toronto, ON: Harper Trophy Canada. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Children’s Literature

Historical Children’s Literature

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Ethan Zuckerman – Cute Cats and the Arab Spring: When Social Media Meet Social Change

December 6, 2011

Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. The 2011 Vancouver Human Rights Lecture is presented by the Laurier Institution, Yahoo!, UBC Continuing Studies and CBC Radio One. Ethan Zuckerman is director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and a principal research scientist at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on the distribution of attention in mainstream and new media, the use of technology for international development, and the use of new media technologies by activists.With Rebecca MacKinnon, Zuckerman co-founded international blogging community Global Voices. Global Voices showcases news and opinions from citizen media in over 150 nations and thirty languages, publishing editions in twenty languages. Through Global Voices and through the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where he served as a researcher and fellow for eight years, Zuckerman is active in efforts to promote freedom of expression and fight censorship in online spaces. In 2000, Zuckerman founded Geekcorps, a technology volunteer corps that sends IT specialists to work on projects in developing nations, with a focus on West Africa. Previously he helped found Tripod.com, one of the web’s first “personal publishing” sites. He blogs at http://ethanzuckerman.com/blog. He received his bachelor’s degree from Williams College, and, as a Fulbright scholar, studied at the University of Ghana at Legon.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Zuckerman, E. (2014). New media, new civics? Policy & Internet, 6(2), 151-168. doi:10.1002/1944-2866.POI360. [Link]

Zuckerman, E. (2012). A small world after all? The Wilson Quarterly (1976-), 36(2), 44-47. [Link]

Zuckerman, E. (2010). International reporting in the age of participatory media. Daedalus, 139(2), 66-75. doi:10.1162/daed.2010.139.2.66. [Link]

Zuckerman, E. (2008; 2007). Meet the bridgebloggers. Public Choice, 134(1/2), 47-65. doi:10.1007/s11127-007-9200-y. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Library, Archival, and Information Science

Learning Through Literacy and Technology

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Amber Ridington – After Digital Repatriation: Articulations of Heritage, Community, and Cultural Property in a Northern Athapascan Hunting Group

December 6, 2011

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS). Using examples from her collaborative and applied work with the Doig River First Nation, a Dane-zaa Athapaskan group in northeastern BC, folklorist Amber Ridington will discuss some of the issues of cultural representation and cultural property that have surfaced and have been mediated within the Doig River community, and other Dane-zaa communities with shared interests, during a sequence of digital cultural heritage projects since 1999.

These collaborative projects began with simple goals of digital preservation and digital repatriation, and have expanded their scope and implications to include cultural reclamation and language revitalization as they have grown to incorporate participatory ethnography, participatory exhibition, and global distribution through the Internet. Doig River’s most recent collaborative project with Amber is the award winning virtual exhibit, Dane-Wajich – Dane-zaa

Stories and Songs: Dreamers and the Land hosted by the Virtual Museum of Canada (www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Danewajich 2007). This exhibition integrates subtitled Dane-zaa and English video narratives, interpretive e-text, photographs of the production process, recordings of archival songs, and contemporary and archival images of traditional lands in order to showcase Dane-zaa culture and to address present concerns faced by the community as they negotiate legacies of colonialism and a changing relationship to the land.

These projects signify the possibilities and challenges for the use of digital media to both conserve and represent Indigenous heritage. Amber will discuss her efforts to recontextualize archival materials and standardize the catalogue system, the development of a community defined process of documentation and self representation, and Doig River’s initiatives to balance protecting and sharing their cultural heritage materials with the public through a tradition based attribution and clearance protocol for the use and distribution of archival heritage materials.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Ridington, A. (2006). Drawing on identity: Inkameep day school and art collection:Drawing on identity: Inkameep day school and art collection. Museum Anthropology, 29(1), 73-75. doi:10.1525/mua.2006.29.1.73. [Link]

Ridington, R. (1990). Little bit know something: Stories in a language of anthropology. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. [Link]

Dickinson, W. (2008). Society for visual anthropology. Anthropology News, 49(9), 58-58. doi:10.1111/an.2008.49.9.58. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Library, Archival, and Information Science

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Dean Bavington – Managerialsm and the Nature of Canada

December 6, 2011

Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and sponsored by Green College. Dean Bavington is a Canada Research Chair in Environmental History at Nippising University in North Bay Ontario. His research focuses on the history, politics and ethics of managerial relationships with nature. Along with an impressive number of papers from this research, Dean published his first monograph earlier this year with UBC press. A paperback edition of Managed Annihilation: An Unnatural History of the Newfoundland Cod Collapse, is due out in November 2010. His publication demonstrates the relevancy of his work to understanding current issues in global fisheries particularly the deleterious consequences of managerial relationships between fish and people. Looking forward, the new focus of Dean’s work is on recent attempts to reform natural resource management through participatory techniques and the integration of traditional and local ecological knowledge. He explains that “Participatory management, while using the rhetoric of empowerment and democratic decision making, often re-inscribes new forms of power relations that continue to place scientists and managers in control and expose the targets of participatory techniques to increasing responsibilities without commensurate resources. Moves toward the incorporation of traditional and local ecological knowledge into NRM programs often act as reductive translation exercises that mine “ways of knowing and living” for data that is compatible with scientific resource managers and their bureaucratic agencies without fundamentally challenging structures of institutional power and ways of knowing that have proven to be undemocratic and ineffective when practiced on the ground”.

Select Articles and Books from UBC Library

Bavington, D. (2006). Competing claims on cod. Alternatives Journal, 32(1), 7. [Link]

Bavington, D. (2001). From jigging to farming. Alternatives, 27(4), 16-16. [Link]

Bavington, D. (2010). From hunting fish to managing populations: Fisheries science and the destruction of Newfoundland cod fisheries. Science as Culture, 19(4), 509-528. doi:10.1080/09505431.2010.519615 [Link]

Bavington, D. (2001). The belated discovery of cod diversity. Alternatives Journal, 27(4), 19. [Link]

UBC Library Guides

Natural Resources Conservation

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Huddle 2011 – Environmental Issues Panel

December 2, 2011

Calls for collective action against some of the most pressing issues we face today have never been more resounding. Cross-cultural coordination of initiatives against environmental issues, advocacy for LGBTQ rights, and civic engagement are all hot topics in contemporary social discourse. Yet, how are grassroots change-makers and elected officials each managing diversity?

Local media, political leaders, NGO and non-profit representatives and academics will engage in roundtable discussions on their experiences engaging a diverse public in their work. In addition, this discussion will explore how different sectors might better work together to further engagement. Discussion will be followed by an opportunity for questions and answers from the audience. Huddle 2011 will be scheduled to lead up to and coincide with the Vancouver municipal elections on November 19th, 2011.

Panelists include:

Arzeena Hamir, Richmond Food Security Society (Coordinator)
Claudia Li, SharkTruth (Founder)
Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega, Department of Political Science UBC (Instructor)
Tricia Sedgwick, World in a Garden (Founder)
Audrea Chan, Fairchild Television (Senior Reporter)

Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library

McConnell, R. L., & Abel, D. C. (2008). Environmental issues: An introduction to sustainability (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Prentice Hall.

UBC Library Research Guides

Sustainability

Political Science

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