Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College. Both demographically and ecologically, humans are a remarkably successful species. This success is generally attributed to our capacity for culture. But how did our species’ extraordinary cultural capabilities evolve from its roots in animal social learning and tradition? In this seminar, Laland will provide a provisional answer. After characterizing contemporary research into animal social learning, he will focus in on a case study of stickleback learning that illustrates the strategic nature of animal copying. Laland will go on to describe the findings of an international competition (the “social learning strategies tournament”) that he organized to investigate the best way to learn. Laland will suggest that the tournament sheds light on why copying is widespread in nature, and why humans happen to be so good at it. Finally, he will end by describing some other theoretical and experimental projects suggesting feedback mechanisms that may have been instrumental to the evolution of Culture.
UBC Library Resources
Laland, K. (2004). Social learning strategies. Learning & Behaviour, 32(1), 4-14. [Link]
Reader, S. M., & Laland, K. N. (2002). Social intelligence, innovation, and enhanced brain size in primates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 99(7), 4436-4441. doi:10.1073/pnas.062041299. [Link]
Hoppitt, W., Laland, K. N., & ebrary eBooks. (2013). Social learning: An introduction to mechanisms, methods, and models. Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Link]
Laland, K. N., & Brown, G. R. (2011). Sense and nonsense: Evolutionary perspectives on human behaviour. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Global Islam: Past, Present and Future is presented by UBC Continuing Studies, the Department of Asian Studies at UBC, the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and the Laurier Institution. It is part of UBC Continuing Studies’ Lifelong Learning Series. Faisal Devji is a historian who specializes in studies of Islam, globalization, violence and ethics. His multidisciplinary work grounds empirical historical issues in philosophical questions. He has taught at The New School in New York City. Since 2009, Devji is Reader in Modern South Asian History, Oxford University. He also is a senior fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge (New York University). Now a Canadian citizen, Devji is Zanzibari, having been born in Dar es Salaam in 1964 to a family of Indian ethnicity. His undergraduate education was at the University of British Columbia, where he received double honors in history and anthropology. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago with his dissertation Muslim Nationalism: Founding Identity in Colonial India and was chosen to be a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. He has taught at Yale University and also served as Head of Graduate Studies at The Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. He knows English, French, Gujarati, Hindi, Kutchi, Khojki, Swahili, Persian, Sindhi and Urdu. In 2005, Cornell University Press published his Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity, exploring the ethical content of jihad as opposed to its more widely-studied purported political content. The book draws a distinction between the majority of Islamic fundamentalist organizations concerned with the establishing of states and al-Qaeda with its decentralized structure and emphasis on moral rather than political action. His next book was The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics, published by Columbia University Press in October 2008. Devji is also a regular contributor to the scholarly journal Public Culture and serves on its Editorial Committee. Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
Select Articles Available at UBC Library
Devji, F. (2013). Muslim Zion. Harvard University Press. [Link]
Devji, F. (2012). The impossible Indian: Gandhi and the temptation of violence. London: Hurst & Co.
Khan, N. (2014). Faisal Devji. Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a political idea. The American Historical Review, 119(5), 1663-1664. doi:10.1093/ahr/119.5.1663. [Link]
Devji, F. (2013). Communities of violence. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 45(4), 801-803. doi:10.1017/S0020743813000949. [Link]
An article about the digitization of photo archives from the Reach Gallery Museum appears in the Abbotsford News. This project received funding from the BC History Digitization Program, an initiative of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
You can view the article here, and find out more about the BC History Digitization Program here.
Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and sponsored by the Wat Endowment and hosted by the Department of Asian Studies. Yip So Man Wat Memorial Lecture. David Der-wei Wang is Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature and Director of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Inter-University Center for Sinological Studies at Harvard University. The world’s leading scholar of modern Chinese fiction, his research specialties include modern and contemporary Chinese literature, late Qing fiction and drama, and comparative literary theory. Wang received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and has taught at National Taiwan University and Columbia University. His many honors include an honorary doctorate from Lingnan University (Hong Kong), and his appointments as an Academician of the Academia Sinica (Taiwan) and as a Yangtze River Scholar affiliated with Fudan University (Shanghai). Writing at a time when History has collapsed and Revolution has lost its mandate, writers cannot take up the two subjects without pondering their inherent intelligibility. Drawing upon theories on “post-history” as developed by scholars such as Jacques Derrida, Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu, and contemporary fictional works as created by writers such as Mo Yan, Yan Lianke and Wang Anyi, this lecture will address the following three issues: History after Post-History, Enlightenment versus Enchantment and Socialist Utopia and “the Best of all Best Possible Worlds”.
Author’s Titles at UBC Library
Wang, D. (1999). Under the soviet shadow: The Yining incident; ethnic conflicts and international rivalry in Xinjiang, 1944-1949. Wantage: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. [Link]
Wang, D., & Rojas, C. (2007). Writing Taiwan: A new literary history. Durham: Duke University Press. [Link]
Wang, D., & Shang, W. (2005). Dynastic crisis and cultural innovation: From the late Ming to the late Qing and beyond. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Asia Center. [Link]
Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS) colloquium series. In today’s changing information society, knowledge curation is in demand, information literacy is essential, and those entering the workforce must be ready to demonstrate new competencies. No doubt, the library is a force of change, contributing to and accelerating the ever growing needs of e-research. Yet libraries can do more. Libraries need to shift their paradigm from “They will come” to “We will go to them” and in doing so, be prepared to explore new methods of outreach and community engagement at a local level and beyond. How do we, as librarians and information professionals, meet these demands? What trends are libraries currently facing that will impact future generations of information professionals? This presentation will address these key issues and offer a review of libraries and librarianship in a global context.
Ingrid Parent is the 14th University Librarian at the University of British Columbia. Ms. Parent assumed leadership of the UBC Library on July 1, 2009, shortly after winning an award from the Canadian Association of Research Libraries for Distinguished Service to Research Librarianship. She is also President-elect of IFLA and will serve as president from 2011-2013. The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession. Ms. Parent has an honours degree in History and a Masters in Library Science, both from UBC. She has held a variety of positions in the information profession prior to returning to her alma mater, including the role of Assistant Deputy Minister at Library and Archives Canada (LAC).
From the Westcoast Calligraphy Society “Letters to the Garden” is a design of colour, illustration, bookbinding, and paper making for everyone interested in the art of letters – with the theme of “Springtime” and “Gardens.” “Letters to the Garden” is a travelling exhibition that has been displayed throughout the lower mainland, including Cloverdale Library and Fleetwood Public Library in Surrey, and the Kay Meek Centre in West Vancouver, B.C. This exhibit at IKBLC can be seen in Learning Centre foyer and Ike’s Cafe Gallery.
On March 2, 2011, Dr. Larry Goldenberg, an award-winning Canadian researcher, pioneer in the treatment of prostate cancer and world-renowned advocate of patient education. Dr. Goldenberg authored one of the first books to explain prostate cancer treatment options in layman’s terms. The Intelligent Guide to Prostate Cancer: All You Need to Know to Take an Active Part in Your Treatment is widely considered to be one of the best resources available to men diagnosed with the disease. Dr. Goldenberg talks about how the 21st century will be a century of aging, and how the Men’s Health Initiative will help people not only live long, but live healthy.
Goldenberg, Larry. (2005). Further fine tuning of hormone therapy. The Journal of urology, 174(2), 415-416. [Link to journal article]
Akakura, Koichiro, Nicholas Bruchovsky, Goldenberg, Larry, Paul S. Rennie, Anne R. Buckley, and Lorne D. Sullivan. “Effects of intermittent androgen suppression on androgen‐dependent tumors. Apoptosis and serum prostate‐specific antigen.” Cancer 71, no. 9 (1993): 2782-2790. [Link to journal article]
Are you interested in more about this area? There are open access resources available online selected by UBC Librarians
PubMed – Premier database containing over 23 million references to journal articles in life sciences with a focus on biomedicine.
MedlinePlus (Consumer Health) – Freely-searchable consumer health information site linking to simple overviews, dictionaries, directories, organizations and news for ~750 topics.
Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS) colloquium series. In today’s changing information society, knowledge curation is in demand, information literacy is essential, and those entering the workforce must be ready to demonstrate new competencies. No doubt, the library is a force of change, contributing to and accelerating the ever growing needs of e-research. Yet libraries can do more. Libraries need to shift their paradigm from “They will come” to “We will go to them” and in doing so, be prepared to explore new methods of outreach and community engagement at a local level and beyond. How do we, as librarians and information professionals, meet these demands? What trends are libraries currently facing that will impact future generations of information professionals? This presentation will address these key issues and offer a review of libraries and librarianship in a global context.
Ingrid Parent was the 14th University Librarian at the University of British Columbia. Ms. Parent assumed leadership of the UBC Library on July 1, 2009, shortly after winning an award from the Canadian Association of Research Libraries for Distinguished Service to Research Librarianship. She is also President-elect of IFLA and will serve as president from 2011-2013. The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession. Ms. Parent has an honours degree in History and a Masters in Library Science, both from UBC. She has held a variety of positions in the information profession prior to returning to her alma mater, including the role of Assistant Deputy Minister at Library and Archives Canada (LAC).
Select Articles Available at UBC Library
Parent, I. (2000). Fifty years of service to Canadian libraries. National Library of Canada, Marketing and Publishing Services.
Parent, I. (1992). Speaking from — ABSB (acquisitions and bibliographic services). National Library of Canada, Marketing and Publishing Services.
Parent, I. (2000). Canadian bibliographic centre: The more things change, the more they stay the same. National Library of Canada, Marketing and Publishing Services.
Parent, I. (1999). International conference on national bibliographic services: A truly international experience. National Library of Canada, Marketing and Publishing Services.
The Westcoast Calligraphy Society’s “Letters to the Garden” is an exhibition with a theme of spring-time and gardens. With different designs of colour, illustration, bookbinding, and paper making, within the mutual interest in the art of letters, “Letters to the Garden” was a travelling exhibition that has been displayed throughout the lower mainland, including Cloverdale Library and Fleetwood Public Library in Surrey, and the Kay Meek Centre in West Vancouver, B.C.
The Society began life in September 1978 as the Society for Italic Handwriting, B. C. Branch. As the Society grew and its members’ interests expanded, the focus broadened to all types of calligraphy and in June 1986, the name was changed to Westcoast Calligraphy Society. The society is an enthusiastic group of people with a common bond–a love of all things calligraphic. Members share knowledge of design, colour, illustration, bookbinding, paper making and our other talents with everyone interested in the art of letters with more experienced members teaching beginning and more advanced calligraphy throughtout the Lower Mainland.
Living Under Plastic represents a major departure from Evelyn Lau’s previous poetry books. Instead of the focus on relationships and emotional damage that has characterized much of her earlier work, this book opens up to explore new subjects: family history, illness, death and dying, consumerism, and the natural world. In a tone that is often elegiac, without ever being maudlin, these poems are steeped in immortality and loss. Haunted by the pull of the past, there is strength of character and a sense of affirmation in all of these poems. While grounded in travel and in place, the tone is surprisingly meditative and contemplative.
Evelyn Lau began publishing poetry at the age of 12; her creative efforts helped her escape the pressure of home and school. In 1985, at age 14, Lau left home and spent the next several years living itinerantly in Vancouver as a homeless person, sleeping mainly in shelters, friends’ homes and on the street. Despite the chaos of her first two years’ independence she submitted a great deal of poetry to journals and received some recognition. A diary she kept at the time was published in 1989 as Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid. The book was a critical and commercial success
Ray Hsu’s Cold Sleep Permanent Afternoon, the follow-up to his award-winning first collection, Anthropy, is the second book in a prospective trilogy that explores the “grammar of personhood.” He has published over a hundred and twenty-five poems in over forty magazines internationally. Ray is an instructor at the Creative Writing Faculty at UBC.
Ray Hsu and Evelyn Lau read at the Victoria Learning Theatre of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre on Febraury 24, 2011.
The 
