Sheryl Lightfoot - Lands, Treaties, and Development Strategies

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the UBC Buddhism and Contemporary Society Program. Based on the religious thought of Shinran Shonin, the founder of Shin Buddhism, the largest sect of Japanese Buddhism, this presentation explores the world of religious dialogue. Specifically, how can one understand the particularity of religious thought within the larger scope of religious diversity. Through examining case studies of teaching and learning, one can begin to see how Shin Buddhism provides a way to appreciate differences among religious perspectives while also finding common ground. Professor Unno is currently Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions at the University of Oregon, specializing in Japanese Buddhism. He is also an ordained Shin Buddhist priest. He received his PhD in Buddhist Studies from Stanford University in 1994, and has since taught at Brown Univesrity, Carleton College, and Kyoto University. He has published and lectured on Pure Land Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, and Psychology of Religion. UBC’s Buddhism and Contemporary Society Program lectures are made possible by the generous support of The Tung Lin Kok Yuen Canada Foundation, in collaboration with the Institute of Asian Research and Department of Asian Studies.

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS). The application of information and communications technology (ICT) to enable and empower community processes, the goal of Community Informatics is to use information communication technologies (ICT) to enable the achievement of community objectives including overcoming “digital divides” both within and between communities. However, community informatics goes beyond discussions of the “Digital Divide” to examine how and under what conditions ICT access can be made usable and useful to the range of excluded populations and communities and particularly to support local economic development, social justice, and political empowerment using the Internet. Community informatics as a discipline is located within a variety of academic faculties including Information Science, Information Systems, Computer Science, Planning, Development Studies, and Library Science among others and draws on insights on community development from a range of social sciences disciplines. At the forefront of this new field of research is Michael Gurstein, Director of the Center for Community Informatics Research, Training and Development in Vancouver, Canada, which works with communities, ICT practitioners, researchers, governments and agencies as a resource for enabling and empowering communities with Information and Communications Technologies.

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, and hosted by the Master of Arts in Children’s Literature (MACL) program, the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, the Departments of Language and Literacy Education, English, and the Creative Writing Program, SLAIS presents Lissa Paul.  As scholars working in children’s literature know all too well, cross‐disciplinary conversations are often uneasy. Though librarians, literary scholars, educators, cultural studies and media specialists may critique the same primary texts, what they say and how they say it very much depends on the critical vocabularies of their particular disciplines. In developing Keywords for Children’s Literature, editors Philip Nel and Lissa Paul responded to the need for a shared vocabulary by inviting internationally renowned authors and scholars from a range of disciplines to map the histories and etymologies of key conflicted terms in the field. In her talk, Lissa will preview some of the engaging essays in the book, beginning with her key to the word ‘keyword.’