Personalized learning for every student, quality teaching, flexibility and choice, and learning empowered by technology – these goals of the BC Education Plan are central to effective school library programs. Teacher-librarians collaborate with teachers so that kids engage in inquiry and have greater opportunities to employ critical thinking and creativity. Never before has there been a better time for teachers to learn to teach with teacher librarians than now. In this National School Library Day conversation, we hear from this expert panel as they talk about the role of teacher-librarians and school libraries in the BC Education Plan.
Speakers:
Gino Bondi, District Principal, Specialty Programs, Vancouver School District
Patricia Finlay, District Teacher Librarian , Burnaby School District
Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the Faculty of Law.
This talk revisits the issue of including lesbians and gay men as spouses for tax purposes. It highlights existing concerns about this policy, including the fact that it results in a privatization of economic security within relationships. The lecture also considers the impact of changes to the income tax system that permit spouses to split income and concludes that these changes exacerbate existing inequalities and reinforce heteronormativity by rewarding the traditional family in which one spouse is the breadwinner and the other remains at home. The recommendation is that all tax rules that take spousal status into account be abolished and we return to the individual as the unit of taxation.
About the Speaker:
Claire Young
Professor, UBC Faculty of Law
Prior to joining the Faculty of Law in 1992, Claire Young practiced law with the Alberta Attorney-General’s department for several years and taught law at the University of Western Ontario from 1984-1992.She is the co-author of two books and the author of numerous articles on tax law and policy. Her research interests include feminist legal theory and sexuality and the law. She was awarded the Killam prize for excellence in teaching in 1998 and 2002. In 1999 she held the Dunhill Madden Butler Visiting Chair in Women and the Law at the University of Sydney, Australia. She has consulted with the Department of Finance and several international organizations on tax policy issues and is currently a member of the Joint Commonwealth Secretariat and the International Development Research Centre (IRDC) research team (based in London, U.K.) working on The Gender Responsive Budget Project. In 2003 Professor Young was awarded the Therese Casgrain Fellowship in recognition of her research on women and economic issues.
Select Articles and Books Available at UBC Library
Young, C. (2011). Pensions, privatization, and poverty: The gendered impact. Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 23(2), 661. [Link]
Young, C. F. L. (1994). Tax and the family: Law 409. Vancouver: U.B.C. Faculty of Law.
Young, C. F., & Canada. Status of Women Canada. (2000). Women, tax and social programs: The gendered impact of funding social programs through the tax system. Ottawa: Status of Women Canada.
Young, C. (2003). Tax policy, theoretical explorations, and social realities. Canadian Tax Journal, 51(5), 1922. [Link]
Bullying has long been considered a part of growing up. In recent years, however, the problem of bullying seems to have escalated. But why? Increased family dysfunction? Lax school policies? Social media? Peer group indifference? Media hype? In order to protect our children, we need to understand the issue and focus on solutions. Is eliminating bullying a realistic goal or is it more important to equip our children with the tools to avoid becoming victims? This event took place Tuesday, September 17, 2013, in downtown Vancouver.
Moderator
Renee Filippone – Host, CBC News Vancouver Saturday and CBC News Vancouver Sunday
Panelists
Shelley Hymel – Professor, UBC Faculty of Education; Current holder of the Edith Lando Professorship in Social and Emotional Learning
Lynn Miller – Associate Professor, Educational and Counselling Psychology and Special Education, UBC Faculty of Education
Brenda Morrison, BA’91 – Director, Centre for Restorative Justice and Associate Professor, School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University
Carol Todd, BEd’84 – Teacher; Founder, The Amanda Todd Legacy
Sherri Mohoruk – Superintendent of Safe Schools, BC Ministry of Education
Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library
Hymel, S., & Swearer, S. M. (2015). Four decades of research on school bullying: An introduction. The American Psychologist, 70(4), 293-299. doi:10.1037/a0038928 [Link]
Konishi, C., & Hymel, S. (2009). Bullying and stress in early adolescence. Journal of Early Adolescence, 29(3), 333-356. doi:10.1177/0272431608320126 [Link]
Bonanno, R. A., & Hymel, S. (2014). Moral disengagement processes in bullying. Theory into Practice, 53(4), 278-285. doi:10.1080/00405841.2014.947219 [Link]
Swearer, S. M., & Hymel, S. (2015). Understanding the psychology of bullying: Moving toward a social-ecological diathesis-stress model. The American Psychologist, 70(4), 344. [Link]
Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS).
Abstract of the Talk: While images are commonly used in search results for vertical domains such as shopping and news, web search results remain primarily text-based. In this talk, Dr. Capra presents results of two large-scale user studies to examine the effects of augmenting text-based result surrogates with images extracted from the underlying webpage. In short, Dr. Capra will address the question of, “Does it help to add images to web search results?” We evaluated effectiveness and efficiency at both the individual surrogate level and at the results page level, and also consider the goodness of the image in terms of representing the underlying page content. Results of these studies show trade offs in the use of images in web search surrogates, and highlight particular situations where they can provide benefits.
About the Speaker
Dr. Robert Capra is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include human-computer interaction, personal information management, and digital information seeking behaviors, tools, and interfaces. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech and M.S. and B.S. degrees in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis. At Virginia Tech, he was part of the Center for Human-Computer Interaction where he investigated multi-platform interfaces, information re-finding, and interfaces for digital libraries. Prior to Virginia Tech, he worked in corporate research and development, spending five years in the Speech and Language Technologies group at SBC Communications (now merged with AT&T Labs) where he focused on voice user interfaces, speech recognition, and natural language processing.
Father and the Republic is a photobiography devoted to the life and career of the late General Pai Ch’ung-hsi (Bai Chongxi; 1893–1966). General Pai’s career both paralleled and profoundly influenced the history of the Republic of China: As an eighteen-year-old military cadet in 1911, he joined a “Dare-to-Die” corps that marched to Wuhan to take part in the Wuchang Uprising and helped overthrow the Qing dynasty (1644–1912); in 1928, as Chiang Kai-shek’s one-time Chief of Staff, General Pai fought his way into Beijing and brought the Northern Expedition to a successful conclusion; in 1938, as Commander of the Republic’s armies in northern China, he gave the Japanese Army, at the Battle of Taierzhuang, what was later called “the worst defeat it had suffered in modern times”; and in the winter of 1939, as commander of forces in Guangxi, General Pai was instrumental in wiping out one of Japan’s elite units.
During the Civil War, after routing the army led by Lin Biao (1907–71) in 1946, General Pai argued for the pursuit and destruction of the retreating Communist forces. But, under the pressure of General George Marshall, Chiang Kai-shek ordered a ceasefire, thus allowing the Communist Army to recover Manchuria and, in time, conquer mainland China. In 1949, General Pai commanded the Nationalists’ last operational forces on the mainland before withdrawing to Taiwan, where the Republican government’s standoff against Communist China continues to this day.
General Pai was immensely popular in China during the war and was recognized as the most brilliant military strategist of his generation, a distinction exemplified by his nickname “Little Zhuge” (a reference to the fabled strategist Zhuge Liang of the Three Kingdoms period). But his military career was overshadowed by a long and complicated relationship with Chiang Kai-shek, who resented his brilliance and kept him under constant surveillance after the Republic’s retreat to Taiwan.
Father and the Republic includes nearly six hundred photographs (many appearing in public for the first time) that serve to illustrate the public career and family life of General Pai from the 1920s to his days in Taiwan. As a witness to the birth of the first republic in Asia, Pai Ch’ung-hsi felt an unwavering sense of loyalty to it and chose to stay on in the Republic’s last foothold in China. General Pai was also a devout Muslim, and his death in 1966 was honored with a state funeral held in accordance with Muslim customs.
About the Speaker
Son of the prominent military general Pai Ch’ung-hsi (Bai Chongxi), Pai Hsien-yung grew up in Guilin, Shanghai, and Hong Kong during the war years of the 1930s and 1940s. His family eventually resettled in Taiwan, where he received the remainder of his early schooling. Pai Hsien-yung is a graduate of the National Taiwan University (1961), where he co-founded the literary journal Xian dai wen xue (Modern Literature). The journal launched the modern literary movement in Taiwan and subsequently had a great impact on both Hong Kong and China. In 1965, Pai received a master’s degree in fine arts with a specialization in creative writing from the famed Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa. That same year, he joined the faculty of the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he remained active as a teacher, creative writer, and scholar until his retirement in 1994.
Pai Hsien-yung is recognized as one of the most important modern Chinese fiction writers. His works, comprising several dozen volumes, include short story collections, novels, screenplays, and critical essays; among his more notable works are Taibei ren (Taipei People), Nie zi (Crystal Boys), Niuyue ke (New Yorkers), and the stage play You yuan jing meng (Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream). His fiction, set against the backdrop of the great national dramas and tragedies that mark the history of twentieth-century China, explores, among other topics, problems of Chinese identity, migration and nostalgia, and sexuality. Ever innovative and daring, his works examine a startling range of subjects and lifestyles, from the “last aristocrats” of displaced mainlander Chinese in Taiwan and Manhattan in the 1950s and 1960s to the homosexual youth counterculture of Taipei in the 1980s. His novels and short stories have been adapted into full-length films, television series, and stage plays; and his fiction has been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, and Japanese. In addition to his other creative activities, Pai Hsien-yung has become a leading promoter of the revival of Kunqu opera, and his own production of the sixteenth-century drama “The Peony Pavilion” has been performed more than two hundred times worldwide, winning high critical acclaim.
His most recent endeavor has been the completion of a photobiography of his father, Fu qin yu Min guo (Father and the Republic), which was published simultaneously in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China in 2012. The publication of the book was a major milestone, which the noted historian Diana Lary has called “a harbinger that a serious reconsideration of China’s history of revolution can be discussed in public… [and that] a clearer understanding of modern Chinese history [can be achieved].”
Select Book Available at UBC Library
Pai, Hsien-yung. (1990). Crystal Boys: a novel. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press. [Link]
Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Dr. Philippe Descola and Dr. Bruno Latour are two of France’s most prominent intellectuals, and both have redefined their respective fields of expertise by considering the place of human agency – and non-human actors – in the construction of the modern world. In this conversation, Dr. Latour and Dr. Descola will debate the idea of the anthropocene, a new geological era in which humans have become the principal agents for the transformation of our planetary systems: from small scale consumption of natural resources to large-scale human-induced climate changes. Drawing on the fields of anthropology, science studies, and other allied disciplines, these two thinkers will discuss their views on how intervention in the natural world has not only transformed planetary ecosystems, but also the very ideas and models we use to think about the planet as a whole. Sponsored by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, UBC Museum of Anthropology, and the French Consulate Vancouver.
About the Speakers
Dr. Philippe Descola is currently the Chair in Anthropology of Nature at Collège de France. With a background in philosophy, Dr. Philippe Descola specializes in the relations that human societies establish with nature. His ethnographic work in Ecuador revolutionized anthropological research in Amazonia. Gradually extending his scope to other societies and looking beyond the opposition between nature and culture, Dr. Descola has redefined the dialectic that structures humankind’s relationship with the world and with other beings. Dr. Descola is the originator of “relational ecology”, the investigation of relations between humans, as well as between humans and non-humans. His most recent work focuses on how universal modes of identification interact with modes of figuration and the use of images. Since 2011, Descola has been working on an “anthropology of landscape”, identifying the principles of iconic figuration and transfiguration of the environment at work in cultures that have no conventional tradition of landscape representation. For further references : click here.
Dr. Bruno Latour is professor at Sciences Po Paris. Trained in philosophy, he has been instrumental in the development of an anthropology of science and technology. This field has had a direct impact on the philosophy of ecology and on an alternative definition of modernity. He has taught for many years in North American universities. Most of his books have been published with Harvard University Press. The most recently published is An Inquiry into Modes of Existence ‐ An Anthropology of the Moderns. All references and most articles may be found on http://www.bruno-latour.fr. Bruno Latour gave the six Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion for 2013, under the title Facing Gaia, Six Lectures on the Political Theology of Nature, and was awarded the prestigious Holberg Prize for 2013.
Select Articles and Books Available at UBC Library
Descola, P. (2013). Beyond nature and culture. (J. Lloyd, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Link]
Descola, P. (2013). The ecology of others. (G. Godbout and B.P. Luley, Trans.). Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. [Link]
Latour, B. ( 2013). An inquiry into modes of existence: an anthropology of the moderns. (C. Porter, Trans.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. [Link]
Latour, B. (2010). On the modern cult of the factish gods. (C. Porter and H. MacLean, Trans.). Durham [NC]: Duke University Press. [Link]
Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Discussants: KOJO Yoshiko (Univ of Tokyo); KUME Ikuo, (Waseda Univ/Institute of European Studies, UBC); Yves TIBERGHIEN (IAR, UBC); UCHIYAMA Yu (Univ of Tokyo). How will Shinzō Abe take advantage of his recent electoral victory to move forward with his domestic and international agendas? Informed experts, including six distinguished Japanese analysts, will consider the prospects for Abe economics, for constitutional reform, and for relations with regional powers.
Panelists:
Professor Ikuo Kume (Waseda University, School of Political Science and Economics, Visiting Professor at Institute of European Studies and Political Science, UBC)
Professor Yves Tiberghien (UBC, Department of Political Science)
Professor Yu Uchiyama (University of Tokyo, Department of Advanced Social and International Studies)
Professor Yoshiko Kojo (University of Tokyo, Department of Advanced Social and International Studies)
Select Articles and Books Available at UBC Library
Naoi, M. , Kume, I. (2011). Explaining Mass Support for Agricultural Protectionism: Evidence from a Survey Experiment During the Global Recession. International Organization, 65(4), 771-795. [Link]
Tiberghien, Y. (2011). Playing Our Game: Why China’s Rise Doesn’t Threaten the West. Journal Of East Asian Studies, 11(2), 331-334. [Link]
Uchiyama, Yu. (2010). Koizumi and Japanese politics: reform strategies and leadership style. (C. Freire, Trans.). London: Routledge. [Link]
Golden Jubilee Room (Level 4), Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
With 120 million speakers around the world, Punjabi is one of the most commonly spoken languages in Canada. On Tuesday, October 8th, the Dhahan International Punjabi Literature Prize celebrates the Punjabi language, history, and literature at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
