In the exhibition , Czegledy explains, science, technology and art are brought together by artists who share a deep, contemporary sensitivity to nature.��

The exhibition, featured in Kitchener, Ontario, included Aotearoa/New Zealand artists Caro McCaw and Vicki Smith’s collaborative work “Sounding”, which is concerned with the noise pollution that is increasingly disrupting the sonic environment of marine mammals. McCaw and Smith seek to draw attention to spaces of communication for whales and dolphins that we cannot see, in a blue, underwatery light where viewers listen to echolocation by whales and dolphins recorded in the Tasmanian Sea.

In her work “Spontaneous Generation”, Toronto-based artist Elaine Miller makes links between the melting of the polar ice caps and the emergence of viruses, including Ebola, but with obvious resonance for the current covid-19 pandemic. For her part, Kristine Diekman, creating from California, presents “Behold the Tilapia”, in a stop-motion image of the fish, which is known for its resiliency but that is now facing extinction in polluted waters, exacerbated by the stresses of increasing temperatures due to climate change. Both use mixed media, as Tingley describes, while Maayke Schurer, an artist from Victoria, British Columbia, plays with the idea of the sublime in “Spirits of Wasteland” which creates beautiful yet horrific imagery with plastic and other waste that pollutes our environment.��

Along with other featured women artists from across Canada and around the world, Agents for Change: Facing the Anthropocene, seeks to “critically and poetically investigate our present, unpack the social and cultural impacts of environmental change, speculate about future realities, and suggest solutions for how we might approach life in the Anthropocene.” This demands that we acknowledge the ways that environmental change, including rising oceans and heat waves, affects all of us, both human and other animals and insects. 

In her work, Liz Miller’s project begins with the Lake Ontario shoreline, its histories and ecologies. Half of the world’s population lives by the coasts, which are densely populated and continue to develop, as Miller explains. Climate change means rising seas and storms that are increasingly affecting coastal areas. Miller’s work brings together engineers, educators, biologists, artists, and youth activists working across disciplines and across species. Through shared data sets, soundscapes, and more than forty short portraits of coastal communities from nine countries, this collaborative project considers the challenge of our collective survival.��

In their different ways, each of these women artists invites us to consider the realities of living in the Anthropocene, an era in which human beings have irrevocably shaped the natural world, with devastating consequences for many species including our own. But these artists ask us to do more than witness. They invite us to engage with urgent ecological questions and to develop new relationships  -- and deep love -- for the ecoystems that sustain all of us. 

The post Agents for Change: Facing the Anthropocene and The Shore Line Project appeared first on Research & Innovation.

, associate professor of dance in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD), was one of the conference speakers. He gave a presentation about using dance as a pedagogical tool. Alcedo is a dancer, dance ethnographer and documentary filmmaker who specializes in the folk dances of the Philippines.

In the audience for  was Faye Snodgress, an American education consultant and granddaughter of a man who taught English in the northern Philippines in the late 1800s.

Following the conference, Snodgress wrote to Alcedo to explain her family connection to the Philippines. She sent along photos of some cultural artifacts that her grandfather had brought home as mementos of his stay in the rural Philippines. Snodgress expressed a desire to donate them to a museum or an appreciative audience. She asked Alcedo if he had any ideas about a good home or any connections to someone who could assist her with the donation.

Alcedo, who hails from the central Philippines, immediately thought of a colleague at OCAD University, Lynne B. Milgram, who conducts research in the northern part of the Philippines. He got in touch with Milgram and she told him that a new museum, the , had opened in 2019 at the University of the Philippines. Milgram contacted the director of Museo Kordilyera and received an enthusiastic response: the museum would be delighted to add the artifacts to its collection.

“The artifacts are amazing,” said Alcedo. “There are wooden spoons with carvings of humans on the handle, for example, and a very rare bag that is used in a particular Philippine dance. Material objects are inextricably linked with Philippine dance; they are used as props. I used a similar bag when I was a dancer. These traditions still exist. The dance movements are specific, but they alone can’t signify the culture; the dances are so object-driven.”

The artifacts are now in Baguio, the city that houses the Museo Kordilyera.

Alcedo, who often travels to the area to conduct research on regional dances, is planning a visit to the collection once it is safe to travel again.

“Imagine, these artifacts came to North America 120 years ago,” he said. “It is such a generous thing to do to return them to a place where they will be treasured.

“In addition, it is fitting that these artifacts are being returned home during the Philippines’ quincentennial year so that the entire country can enjoy them,” added Alcedo, who was named by the Philippine Consulate as a recipient of a 2021 Quincentennial Award.

By Elaine Smith, special contributor

Courtesy of YFile.

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Sponsored by the Consulate General of Japan in Toronto, the competition attracts more than 50 participants every year and offers an invaluable opportunity for learners of Japanese to demonstrate their knowledge and performance of the Japanese language. Seven 91��ɫ students participated in the four categories: Beginners, Intermediate, Advanced and Open.

All of the 91��ɫ contestants exhibited excellence in the content and performance of their speeches. The six students awarded prizes were:

• Grand Prize: Peter Wenxiang Zang (Intermediate) (JP2000)
• Beginners first: Heshan Wadumasethrige (JP1000)
• Beginners second: Taek Oh (JP1000)
• Beginners third: Harmony Newcombe (JP1000)
• Open first: Lilika Zhang (JP3000)
• Canon Special Prize: Richard Pelchat (Advanced) (JP3000)

Wadumasethrige, Zang and Zhang participated in the National Speech Contest in their respective categories on March 28, broadcast from the University of British Columbia (UBC).

The is delighted by the outstanding achievements made by 91��ɫ students again this year, which builds on the strong performance in last year's competition when five students were awarded prizes. This success, however, would not have been possible without the faculty members’ excellent coaching and tutelage. Professors��,��,��Akiko Mitsui�����Ի���Eri Takahashi��coached the students diligently and professionally and led them to the successful results at the contest. Professors Yabuki-Soh and Inutsuka also served on the organizing committee, playing important roles in the contest organization and operation. In addition, Associate Professor����also coached the students and contributed to the contest as the contest web master.

The 39th Ontario Japanese Speech Contest can be viewed on��. To learn more, visit��.

Courtesy of YFile.

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The November 2020 event brought together graduate students from across AMPD to share stories of transforming their research and creation projects in response to the COVID-19 restrictions.

“We want to think together across the arts,” said , AMPD’s associate dean of research, during her introductory remarks at the Creative Shifts event. “We feel this is vital for understanding the array of methods that this moment might be opening up. And we also want to think together about how we might support one another in this very unusual year.”

Despite the challenges of working alone with little opportunity for the usual cross-pollination that takes place in hallways, studios and around water coolers, these shifts led to fruitful research experiments and unexpected discoveries in artmaking.

The event, co-organized by Levin and Sunita Nigam, an AMPD postdoctoral researcher, offered wonderful stories and fascinating insights about creating.

A workshop reckoning and pivot

For Scott Christian, a master's student in music composition, the pandemic necessitated turning around a carful of actors and returning to Canada from a New 91��ɫ state park in mid-March.

His off-Broadway workshop of , co-created with director and lyricist Lezlie Wade, had been cancelled due to public health closures.

Christian then received funding to film 30 minutes of the piece and present it online. The video launched in October 2020 and has been seen by more than 2,000 people.

The camera as a dance partner

“If we were going to present a developmental workshop for an audience,” said Christian, “we might hit 100 people. So, the fact that we were able to create something that reached 2,000 people this year feels like a real victory.”

The camera also became a new collaborator for Meera Kanageswaran, a master of fine art student in dance, as she transitioned to a filmed version of her Bharatanatyam choreography, documenting this Southern Indian dance form.

“In Bharatanatyam,” said Kanageswaran, “we use facial expressions and movements of isolated body parts. The dancers adjusted pretty quickly to adjusting their respective cameras to focus different body parts – either their face, their feet, or their hands. I think the camera now has become a dancing partner, not just a documenting device, and that’s something I would like to retain in my practice.”

She notes the initial trouble of finding rehearsal space for each dancer to rehearse in, but reflected that this led to exploring other forms of physical expression. “Bharatanatyam uses strong footwork, which produced some unhappy neighbours. That resulted in us changing our choreography a little bit.”

Unintended basement collaborations 

Ella Dawn McGeough, a PhD student in visual arts, was nearly an unhappy neighbour when her landlord proposed turning their basement into an extra apartment amid the pandemic.

She notes the initial trouble of finding rehearsal space for each dancer to rehearse in, but reflected that this led to exploring other forms of physical expression. “Bharatanatyam uses strong footwork, which produced some unhappy neighbours. That resulted in us changing our choreography a little bit.”

Unintended basement collaborations 

Ella Dawn McGeough, a PhD student in visual arts, was nearly an unhappy neighbour when her landlord proposed turning their basement into an extra apartment amid the pandemic.

More than just a storage space, the basement was a generative place to create in the first few months of the pandemic before she returned to her studio at 91��ɫ.

“The basement’s floors had long been a feature of fascination,” said McGeough, “a chaotic mystery of poorly poured layers of uneven concrete, the buckle and bend and fragmented sections of exposed dirt.”

She could even spot 30-year-old paw prints from a resident cat, Charlie. The basement was never made into an apartment and these non-human entities that she discovered in her art spaces over the last year became, in her words, “unintended collaborators, but I was also thinking of them as viewers.”

Taking theatre to Zoom

For Lisa Marie DiLiberto, a PhD student in theatre and performance studies, these broader audiences have become a recent focus of her work engaging the imaginations and aspirations of young people in her role as artistic director of Theatre Direct.

“One of the questions I had at the beginning of this pandemic,” said DiLiberto, “was how can theatre help young people heal through this traumatic experience of living through the pandemic through these last few months?”

One of her answers was , a digitally touring and Zoom-produced show that touches on issues that young people are facing in the pandemic.

The show’s digital nature has led to a broader and more geographically diverse audience. “[We’ve] reached audiences across the country or internationally, whereas that might not have been such an easy possibility to begin with,” said DiLiberto.

Accessible code illuminates environmental content

Sarah Vollmer and Racelar Ho, PhD students in computational arts, have shifted original research-creation plans by expanding the participatory scope of their virtual reality project , which discusses the invisible erosions brought on by climate change.

Vollmer and Ho have used tools like Google Collab and Miro to make their code accessible and allow participants to submit their own environmental content to Luminiferous Funeral.

“The original point,” said Ho, “was to break through the privilege of museums and galleries, so we tried to make our work more digital and flexible so audiences could participate in our work as content generators.”

The two have found more time to write about their work, which led them to present on how they handled their constant flow of climate data and content at a conference on information and online environments.

“That work transfers immediately into the pandemic state,” said Vollmer. “So, we’ve been able to help in ways that we didn’t think we could.”

Using augmented reality to situate artifacts

After initial setbacks in her PhD work, Lia Tarachansky, a PhD student in cinema and media studies, developed her research interests through a newly created Mitacs grant supporting her Toronto-based augmented reality (AR) project in the historic St. John’s Ward. Archeologists uncovered the artifacts in 2015 and transported them to London, Ont. Tarachansky hoped to use AR to situate them back home.

COVID-19, though, has continued to alter the project. “Through a series of trial and error I was able to get a 3D scanner from [CMA professor] Dr. Caitlin Fisher,” said Tarachansky. She then scanned artifacts like a hat block (mould), a memorial plate of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and a children’s doll, which will allow her to place the digital copies in Toronto via AR.

The current social challenges are just as serious as the technical ones and have led to important discoveries about the nature of research, something that is all too often taken for granted as an autonomous endeavour.

“Without access to people, without the ability to interact and brainstorm together,” said Tarachansky, “working in isolation is bringing out the understanding of how collaborative academic research is, even when pre-COVID we used to think it was very isolated and self-driven.”

Levin agreed that events like this one aimed to bring makers and thinkers together to support each other. “Many of us are having conversations within our own disciplinary silos right now,” said the associate dean, “about how to wrestle with the conditions of distanced research, both intellectually, creatively, and in other modes.”

Judging by the lively discussion that followed the presentations, the event met its goal of sparking new connections across AMPD.

By Thomas Sayers, MA student in theatre & performance studies at AMPD

Courtesy of YFile.

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After choreographing a Filipino dance extravaganza at 91��ɫ as part of the last spring, Professor Patrick Alcedo was anxiously watching his dancers perform from the front row, off to the side. And then he joined in on the final number. The passion and skill of this postcolonial scholar, dance artist and award-winning filmmaker truly radiates.

This translates into film. Alcedo, in 91��ɫ’s University’s School of the Arts, Media Performance & Design (AMPD) for more than a decade, certainly knows how to tell a story that captivates audiences through unvarnished beauty and powerful messages.

Two documentaries – A Piece of Paradise (2017) and Dancing Manilenyos (2019) – have put him on the map of filmmakers to watch. The more recent film earned an Award of Recognition from the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Awards and was selected to be in competition at the 2019 Diversity in Cannes Short Film Showcase during the Cannes Film Festival.

Alcedo sits down with Brainstorm to discuss what inspires his work, what he hopes to convey through his documentaries and what’s next for this accomplished scholar.

Q: What drives you to find and tell these stories?

A: I have always been fascinated with the power of film. Way back, as a young faculty member at the University of the Philippines, I would watch films by directors like Pedro Almodovar, Lino Brocka and Zhang Yimou. As much as their films are fictional, they indicated to me the immediate impact of films on their viewers.

Poster for Dancing Manilenyos

Such immediacy drew me to go into documentary films, a genre that fits my training in dance ethnography like a glove.

Since I am an ethnographer, I conduct fieldwork. When I find stories that speak to larger realities, I do not hesitate to reorganize my life to make documentary films around these subjects.

Q: Please describe the filmmaking process.

A: Since my primary method of research is fieldwork, I live in communities where I conduct research. It is amazing how many inspiring and inspired stories I encounter through that living.

I start conceptualizing my documentary films in the field. The first step is pre-production, where I do quite a few on-camera interviews with individuals who I envision will play key roles in the film.

The second step is production, which could take three to four years of intermittent filming. Here, I work closely with a videographer who has a keen understanding of ethnographic work. With me doing the audio or, at times, the second camera, together we patiently follow the lives of film “subjects” or cast members. Establishing rapport is key for me. There are times when I just hang out with them – a “deep hanging out” in an anthropological sense.

The final step is post-production, where I work closely with an editor to piece the story together. I do the subtitling myself.

Scenes from Dancing Manilenyos

Q: Your movies shine a light on Filipino culture but also contain universal themes. What are you trying to say to audiences?

A: I have always been drawn to issues around marginality. Thus, my films tend to focus on groups of people who are underprivileged as a result of class disparity, ethnocentrism, and myopic understanding of the complexity of gender formation and choices.

As a scholar, dance artist and filmmaker who has experienced discrimination first-hand, I purposely employ my works to empower the powerless – to redress unfair practices and rectify essentialized notions of what it means to be human.

I am a postcolonial scholar, someone who was born and raised in the Philippines – a country that was formerly within the domains of the Spanish and American empires. And thus, the ability of people to take ownership of, to localize, foreign elements introduced or forced upon them is running through my works.

What I am trying to say in my films is this: if one zooms into people’s everyday lives and their attendant cultural dance practices, one can spot many instances of agency – that is, the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. These are the moments about which I care the most.

A poster for A Piece of Paradise

Q: Why do you think your films resonate so profoundly with audiences?

A: I think my films speak to universal issues that matter regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, class background etc.

In A Piece of Paradise and Dancing Manilenyos, I, respectively, tackle the topics of emotional labour among Filipino caregivers in Toronto and of the incredible potential of dance to fight poverty and to choreograph against elitism. These themes resonate with viewers because they are moved by stories that grip the heart, striking chords of emotion and empathy.

Q: How has 91��ɫ supported your work?

A: If not for 91��ɫ, I truly believe it would not have been possible for me to do my documentary films. The writing of my grants was carefully vetted by highly competent research officers. As a member of the 91��ɫ Centre for Asian Research, I received a Publication Fund to finish the post-production of Dancing Manilenyos. AMPD and the Department of Cinema & Media Arts sponsored the free use of colour correction and sound design suites. My own Department of Dance has always supported my films and created a conducive environment for filmmaking.

Q: What’s next for you?

Scenes from A Piece of Paradise

A: I am excited and deeply honoured that I have, again, received a grant from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council.

For the next five years, I will be conducting research on Philippine dance practices in Manila and across Canada. Propelled by the positive outcome of Dancing Manilenyos, I have decided to turn it into a feature-length documentary.

To date, I have already started working on this new film and the transnational research project. I hope that in the next couple of years my new film will have its world premiere somewhere and that my research project will have been articulated in a series of print publications.

To learn more about Alcedo, visit his To see the trailer for Dancing Manilenyos, go . To see the trailer for A Piece of Paradise, go.

To learn more about Research & Innovation at 91��ɫ, follow us at ; watch our new , which profiles current research strengths and areas of opportunity such as artificial intelligence and Indigenous futurities; and see the for a glimpse of the year’s successes.

By Megan Mueller, senior manager, research communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, 91��ɫ, muellerm@yorku.ca

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Eric Armstrong

Theatre professors are no strangers to the limelight, but for one 91��ɫ academic, Eric Armstrong, the cool factor is off the charts. He created the accent for a constructed language called Belter, used in the white-hot sci-fi television series “The Expanse,” set 200 years in the future. This new language, developed by linguist Nick Farmer with the assistance of Armstrong as dialect/accent coach, mashes up six existing languages.

The American series, the third season of which airs 2018, has a captivating premise: Humans have colonized the solar system and Mars has become a military power. One social class has not fared well in this world. The new language belongs to this group of people, called Belters, who survive by scavenging materials in a particular Asteroid Belt.

In this Q&A with Brainstorm, Armstrong�� ̶ ��who teaches voice, speech, dialects and Shakespearean text at 91��ɫ�� ̶ ��talks about the new language and the television show that are taking centre stage in his career.

Q: How did this gig on “The Expanse” transpire?

A: One day, I got a call from my agent, asking if I knew anything about made-up languages in science fiction shows. I have to admit, I’m a bit of a nerd. I had read a lot about what are called ‘con langs’ or constructed languages in the press, most notably due to “Game of Thrones.” Dothraki and Valyrian are two made-up languages in that show.

When I was brought in to speak with the show creators, they could see that I knew what I was talking about, even though it was a ‘first’ for me.

“One day, I got a call from my agent, asking if I knew anything about made-up languages in science fiction shows. I have to admit, I’m a bit of a nerd. I had read a lot about constructed languages.” – Eric Armstrong

Q: How did your career lead up to this position as dialect/accent coach on a hit television series?

A: I trained to be an actor and worked professionally in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal for about five years. I always felt an attraction to teaching voice. 91��ɫ had an MFA program in this field. One of my mentors was David Smukler, Canada’s foremost voice teacher at the time, who started the voice teacher diploma program here at 91��ɫ. I completed this program, then worked freelance for a year. And from then on, I’ve had full-time voice teaching jobs in Canada and the United States. I returned to 91��ɫ [as a faculty member] in 2003.

“Our acting classes at 91��ɫ are diverse; and that diversity motivates me to teach in a way that is inclusive… That’s very rewarding.” – Eric Armstrong

One of the jobs that I took early on teaching was at Brandeis University [Massachusetts] where I was the speech and accents teacher – a narrower niche in the voice teaching field. I felt a little underqualified, so I took the time to do further research. I started to coach professionally in the theatre in Boston. That got me on the path. After that, I went to Chicago, where I started to work on film and television on a much bigger scale. My first film coaching job was with the [British actor] Tom Wilkinson, who had just been nominated for an Academy Award.

Q: Belter is comprised of Chinese, Japanese, Slavic, Germanic and other languages. What was it like developing the accent for this fabricated language?

A: Belter is a creole, a combination of languages. Nick Farmer, creator of the Belter language, studied creoles and used the structure of many creoles to create a new creole. English is at the core of Belter. But he took many of these other languages that you referenced as ingredients.

To begin with, he created a basic dictionary. For this, he turned to different languages for the source words, then undertook a transformational process to create phonological rules. [Phonology is the study of how sounds are used in language. This includes how sounds interact with each other.]

So, Nick handed me the phonological rules [for Belter] and gave me some samples of what Belter sounded like. As I ‘auditioned’ for the show – really, it was more like an extended interview – ��I took those sounds and developed an overall feeling of the language.

At first, Belter felt like Jamaican, also a creole. But we didn’t want it to be exclusively one thing; we wanted it to feel global. So, I took elements from Chinese, European and English accents, and salted them in to the recipe as a means of counterbalancing the Jamaican accent. As a result, Belter seems familiar… but you can’t quite put your finger on it. Later, I was surprised to find out that a Singaporean accent sounds quite a lot like Belter.

Q: What’s next for you at 91��ɫ?

A: I’m currently working on a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)-funded project on developing accent resources for the Indigenous performance community, which is underserved. This is a mandate I created for myself. For far too long, accent resources have primarily targeted mainstream actors. The industry is dominated by people who look like me, and I would like that to change.

Our acting classes at 91��ɫ are diverse; and that diversity motivates me to teach in a way that is inclusive… That’s very rewarding.

To learn more about the television show, visit the space.ca . To read an interview with Armstrong in Wired magazine, visit the . Armstong’s credits are listed in the Internet Movie Database, . For more information about Armstrong, visit his .

To learn more about Research & Innovation at 91��ɫ, follow us at , watch the and see the .

By Megan Mueller, manager, research communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, 91��ɫ, muellerm@yorku.ca

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B. W. Powe

Esteemed Canadian poet, novelist and essayist B.W. Powe is one of 91��ɫ’s treasures, bolstering this University’s strong literary tradition. A prolific writer, he has produced books that were championed by Canada’s leading publishers including Coach House, Guernica Editions and Random House.

Powe, who began at 91��ɫ in 1995, teaches courses on Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye and on Visionaries, and has helped found the Dead Tree Medium Theatre Group through the McLuhan Initiative at 91��ɫ.

Described by Toronto writer/editor Elana Wolff as “oceanic in intellectual breadth and interest, spiritual vision and pure, unshielded feeling,” Powe produced an engaging new volume of poetry: Decoding Dust (NeoPoiesis Press, 2016). It contains emotive themes of family and deep connections; it perfectly encapsulates life at a particular point in time – with grown kids and ailing parents – as well as the universal ‘stuff’ of life.

In this Q&A, he discusses his new book.

Q: Why did you write Decoding Dust?

A: The poems came from a desire to get close to the soul and sorrow, the heart of my family and heartbreak, shapeshifters and the garden of vision. I wanted the book to be a place of intensities, where many voices would speak.

Sometimes my desire was just to shape something beautiful. It may seem an odd thing to say, but if you’ve added beauty to the world, in the way a tree is beautiful, then I think you’ve done something. That’s part of what I wanted to do: leave a beautiful line on a page.

Q: What are the key ingredients to your writing process?

Decoding Dust. Reproduced with permission of NeoPoiesis Press.

A: Time, concentration, quiet, few interruptions, the cultivation of images and voices, a solitude that creates receptivity. Keeping myself open to atmospheres and the closeness of things, to the voices of soul yearning and transformation… This is what I hoped to get into Decoding Dust … an availability to dreaming true, letting the spirit speak.

One of the things I say to my creative writing students is, if you don’t like solitude, you’re in the wrong business. It’s a double-edged experience because the reverse of solitude is loneliness… and loneliness is one of the epidemics of our time. There’s loneliness and there’s heartbreak in the voices that inhabit Decoding Dust.

I call the creative environment that you need “the greening,” from Hildegard von Bingen’s word, viriditas. It means your space/time should have signals of encouragement, music, artwork, light, films, a spiritual-imaginative nourishment that allows you to make associations and imagine stories.

“I’m indebted to 91��ɫ’s English department for the encouragement to teach my courses – on Visionaries, on McLuhan and Frye. The courses are my children, in a way.” – B.W. Powe

Q: What writers inspired you to write?

A: When I read Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, I thought: I want to write. Then I read Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River… Virginia Woolf’s The Waves… Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf… They were extraordinary books for me. I read McLuhan at an early age, and Sartre’s essays, Susan Sontag’s books. They inspired my essays.

The poets who spoke to me early on were William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Arthur Rimbaud and William Butler Yeats. And song lyrics: I was a fan of Bob Dylan and The Who’s Pete Townshend. Patti Smith became another inspiring figure.

Q: Who are your favourite poets? What are you reading now? ��

A: Canadians, of course – I revere Anne Carson and A.F. Moritz – and many European, South American and Spanish poets. Rainer Maria Rilke, César Vallejo, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Antonio Machado. I’m currently reading Rubén Darío. He’s Nicaraguan. I revere Federico Garcia Lorca and I’ve been translating his lyrics. It’s the way I teach myself Spanish. My wife is Spanish and she says that my translations are good. I think she’s being nice. I’m also reading Marilynne Robinson’s trilogy, Gilead, Home and Lila, novels I admire very much. I’m re-reading George Steiner’s After Babel on translation.

Q: Can you speak to 91��ɫ’s support for your work and how 91��ɫ fosters excellence?

A: There has been very strong support. Recently, 91��ɫ funded a theatre project by the Dead��Tree Medium Group, which will transform Decoding Dust into works for stage and video.

A great thing 91��ɫ has given me is time. I’m indebted to 91��ɫ’s English department for the encouragement to teach my courses – on Visionaries, on McLuhan and Frye. The courses are my children, in a way. I suppose they’re a little unusual in the curriculum, but they’ve been encouraged. That kind of support on 91��ɫ’s part has been remarkable. I should mention that [former] Dean Bob Drummond was very keen on having a creative/scholarly mix in the English department, which has been maintained here extremely well. I’ve found fine colleagues here too.

The other great thing about being at 91��ɫ has been my students. I’ve been blessed in attracting extraordinary students.

“The fact that 91��ɫ pays me to do this is one of the great gifts of the cosmos.” – B.W. Powe

Q: What’s the advice you would give a budding writer in your class?

A: Good luck! And courage, strength, stamina, inspirations and wisdom. Love what you do. Find the heart in it. Decoding Dust was another attempt to put the heart on the page. The first ultrasound we saw of our baby last week was of her/his heart. It was very moving. And I thought, well, that’s kind of what we’re doing here: trying to find a way to make the heart beat as loud as it can… to remind us how miraculous it all is.

I encourage students to set aside time and delve. Take a poem or a story, and read it over and over. You’d be amazed at how much awareness comes when you take time. I suggest: allow inspiration (from the Latin word inspiritus) to enter you. The second word I use is entheos, the Greek word for being filled with the Gods. It translates into our word “enthusiasm.” Another word is, again, “greening:” creating an environment in which awareness can deepen. The fourth word, duende, I’ve taken from the Spanish tradition. The word comes from Flamenco, meaning the rising to the moment.

It seems to me a spiritual crime to go into a classroom and dispirit people. You need to lift them. But it’s a two-way process: they inspire me, too. The fact that 91��ɫ pays me to do this is one of the great gifts of the cosmos.

For more information about Decoding Dust, visit the publisher’s . For more about B.W. Powe, visit his or his .

By Megan Mueller, manager, research communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, 91��ɫ, muellerm@yorku.ca

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Witnessing and engaging in a paradigm shift of epic proportions, Professor Gail Vanstone, director of the Culture & Expression program at 91��ɫ, is interested how the documentary is changing in light of new digital technology. How is this 100-year-old art form evolving into a different animal altogether − something enhanced or enriched; something that captures and reflects the marginalized and gives a voice to previously absent experiences; something profoundly aspirational?

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Dan Adler

Teaming up with the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Professor Dan Adler assembles a major show of an artist who is viewed as the most influential sculptor of the last 30 years.

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Stephanie Fisher

91��ɫ doctoral student Stephanie Fisher and Faculty of Education Professor Jennifer Jenson’s study challenges the subordinate positioning of females in digital games. Despite the odds, some in the study introduce female leads.

New research led by doctoral student Stephanie Fisher with Faculty of Education Professor Jennifer Jenson, director of the Institute for Research on Digital Learning, examines some of the ways in which girls are set up as subordinate, in relation to boys and men, by and within the digital games industry.

What is unique about their investigation, which takes place under the umbrella of feminist interventionist research, is that it goes beyond recording the inequity. Digging deeper, the researchers profile how, and under what circumstances, girls push back on these imposed positions when engaging in game development.

“This research shows how participants are not helpless victims,” Fisher explains.��“Rather, the girls in our study critically considered gender roles in games as well as different aspects of their own identity. They exercised autonomy to resist negative positioning. We were interested in supporting girls as producers, not just as consumers of digital games.”

“We were interested in supporting girls as producers, not just as consumers of digital games.”��– Stephanie Fisher

In mainstream digital games culture − where the games are primarily developed and marketed for boys and men − sex-based stereotypes are routinely displayed and reinforced. This effectively normalizes the male-dominated system.

The repeated imagery of girls and women in games are instrumental to maintaining gender-based oppression. Characteristics of female imagery in these games include the following:

• Pinkification: In games where pink signifies anything feminine. This reinforces gender-based play and functions as a barrier for female participation.
• Marginalization: In most, if not all, aspects of games culture, women are on the sidelines as quest givers or objects of affection or conquest.
• Sexualization: Women are portrayed as sex objects that exist for the pleasure of male gaze. This undermines attempts by women to participate as equals.
• Exclusion: It is not uncommon for women to be explicitly excluded from gaming tournaments on sexist grounds.
• Gender-based harassment: In the past, this has included highly publicized, coordinated campaigns that target feminist critics.

Game development camp places girls at the top of the pecking order

This is the context in which Fisher and Jenson set up their experiment. In the summer of 2011, they ran three game-development camps around 91��ɫ, through two existing on-campus summer youth programs. They, with their team, worked with 39 kids (23 boys and 16 girls) between the ages of 11 and 16.

The researchers created a unique environment as the kids developed computer games using Game Maker: critical thinking spaces designed to encourage participants to challenge cultural norms on what games are “appropriate” for girls and boys to play, to talk about their gaming experiences, and to take risks in their play and designs.

“We designed and enacted a ‘crash course’ that raised awareness of and questioned the status quo, put girls at the very top of the pecking order and intentionally placed female staff in positions of authority,” Jenson explains.

What kind of games would the kids develop? How would the kids make gender-based decisions about the games they were creating? Primarily interested in the girls participating in the study, Fisher and Jenson focused on how the girls constructed their identity as game developers.

Girls begin to counter stereotypes��

The researchers collected data using methods such as short surveys, interviews, researcher observations and analyses of student-produced media. They discovered that the girls created games that fell into three categories:

1. Pink or ‘girly’ games: Most girls created games that reinforced the status quo and in this, they saw themselves as ‘good girls.’ “This is how these participants chose to mark themselves as girls in a space that is dominated by boys,” Fisher explains.
2. Educational games: Eighty per cent of the girls created a game that included math problems. Why? Being a good student was part of their identity, and they were familiar with this genre.
3. Gender-neutral games

Despite the environment ─ an empowered space designed to disrupt the gender order ─ the girls reinforced stereotypes. “Our findings show that it’s not enough to provide opportunities for youth to work with digital tools,” Jenson concludes. “Masculine values have an impact on the stories that girls will tell through game development.”

“Masculine values have an impact on the stories that girls will tell through game development.”��– Jennifer Jenson

However, the girls were receptive to encouragement to think outside the box. They discussed inequalities that they had personally noticed. After talking about the lack of representation of girls who enjoy “boy” hobbies, one girl changed the sex of the main character in her skateboarding game from male to female. She began to think of her game as something that flies in the face of industry norms, an example to counter stereotypes of “what girls can do (too).”

“It’s about pushing boundaries, getting these girls to ask questions and recognize that it is possible for them to act in ways they never imagined,” Fisher emphasizes. “If a��space does not exist where the girls can act from a powerful position, then they will learn to question why that is.”

This research was funded by a Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada grant. The article “,” was published in Learning, Media and Technology (2016).

To read more about Jenson’s work, visit��.

By Megan Mueller, manager, research communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, 91��ɫ, muellerm@yorku.ca

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