The talk, presented by the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at 91��ɫ, will take place Sunday, Nov. 21 at 3:30pm in W136 Executive Learning Centre, Seymour Schulich Building, Keele campus. The lecture is free of charge.

Right: Xu Xin

Xin, director of the Glazer Institute for Jewish Studies at Nanjing University, is the recipient of an honorary doctorate from Bar-Ilan University in Israel and the only professor of Jewish studies in China.

The Centre for Jewish Studies at 91��ɫ is Canada's first interdisciplinary research centre in Jewish studies, bringing together a vibrant community of scholars and teachers to promote cutting-edge research in the field. Jewish studies encompasses the study of the texts, histories and cultures of the Jewish people, which developed alongside and within Western and non-Western civilizations.

The event is being co-sponsored by the 91��ɫ Centre for Asian Research and the Department of Humanities.

For more information, visit the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies website or call 416-736-5823.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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“I was surprised and truly honoured….I'm very lucky to have had such a supportive group of friends, supervisors, and colleagues at 91��ɫ who helped and encouraged me to write this particular paper,” says Mosby.

Right: Ian Mosby accepts the Nicholas C. Mullin Award in Tokyo from Society for Social Studies of Science council member Nina Wakeford of the University of London, UK

His paper, published last year in the journal examines the “discovery” of the Chinese restaurant syndrome in 1968 and subsequent reactions by the medical community, scientists, public health authorities and the general public to dangers posed by the common food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG) and by Chinese cooking more generally.

“I was originally attracted to this topic because I was curious as to why Chinese restaurants often had prominent 'No MSG' signs in their windows and on their menus even though MSG was a common ingredient in all kinds of processed foods ranging from potato chips to canned soup,” says Mosby.

“This curiosity quickly led me to a surprising number of scientific and medical studies from the 1960s and 1970s examining something called the Chinese restaurant syndrome. As it turned out, these studies ended up being a fascinating window into the interplay between ideas about race, food culture and industrial food technologies during the postwar period.”

In his paper, Mosby argues that "Chinese restaurant syndrome was, at its core, a product of a racialized discourse that framed much of the scientific, medical and popular discussion surrounding the condition. This particular debate brought to the surface a number of widely held assumptions about the strangely ‘exotic’, ‘bizarre’ and ‘excessive’ practices associated with Chinese cooking which, ultimately, meant that few of those studying the Chinese restaurant syndrome would question the ethnic origins of the condition.”

What happened is that Chinese restaurant syndrome became synonymous in medical and popular literature with Chinese cooking even though MSG was widely used by major American food manufacturers, he says.

And, as Mosby discovered, the debate over MSG and its possible short- and long-term health effects, which have been claimed to range from mild discomfort up to brain damage, continues today.

The Nicholas C. Mullins Award is handed out annually by the for an outstanding piece of scholarship by a graduate student in the field of Science & Technology Studies. Mosby was presented with the award at the 2010 annual meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science at the University of Tokyo.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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This international symposium aims to facilitate the exchange of ideas on Chinese Canadian literature, review and define the parameters of the research field and promote a robust development of studies on the subject.

The two-day event will take place starting at 1pm on Friday, July 23 and at 9am on Saturday, July 24 on the second floor of Vari Hall. The symposium is jointly presented by 91��ɫ’s Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics (DLLL), the Chinese Pen Society of Canada and the College of Letters of Jinan University in Guangzhou, China. Anyone is welcome to attend.

Professor Angela Pao (left) of Indiana University Bloomington’s Department of Comparative Literature will deliver the keynote speech Friday, titled “Floating Points: From Diasporic Spaces to Multiculturalism Places”, following opening remarks by Jiang Shuzhuo, vice-president academic at Jinan University in China. Jiang will also deliver the keynote address Saturday afternoon.

Several established scholars and promising young researchers in the field of Chinese Canadian literature will present their research on Chinese Canadian writers whom they have read. Some of the lectures are listed below:

• Professor Chen Cai (English) of the School of Foreign Languages & Cultures at the Southwest University of Science & Technology in China will talk about “Changing Ethnic Awareness: Major Themes in Chinese Canadian Literature”.
• Pu Yazhu (English), a PhD candidate at the College of Foreign Languages & Cultures at Sichuan University in China, will discuss “On the Identity Acknowledgement in Cross the Oce����”.
• Ray Hsu (English), author of Anthropy and a post-doctoral fellow in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and Danielle Thien (English), also of UBC’s Creative Writing Program, will look at “Asian Canadian and Aboriginal Communities: Collectivities and Allies?”
• Writer Michelle Tisseyre (English) will talk about “Bilingual Writing, Challenges, Rewards and the Unique Creative Process”.
• Professor John Z. M. Chen (English) of Inner Mongolia University’s Canadian Studies Center in China will lecture on “Society, History and Values: A Cultural Study of Paul Yee’s Chinese Canadian Female Characters”.
• Professor Qian Hong (Chinese) of the Department of Chinese Language & Literature at Tongji University in China will discuss “From Looking at the Moon to Gold Mountain Blues: Chinese Canadian Women Writer Zhang Ling’s Narrative Transitions”.
• Professor Lin Danya (Chinese), chair of the Department of Chinese Language & Literature at Xiamen University in China, will look at “Examining the Emergence and Characteristics of Chinese-Canadian Literature”.
• Professor Pu Ruoqian (Chinese), dean of the College of Foreign Studies at Jinan University, will lecture on “Time, Space and Cultural Construction in Zhang Ling’s Gold Mountain Blues”.
• Tan Xiang (Chinese), associate chief editor at Hebei Education Press in China, will discuss “Reading Chen He’s Novel The City in the Black and White Movie”.
• Professor Zhao Qingqing (Chinese) of the Centre of Canadian Studies at Nanjing University in China will look at “Chinese Canadian Literature and its Reception in China”.
• Professor Daxiang Yu, director of the Centre of World Literature in Chinese at Tongji University, will discuss “The Image of Maple Forests in Overseas Chinese Prose Essays: the Uniqueness of Chinese-Canadian Writings”.

To see the full schedule of events and times, click here. For more information, contact 91��ɫ DLLL Professor Xueqing Xu, faculty associate at the 91��ɫ Centre for Asian Research and symposium organizer, at xueqingx@yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Michol Hoffman and James Walker, professors of sociolinguistics in the Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS), studied individuals in Toronto's Chinese and Italian communities. They compared them with people of British and Irish descent to learn whether ethnic identification affects how they speak Canadian English and adopt ongoing changes to the language.

Shopping on Toronto's Spadina Avenue. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Rather than study the effects of ethnicity per se on language, they looked at the effects of ethnic orientation in the study, “Ethnolects and the City: Ethnic Orientation and Linguistic Variation in Toronto English”, which appears in the journal .

“We recognized that individuals may have different attitudes and orientation toward the values and characteristics that are associated with their ethnic group,” said Hoffman. “So we asked them a number of questions to measure how much they identify themselves as belonging to a certain group. For example: Do you watch TV in Italian or English? Did you grow up in a neighbourhood that was predominantly that ethnicity? Are most of your friends of that group?”

In addition to rating the survey participants’ ethnic orientation, the researchers took note of their ethnicity, generation and sex. First-generation Italian- and Chinese-Canadians, whose first language is Italian and Cantonese, respectively, scored highly on ethnic orientation, expressing stronger affiliation to their ethnic group. There was some transfer from the first languages in the first generation, but it does not appear to persist in the second and third generations: linguistically, younger Italian- and Chinese-Canadians who are native speakers of English appear to pattern after their British/Irish-Canadian cohorts.

“The biggest difference between ethnic groups is the rate at which they use linguistic features, such as dropping the 't' or 'd' from certain words, for example pronouncing 'told him' as 'tol’ him', and the degree to which they participate in an ongoing change in vowel pronunciation by Canadians, so 'bit' sounds more like 'bet', 'bet' sounds more like 'bat', and 'bat' sounds more like 'bot',” said Walker. “However, when we look beyond rates of use to the linguistic structure, we find more similarities than differences. Given that the differences we see among ethnic groups are more a question of degree than of kind, we think they may be strategically adopting them − or not adopting them − to express their values and identity.”

Whether these particular linguistic differences are introduced through transfer from other languages in the first generation or already exist in Canada when they arrive, there is evidence that second- and third-generation speakers adopt them and use them intentionally, Hoffman and Walker said. They are further testing this idea by examining other phonetic and grammatical features, as well as collecting further data from the Greek, Portuguese and Punjabi communities. The results of their research should inform public debate about the impact of ethnolinguistic diversity on Canadian English.

The study was covered in the; James Walker also spoke about the study on CBC Radio’s “Here & Now” program June 8.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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