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The launch of Here We Are Among the Living (Tightrope Books) will take place Wednesday, June 20 at 7:30pm at Revival, 783 College St. in Toronto.�� A second launch will take place July 8 at 5pm in Dufferin Grove Park.

An inter-generational story, the book documents the first years of the 21st century, beginning with a conflict between Bernstein and her mother over the meaning of 9-11 and their responses to it. In another early scene, Bernstein finds a letter from her father to her mother written after their divorce in which he rails against flower child hypocrisy. Here We Are Among the Living is in part about our attempts to reconcile ourselves to history, both familial and cultural.

Samantha Bernstein

The epistolary form has for over 200 years been an outlet for social criticism and an expression of engagement, especially for young people.�� Bernstein’s memoir in e-mails captures both her generation’s political sensibilities and desire for instant communication.��

Bernstein started writing it while completing her master’s degree thesis in Interdisciplinary Studies in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Graduate Studies, and the story  includes her time as an undergraduate student in the University’s Creative Writing Program in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

Her poetry and prose has appeared in various publications, including Exile Literary Quarterly, Books in Canada, The Fiddlehead and the anthology TOK 3: Writing the New Toronto.��

In addition, Bernstein received federal funding for her dissertation this year, which considers some of the central questions about ethics and aesthetics posed in Here We Are Among the Living.

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

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The film by Osgoode grad Chris Hope (JD ’04) offers a moving account of Japanese Canadian detention during the Second World War, as seen through the eyes of his grandmother, Nancy Okura.�� Hope spent more than ten years working on the film, which he also produced. Osgoode alumnus Anwar Deeb (JD ’04) composed the film’s original music.

Right: Osgoode Hall Law School grad Chris Hope with his grandmother, Nancy Okura.

"Most people my age have the beginning of a pension," said Hope, whose day job is as director of business and legal affairs for Alliance Films Inc.�� "I have a film; a massive debt, and, thankfully, a very patient wife."

Hope was able to attract community support to raise about 25 per cent of the overall budget, which allowed him to complete the film by the April 1 gala date.�� The film is now ready for distribution and broadcast.

His goal is to screen the film in schools across Canada. "The Japanese Canadian Internment story is one in which Canadians are painfully under-versed,” he said. “Hopefully, by presenting it in the first person with my grandmother, it will resonate on a more personal level than the few paragraphs in a history textbook that most of us experienced, and probably quickly forgot."

Hope says the universal message contained in his film is that everyone needs to take the time to learn the history of those closest to them, and not hesitate in the sharing that history.

“By openly discussing such stories, we may collectively learn from our past, regardless of racial, cultural, religious or political boundaries,” he said. “Knowledge and familiarity with ‘the other’ is the enemy of discrimination, so it is critical that that knowledge is constantly nurtured and encouraged."

For more information, visit the website.

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Environmental studies PhD candidate Andrew Mark knows what’s it’s like to have a long commute to campus, but he tries to use this time productively by thinking about and listening to podcasts.

In fact, he likes podcasts so much, he and a fellow student have created a podcast series he hopes other 91��ɫ commuters will find intriguing and thought-provoking.

This week, Mark and Amanda Di Battista, also an environmental studies PhD candidate at 91��ɫ, will launch CoHearence, a new podcast series exploring the connections between the environment and history and culture.

The first episode will explore mourning, loss and the environment 

On Thursday, Feb. 9, 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) will host a screening and discussion based on the first episode of CoHearence as part of the FES Lecture Series at 12:45pm at 141 Health, Nursing & Environmental Studies building. Mark and Di Battista, along with other participants from the episode, will be on hand for a Q&A period.

Funded by (Network in Canadian History & Environment) and the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES), CoHearence is a six-part, monthly audio program free to the general public. Part one of the pilot podcast is “Melancholy, Mourning and Environmental Thought: Making Loss the Centre” and it looks at the loss involved in today’s changing environment.

Cohearance will also look at protests and the environment

For anyone not familiar with podcasts, they are similar to radio broadcasts with a difference in the delivery system. Instead of tuning in via radio, listeners download episodes digitally and listen to them through a computer or personal media device, such as an iPod or cellphone. “We think [podcasting] is ideally suited to talking about complex environmental issues,” says Di Battista. Mark agrees, saying “We hope this medium can create a new venue for information dissemination, beyond the written word, the lecture, the conference or an advising session.”

Di Battista says her goal in creating CoHearence is to “facilitate interesting discussion about the relationship between culture and environment. We work really hard to make each episode interesting both to those within the academy and the general public.”

Mark hopes the project will also reach an audience outside of the University. “Our primary objective is to improve the interdisciplinary discussion happening within our Faculty. We can [also] create narratives that are engaging to people outside of our community. For example, not only does our Faculty have theoretical ideas about the G20 protests, but we also have lived knowledge of those events.”

Each podcast episode will highlight current FES research. Di Battista says the reason for choosing melancholy and mourning as the topic for the first podcast is that “in the wake of the huge amount of environmental loss we talk, teach and learn about each day here in [FES], thinking about the ways that we might deal with the grief and anger that come out of those experiences seemed like a great place to start.”

Subsequent episodes will address a range of topics, including food justice, protest and resistance, and even highlights from the held last October at the Gladstone Hotel.

Di Battista and Mark hope that series will endure on the airwaves for a long time. To help ensure this, they are offering workshops on podcasting through the (CAP) program so future generations of FES students may continue to produce CoHearence. “People will discover and rediscover the series as a document of our times,” says Mark. “They might listen to our shows to hear about the topics or merely to come to know the people we interview better.”

CoHearence is available now on as a part of Sean Kheraj’s established podcast called Nature’s Past. It is also available on the website, which currently features a short preview video.

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

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[1.] 91��ɫ, Canada

91��ɫ’s Department of Film [Faculty of Fine Arts] is Canada’s first, largest and most comprehensive university-based film school. Film programs are taught by 40 award-winning filmmakers and prominent scholars, all active in their field. Students benefit from comprehensive, professional training that blends theory and practice in a free-thinking and creative environment. Five hundred-plus students work in modern learning, production and screening facilities in Toronto, one of the world’s leading film capitals. 91��ɫ offers a mix of graduate and undergraduate programs covering a range of topics. Students explore everything from the role that film and television play in society to genre-specific topics such as the vampire in cinema or crime film.

Asian students with international filmmaking aspirations have a couple of major avenues to choose from. They can give into the Hollywood paradigm and study in LA, where they will be encouraged to conform to the system and join the filmmaking masses. Opposite this, they can seek out smaller, counter-cultural schools that put a priority on the modern film as work of art.

For those intent on pursuing the latter, a school like 91��ɫ is an excellent option. Based in Toronto in Canada, it offers all of the advantages of a North American education without cornering aspiring filmmakers in the Hollywood mindset.

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The new directors are Professor Colin Coates, director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies (RCCS); Professor Laurence Harris, director of the Centre for Vision Research (CVR); Professor Christina Kraenzle, director of the Canadian Centre for German & European Studies (CCGES); Professor David Mutimer, director of the Centre for International & Security Studies (YCISS); and Professor Lisa Philipps, director of the Centre for Public Policy & Law (YCPPL).�� 

“On behalf of the 91��ɫ research community, I would like to congratulate Professors Coates, Harris, Kraenzle, Mutimer and Philipps on their appointments,” said Robert Haché, 91��ɫ's vice-president research & innovation.��“Their leadership expertise will be essential to further strengthening the unique and exciting opportunities for interdisciplinary research, collaborations and partnerships at 91��ɫ’s research centres and institutes.”

Colin Coates (left), Canada Research Chair in Cultural Landscapes, is also professor in the Canadian Studies program at Glendon College and president of the Canadian Studies Network-Réseau d’études canadiennes.��His research examines political culture in New France and the history of Canadian utopias.��He also conducts research in the area of environmental history, and is an executive member of the Network in Canadian History & Environment – Nouvelle initiative canadienne en histoire de l’environnement, funded by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Coates has co-edited and authored several books including, Introduction aux études canadiennes: histoires, identités et cultures (with Professor Geoffrey Ewen, Glendon) and Visions: the Canadian History Modules Project (with Professor Marcel Martel, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, along with four colleagues from other universities), Majesty in Canada: Essays on the Role of Royalty among others.��Coates won the Lionel Groulx-Yves Saint-Germain Foundation’s prize for Heroines and History – Representations of Madeleine de Verchères and Laura Secord (co-authored with Cecilia Morgan of OISE).

Laurence Harris (right) is a professor in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, a member of the graduate programs in Kinesiology & Health Science and in Biology, and has served as chair of the Psychology Department. He is the director the Multisensory Integration Laboratory at 91��ɫ, which investigates how information from visual, auditory, vestibular, proprioceptive and tactile senses is combined by the brain to create our perception of body and space. Applications of his research include the design of virtual environments and improving perception in situations where sensory information is impoverished, such as in the unusual environments of underwater or in space, in ageing or in clinical conditions such as partial blindness or Parkinson’s disease.��Recently, Harris ran an experiment on the International Space Station looking at astronauts’ perception of orientation. He is the author of more than 100 scientific articles and has edited nine books on topics pertaining to vision including Vision in 3D Environments, Cortical Mechanisms of Vision, Seeing Spatial Form, and Levels of Perception.  He is editor-in-chief of the journal Seeing and Perceiving: a journal of multisensory science.

Christina Kraenzle (left) is a professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics (DLLL) in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.��She has served as a CCGES affiliate since 2004 and been a member of the centre’s executive committee since 2005 through her role as the coordinator of the German Studies Program within DLLL.��Kraenzle’s research explores modern German literature, film and culture, with a focus on transnational cultural production, migration, travel and globalization. Her recent publications include Mapping Channels Between Ganges and Rhein: German-Indian Cross-Cultural Relations (with Jörg Esleben and Sukanya Kulkarni, 2008) as well as articles in The German Quarterly, German Life and Letters, Transit: A Journal of Travel, Migration and Multiculturalism in the German-Speaking World, and the volume Searching for Sebald: Photography after W. G. Sebald.

David Mutimer (right), a professor in the Department of Political Science, is also the founding editor of Critical Studies on Security and the editor of The Canadian Annual Review of Politics and Public Affairs.  He has been a member of YCISS since 1987 and has previously served as its deputy director.��Mutimer was also a visiting professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and Newcastle University in the United Kingdom (UK), as well as a principal research fellow in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford in the UK.��Mutimer’s research considers issues of contemporary international security through lenses provided by critical social theory and explores the reproduction of security in and through popular culture.��His research has focused on various aspects of weapons production and control, and more recently on the politics of the global war on terror, and of the regional wars around the world which are being fought by Canada and its allies.��Mutimer is presently leading a SSHRC-funded international research project on arms export controls.��His recent published work includes journal articles in Studies in Social Justice, The Cambridge Review of International Affairs and Contemporary Security Policy among others.

Lisa Philipps (left) has been a faculty member at Osgoode Hall Law School since 1996.��Prior to that, she held appointments in the faculties of law at the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia, and has held visiting professorships at Melbourne Law School, University College London and the University of Toronto among other institutions.��She served as associate dean research, graduate studies & institutional relations at Osgoode from 2009 to 2011.��Philipps' research focuses on tax law, budgets and feminist legal studies.��She has published widely on topics, including fiscal transparency, income splitting, gender budgeting, the distributional impact of tax cuts, the tax treatment of unpaid work, charitable tax incentives and more. Most recently she published two co-edited books on Tax Expenditures: State of the Art and Challenging Gender Inequality in Tax Policy Making: Comparative Perspectives.�� 

In all, 91��ɫ lists 29 research centres and institutes.

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