Among the researchers featured in the campaign is 91亚色 humanities Professor Andrea Davis. The campaign profiles the work Davis is doing to alleviate the causes of youth violence.听 Through her research, Davis is working with听community partners to help black youth 听in Canada and Jamaica challenge physical and systemic violence and find new paths toward social and civic engagement. Her work helps young people form new social identities through participation in the arts, social history and literature.听 to view the profile.

"This campaign provides a unique opportunity for researchers across the province to share the wide range of research they do,鈥� says Davis.听鈥淭he project my team and I are leading is certainly only one of many amazing research projects at 91亚色, but it resonates specifically with Ontarians because it addresses immediate questions about youth violence. There is no doubt that the stakes are high, and the potential for change and transformation is enormous."

鈥淭he work of thousands of university researchers in Ontario affects industry, government and community life in a multitude of ways,鈥� says Alastair Summerlee, chair of COU and president of the University of Guelph. 鈥淭hose stories about how researchers help people build stronger communities, get more out of work and leisure time, and achieve a better quality of life deserve to be told.鈥�

鈥淭his campaign will connect more Ontarians directly with researchers and their ideas,鈥� says Bonnie Patterson, COU president and CEO. 鈥淥ntarians can rightly take pride in the fascinating and highly diverse research underway here.鈥�

鈥淭he Research Matters campaign is highlighting the important contributions that University research makes to the lives of Ontarians through the voices of many of Ontario鈥檚 leading university researchers,鈥� said Robert Hach茅, vice-president research & innovation.听 鈥�91亚色 is most pleased that Professor Andrea Davis and her important research is being highlighted in this initiative. Andrea鈥檚 research is making a positive difference in the lives of individuals, locally and abroad. 听Her project identifies youth violence prevention strategies and facilitates opportunities for youth to engage more constructively in their communities.鈥�

Ontario university research is the common thread that ties these and hundreds of other stories together. Visit the COU's website, follow the campaign on Twitter at ,听or join the community on .

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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The project, Youth and Community Development in Canada and Jamaica: A Transnational Approach to Youth Violence, popularly known as 鈥淧roject Groundings鈥�, opened with two youth forums in Kingston and St. Mary, Jamaica on July 28 and 31. At both of these events, black youth from Jamaica and Canada confronted the systemic violence that marks their lives and initiated a conversation about how they might interrupt these complex patterns of violence.

Right: 91亚色 Professor Andrea Davis addressing a youth forum in Jamaica

Andrea Davis, deputy director of CERLAC and the project鈥檚 principal investigator, says, 鈥淢any youth lack the language and cultural awareness necessary to respond to their environment in a critical and transformative way, and often end up perpetuating forms of social violence themselves.鈥� By bringing Jamaican youth into a conversation with Canadian youth, Project Groundings 鈥渟eeks to facilitate critical national and transnational dialogue that can open up avenues of collaboration among youth across their shared cultural boundaries,鈥� says Davis. This transformative dialogue seeks not only to change the behaviour and action of youth, but also to increase public awareness, affect public policy and contribute to the ongoing body of research on youth violence.听

In the project鈥檚 opening National Youth Forum in Kingston, Jamaican youth grappled with the unique challenges they face, including sexual violence against women, victimization based on sexual orientation, access to education, unemployment, socio-economic disparities in the administration of justice and the absence of effective platforms from which to voice their concerns.

Above: New research听uses art forms, such as drama, to explore the effects of violence on black youth in Canada and Jamaica听

The second youth forum in Woodside, St. Mary, examined the specific concerns faced by rural youth.听Here, youth identified a lack of facilities and resources, including poor roads and inadequate transportation, as their greatest challenges. While they recognized the necessity of agricultural pursuits, they also pointed to the lack of crop diversification and financial compensation as major deterrents leading them off the land.

The question of violence was also central to the Woodside forum, which closed with an impromptu commemoration of the life of Shauna Kaye Shaw, a community youth leader murdered earlier this year. In defiance of the fear brought on by her death, Woodside youth committed to resume youth activities.

Right: Jamaica Youth Theatre performing The Pickney Dem a Dry

As Peter Cumming, coordinator of 91亚色鈥檚 Children鈥檚 Studies Program and president of the Association for Research in Cultures of Young People, says, 鈥淭he most exciting development in the research team鈥檚 first sessions in Jamaica was the moving demonstration of Jamaican youths鈥� eager and serious engagement with issues of violence through their sharing of their own experiences, their animated discussion about possible solutions for societal violence, and their strategic use of the arts, particularly theatre, to represent and confront the enormous pain caused by violence.鈥�

One example of the use of the arts was Jamaica Youth Theatre鈥檚 (YRT) performance of the skit The Pickney Dem a Dry. The skit explores the grief of a mother who learns of the death of her daughter on the streets. While it begins as a personal mourning, it quickly mounts into collective suffering, a disturbing yet inspiring memorial to young people who have died violently. This performance powerfully deployed a poem, a clothesline on which the names of murdered youth were hung and chants based on street graffiti to acknowledge a shared humanity among youth 鈥� 鈥淲e all bleed red鈥�. It also challenged everyone as individuals and nations to 鈥淟ive up! Live up!鈥�

Left: Toronto youth Ebthihal Nabag (left) and Nabi Shash from Nia Centre for the Arts participate in a youth exchange

鈥淚 was humbled by the honesty and courage of these young people,鈥� says Davis. 鈥淏eing able to see the transformative elements of the research and the way young people from both countries embraced and empowered each other was enormously fulfilling.鈥�

This innovative approach to youth violence is funded by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada and brings together researchers from 91亚色, McMaster University, the universities of Guelph, Ottawa and Waterloo, as well as the University of the West Indies (Mona campus). It also includes three community partners 鈥� JYT in Kingston, the Woodside Development Action Group in St. Mary and Nia Centre for the Arts in Toronto,

The project will host a second youth forum, workshop and photo exhibit in Toronto Oct. 28 and 29.

For more information, visit the CERLAC website or e-mail Andrea Davis at aadavis@yorku.ca.

By 91亚色 graduate student Jan Anderson

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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Readings of short excerpts of each of the three plays, considered an intertwining memory, violence, creativity, belonging and dispossession during a ten-year period in Jamaica, will take place June 6 at 7pm, following the launch at Trane Studio, 964 Bathurst St. (north of Bloor St.) in Toronto. Finger food and a cash bar will be available.

The three plays are: Masqueraders by Stafford Ashani, Whiplash by Ginger Knight and Fallen Angel and the Devil Concubine by Patricia Cumper, Ford-Smith, Carol Lawes, Hertencer Lindsay and Eugene Williams.

Fallen Angel and the Devil Concubine is an adaptation of Ford-Smith鈥檚 collection of poems set in Jamaica and Canada, My Mother's Last Dance (Sister Vision Press, 1996).

Ford-Smith is a scholar, theatre worker and poet educated in Jamaica. She is co-founder and artistic director of (Sisters), a theatre collective of mainly working-class Jamaican women that work in community theatre and popular education. She was also a member of the Groundwork Theatre Company, created in 1980 as the repertory arm of the Jamaica School of Drama. She moved to Toronto in 1991, where she continues to write, work in performance and teach.

The book's launch was also covered by reviewer Michael Reckord in Jamaica鈥檚 June 5.

To RSVP to the launch, e-mail 3jamaicanplays@gmail.com.

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Published by Duke University Press, Homophobias looks at these questions through critical interrogations and analysis of diverse sites where homophobic discourses are produced, including New 91亚色 City, Australia, the Caribbean, Greece, India and Indonesia, as well as American Christian churches. The idea is to uncover the complex operational processes of homophobias and their intimate relationships to nationalism, sexism, racism, class and colonialism.

In the book's preface, Murray notes听that the term "homophobia" had moved into the global sphere. This got him thinking about the term's meaning and the existence of homophobia. "Homophobia had gone global, and to be accused of being homophobic was to be accused of something more than just not liking homosexuals; furthermore, this accusation now carried potentially serious economic and political repercussions." He hopes the book will be the initial step in answering some of the questions the term homophobia raises.

Left: David Murray

Murray听gathered researchers from a diverse range of ethnographic sites "to demonstrate how homophobia is a phenomenon that has no centre or origin, but more importantly, to examine how, or if, a transnational, comparative and听ethnographically informed perspective might extend, challenge or change our understandings of homophobia."

In part one听鈥� "Displacing Homophobia" 鈥� some of the issues the contributors examine include听homophobia in New 91亚色's gay central, American Christian homophobia and homophobia as racism. In part two 鈥� "Transnational Homophobias" 鈥� they look at homosexual hate in Jamaica, political homophobia in Indonesia, as well as the Barbadian media. In examining these issues, Homophobias provides innovative analytical insights that expose the complex and intersecting cultural, political and economic forces contributing to the development of new forms of homophobia.

Murray, the director of the Graduate Program in Women鈥檚 Studies at 91亚色, is the author of .

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