The lecture's title and topic are borrowed from , which Berland co-edited with Ryerson Professor Blake Fitzpatrick of the Documentary Media Program. Her work explores how military culture now has such a hold on society that many people cannot remember a time when the military was not a constant presence in their lives.

Right: Jody Berland

This military presence appears either physically or more abstractly through art and society as a whole. As Berland noted in an interview, “While civilian deaths and acts of torture have remained invisible and secret, it’s impossible to miss the images of invasion and imprisonment that circulate the world on the Internet, on TV and in video games.” Her presentation will begin by exploring recent events during the G20 summit in Toronto and then move to a broader examination of militarism in Canadian society.

Cultures of Militarization is a collection of essays penned by 22 international scholars and artists who have each contributed their own perspectives and experiences. Each of the contributions jointly identifies how a military culture brings devastation to communities and individuals.

Berland's lecture is part of the "Canada: Like You’ve Never Heard it Before” Speakers Series, which features open lectures delivered by 91��ɫ faculty. Produced by the Canadian Studies Program and the Students for Canadian Studies Club, the series has an interdisciplinary focus and promotes undergraduate research and study of Canada.

The series is co-sponsored by Vanier College, Winters College, New College, Stong College, Calumet College, Founders College and the Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

Submitted by Alison Sanelli, a second-year humanities student; republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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“Cultures of Militarization,” edited by (right), professor in 91��ɫ’s Department of Humanities, and Blake Fitzpatrick, professor in the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University, features contributions from 22 international scholars and artists.

Drawing on a rich array of research sites and interdisciplinary resources, the authors explore how human relations, social policies and cultural values come to be defined by military interests, and how such interests might be freshly understood. They delve into the notion that the culture of war is both hidden and widespread, reaching deep into civic culture and affecting government, families, media, entertainment, public policy and personal beliefs.

Berland cites the recent WikiLeaks exposé of classified US military documents as evidence of the hidden aspects of war. “It is interesting to note that US military operatives face military proceedings not for atrocities or misinformation, but for participating in leakages of classified documents,” Berland says. “And while civilian deaths and acts of torture have remained invisible and secret, it's impossible to miss the images of invasion and imprisonment that circulate the world on the Internet, on TV and in video games.”

Berland cites other prominent examples: the Pentagon's classified budget for research and acquisition of information development has increased 78 per cent since 2001, totaling $34 billion in 2009. “Our own military spends $9 billion on F-35 fighter planes while remaining silent on questions regarding their technical and military justification,” she says.

Berland notes that this widespread increase in militarization does not only affect war zones. In the community of Glace Bay, N.S., a debate rages about the naming of a new school after Jimmy MacNeil, a Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan in June 2010. From coast to coast, yellow ribbons adorn trees and lampposts, while in Ontario, Highway 401 is now known as the Highway of Heroes.

“Here in Toronto, we saw it play out in the streets during the G20 summit. Military culture is everywhere. Ultimately, we are all living the consequences of global militarization,” Berland says.

TOPIA subscribers will receive the special double issue; the book is available through . It will be formally launched at the Gladstone Hotel’s Melody Bar on Dec. 6, from 6 to 8pm. All are welcome.

For more information, visit the TOPIA website.

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

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Here, 91��ɫ humanities Professor , English Professor and PhD student Elena Basile offer an appreciation of Prof. Godard and her tireless work:

It is with great sadness that the Department of English at 91��ɫ announces the death of Professor Emerita Barbara Godard, a professor of English, French, social & political thought and women’s studies. A pillar of the 91��ɫ community and one of Canada’s pre-eminent literary scholars, Prof. Godard broadly influenced the fields of Canadian and Quebec studies, translation studies, feminist poetics, semiotics and cultural studies.

Right: Prof. Barbara Godard

She was a generous supervisor and mentor who trained and influenced a contemporary generation of cultural workers, including academics, writers and artists. The scope of her mentorship was fully recognized in 2002 when she became the recipient of teaching awards from 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Graduate Studies and the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools. Prof. Godard retired from full-time teaching in 2008, but continued a full intellectual and pedagogical life until her sudden passing.

Prof. Godard was a prolific and influential intellectual. An extraordinarily sharp and encyclopedic thinker, Prof. Godard’s interests encompassed semiotics, translation, gender, textuality and the body, as well as archives, memorials, and the history and changing politics of cultural production. With a keen eye for detail and a unique capacity for breadth of vision, she catalyzed interdisciplinary connections among culture, language, gender, politics, poetics and meaning.

After completing her doctorate at the University of Bordeaux, Prof. Godard began teaching at 91��ɫ in 1971 as a visiting assistant professor and was hired into a tenure-track position in 1976. She published eight books, 80 book chapters and 115 articles and catalogue entries. She translated the major writers of Quebec feminism, including Nicole Brossard, Yolande Villemarie and Louky Bersianik. She also served as editor or on the editorial board of no less than 22 journals. She was a founding co-editor of the feminist literary periodical , a contributing editor of and , and the book review editor for Topia: A Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. She also made long-standing contributions to , s and ECW among others.

Prof. Godard was committed to and passionate about her graduate students across the Departments of English, French Studies, Film and Visual Arts, the School of Women’s Studies and the Program in Social & Political Thought, supervising over 35 PhD candidates. She built bridges between people and modes of inquiry because of her genuine enthusiasm for ideas. She worked between and across languages which so often divide. Prof. Godard inspired her colleagues and students through her critical creativity and her unwavering commitment to interrogating and producing the conditions for full civic engagement in the University and in the public sphere. We will miss her greatly.

Funeral arrangements

A funeral service will take place at 11am on Friday, May 21, at St. James-the-Less, 635 Parliament St., Toronto. A reception for friends and family will follow at Prof. Godard’s house at 217 Major St.,Toronto.

Prof. Godard’s family has requested no flowers; in light of her earlier struggles, donations to the Canadian Cancer Society would be greatly appreciated.

As there may be other causes to which you might wish to make a memorial donation, the agency can inform Prof. Godard’s sister Elizabeth Cox at ecox27@sympatico.ca and her son Alexis at lex_o_matic@yahoo.com.

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

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Professor Jody Berland takes a fresh look at what it means to be Canadian in her new book North of Empire: Essays on the Cultural Technologies of Space, published by Duke University Press. Launched last month and already labelled by critics as a major contribution to the fields of communication, cultural studies and geography, Berland’s book is a group of essays about how technology creates and transforms our sense of space.

Right: Jody Berland

“Technology has become the focus of our hopes and dreams; my book explores how this has come about and what it means,” says Berland. “I try to make vivid the various connections between technology and the spaces we make, live in, tell stories about, defend or seek to transform. In doing so, I explore the meanings and effects of some of the most powerful themes of the 20th century, including nation, progress, convenience, entertainment and technology itself.”

Focusing on the importance of space to understanding culture, Berland investigates how media technologies have given shape to things we often take for granted, such as territory, landscape, the local, the border, nature, music and time. Her essays concentrate largely on Canada and the United States and centre on the connections and disconnections between how space is traversed, how it is narrated and how it is used.

This theme is traced throughout the essays on topics ranging from free trade and the discourse of entertainment, to the history of player pianos in the context of a growing consumer society animated by the desire for convenience, to the emergence of satellite image technologies in relation to television forecasts and the exploration of space.

“We live in spaces that are shaped in part by technology – technological tools like railways, radio, musical instruments, optical devices – and by cultural technologies of social and institutional change, including nation building, storytelling, mapping, broadcasting, converging and instructing,” notes Berland. “At the same time, these technologies are constantly changing, which contributes to deeply felt tensions about who we are and where we belong.”

Berland chose the essay structure for her book since it allowed her to explore specific historical developments that illuminate her central questions: How has technological change affected the way we relate to musical instruments? In what ways has satellite photography changed the way we think about the planet? How has the television forecast altered the way we think about weather?

It is her hope that readers will pay close attention to particular political or narrative histories that have been made both real and imaginary through the emergence of technologies such as the radio and the Internet. Berland also hopes that they will understand the urgency of exploring these narratives and the ways in which they reinforce and contest one another in personal, cultural and political spheres.

Berland is program coordinator for the Canadian Studies Program in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. She was recently awarded the Association for Canadian Studies 2009 Award of Merit, which acknowledged her contributions to the development and dissemination of knowledge about Canada. Specifically, the award honoured three different activities: the role she’s played as editor of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (from 1998 to present); the publication of a significant body of work exploring Canadian history, themes and scholars; and lastly, the cultivation of a new generation of scholars through graduate teaching.

Though the nomination for the Award of Merit was made before her book came out, some of the publications that inspired her win can be found in the new book.

For more information on North of Empire or Berland’s research, e-mail her at jberland@yorku.ca. Copies of her book can be purchased through the .

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