Despite the devastation of her injury, the experiences and people she has encountered since that fateful night have taught her the importance and richness of giving back to the community. It is a life lesson reinforced by friends such as the late author and activist June Caldwood and 91��ɫ’s Chancellor Roy McMurtry.

Now an accomplished author, Toronto Star life writer, internationally recognized advocate for those living with disabilities and creator of the Barbara Turnbull Foundation for Spinal Cord Research, she was on the 91��ɫ convocation stage, accompanied by her special skills dog, Bella,�� to receive an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University.

“You have chosen health care, and there is no area more important than that in our society. In a significant way, it defines Canada, and how each of you deals with people under your care will define you as a person,” Turnbull told graduating students of the Faculty of Health during Friday's ceremony.

“As you commence upon the momentous part of your life, I would like you to consider what kind of legacy you are going to craft for yourself,” she said. “I have come to firmly believe that one of the great secrets of a satisfying life is actively working to better your community. It is a truism that your impact will be as big or as small as you want it to be.”

Learning the power of kindness, taking a moment to fill out an organ donor card, volunteering and excelling in one's profession are all important ways to better society, said Turnbull.�� "In the nearly 30 years since, I have relied on untold health-care practitioners for the longstanding effects that go with paralysis, and some unexpected medical situations that have sorely tested our good doctors, nurses, health-care professionals and more. I could not carry on my life as I do without some of the people who are exactly where some of you are today, graduates of health studies."

She closed her speech by quoting the American poet Maya Angelou, "I have learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will not forget how you made them feel."

"As graduates of 91��ɫ's Faculty of Health, go forth and treat your fellow citizens with respect, dignity and kindness," she said. "Recognize your blessings and give back."

91��ɫ's Spring Convocation ceremonies are streamed live and then archived online. To view Turnbull's convocation address, visit the Convocation website.

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

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The launch will take place March 23, from 2 to 3:30pm, Founders Senior Common Room, 305 Founders College, Keele campus.

Reconsidering Knowledge (Fernwood Publishing) also explores current ideas about feminism in relation to knowledge, education and society, as well as the future potential for feminist research and teaching in the university context. It emerged from the Feminist Knowledge Reconsidered: Feminism and the Academy lecture series held at 91��ɫ in 2009.

Connecting early stories of women who defied their exclusion from knowledge creation to contemporary challenges for feminism in universities, this collection assesses how feminist knowledge has influenced dominant thinking and transformed teaching and learning.

Mary Jane Mossman

It also focuses on the challenges for feminism as corporatization redefines the role of universities in a global world. The essays reflect on both historical and contemporary themes from a diversity of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. These essays are united in their exploration of how feminism’s continuing contribution to knowledge remains significant, even fundamental, to the transformation of knowledge in the academy and in our world.

Meg Luxton

Mossman, director of feminist legal studies at the Institute for Feminist Legal Studies, is the author of The First Women Lawyers: A Comparative Study of Gender, Law and the Legal Professions (Hart Publishing, 2006). Luxton is also the co-editor of Neoliberalism and Everyday (McGill-Queens University Press, 2010).

The event co-sponsors include Professor Enakshi Dua, director of 91��ɫ’s Centre for Feminist Research, and Professor Sonia Lawrence, director of Osgoode’s Institute for Feminist Legal Studies.

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

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Claudio Colaguori, a professor in 91��ɫ’s human rights and criminology programs, explores the idea that competition is not a biological drive as evolutionary thinkers believe, but a power force that promotes interpersonal conflict, war and cyclical domination.

The launch of Agon Culture (de Sitter Publications) will take place Wednesday, Feb. 15, from 3 to 5pm, in the Senior Common Room, 305 Founders College, Keele campus. Everyone is welcome to attend and refreshments will be provided.

In Agon Culture, Colaguori outlines the problem of having competition as the organizing principle of social life. He analyzes the human condition by examining how the cultural ideology of competition operates as a mode of rationality that underpins the order of domination.

By combining insights from philosopher Theodor Adorno’s critical theory of society with a reconstruction of the philosophy of the agon (a Greek term for competition), the book formulates a novel critical theory of cultural domination. It offers insights into society’s winner-loser culture and a renewed intensity of social Darwinist tendencies.

Colaguori’s research interests include post 9/11 global human rights issues and their relation to social change. He is a two-time winner of the John O’Neill Award for Teaching Excellence and was nominated for TVOntario’s Best Lecturer Competition.

The launch is sponsored by 91��ɫ Bookstore and Founders College.

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

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Graduate students Shannon Roberts, Nancy��Latoszewski Greyeyes and Ilse Gudiño, candidates in 91��ɫ’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in choreography and dance dramaturgy, premiere new choreographies for ensembles in Temenos. The show, performed by professional and pre-professional dancers, runs Feb.��15 to 17 in the Sandra Faire & Ivan Fecan Theatre at��the Keele campus.

Shannon Roberts. Photo by��David Hou

The Greek word temenos refers to a piece of land cut off from common use, often dedicated as a place for worship. Historically, the proscenium stage has been regarded as a space reserved for particular users and dedicated to expressing the meanings that infuse our bodies and relationships.

As well as addressing the concept of the stage as a special site, the three emerging choreographers build on the idea of the dancing body itself as temenos – simultaneously separated from society’s imposed meanings, and infused with individual sources of meaning for each artist.

“Their dances focus on navigating the proscenium stage as a site for researching the body’s memories and cultural constructions,” said Professor Darcey Callison, the production’s artistic director. “From delving into the historical roots of flamenco, to exploring a family narrative of coal miners in Pennsylvania, to challenging the complexity of the male gaze, these choreographers investigate the proscenium theatre as temenos: a theatrical space that frames these works in order to make visible the body as a conduit for memories and social conditions that permeate their choreography.”��

Fusing modern dance with her athletic background, Shannon Roberts incorporates Bollywood, ballet, jazz, modern, hip hop, figure skating and flying trapeze into her work. Her choreography is inspired by social issues and the people, artwork and cultures she has experienced in her travels around the world.��������������������������

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Roberts’ work, A Way of Seeing, is a discourse between Edvard Munch’s painting Woman in Three Stages and writer John Berger’s influential book Ways of Seeing. Investigating how a woman’s experience is informed through youth, sexuality and aging, this trio explores a sensual physical language that frames the private experience as public display.

��Ilse Gudiño Barthold. Photo by David Hou

In her piece, In the Marrow: A��Crucial Journey, Ilse Gudiño Barthold explores the history of flamenco as cultural memory and personal expression. Four dancers and four live musicians bring to the stage this complex journey, from a dance form infused with cultural significance to a movement vocabulary that is both personal and contemporary.

Trained in flamenco dance in Madrid and Seville, Gudiño Barthold has been a member of the Esmeralda Enrique Spanish Dance Company since 1997 and has performed as a soloist and with other flamenco dancers across Canada and internationally.

In Valley of Coal, Nancy Latoszewski (Greyeyes) tells the story of her grandparents. Both her grandfathers were Pennsylvania coal miners, and her choreography charts memories of the challenges they faced and the personal sacrifices they made. This narrative choreography is Latoszewski’s way of exploring oral history through her work as a dance artist.

Nancy Latoszewski (Greyeyes). Photo by��David Hou

A former soloist with Feld Ballets NY, Latoszewski has also been a principal dancer with the Cleveland San Jose Ballet and Alberta Ballet. Her work has been performed at Nuit Blanche and by Ballet Jörgen, and she has also choreographed for film.

The Temenos program concludes with a structured improvisation created by the 91��ɫ Dance Ensemble’s (YDE) artistic director Holly Small in collaboration with the ensemble, and��performed by the 16 dancers and five musicians of the YDE.

For tickets, contact the Box Office at 416-736-5888.

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

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The first lecture will take place on Monday Oct.��3 from 11am to 1pm in��305 91��ɫ Lanes. Professor Matthew Evenden (right) from the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia (UBC) will��present his lecture titled��“Of muskrats and minerals: The Second World War and the Canadian environment.” Evenden’s talk will focus on the processes of economic and environmental transformation in Canada during the Second World War through an examination of commodities such as aluminium, timber, wheat; even muskrats have a part in the story.

Other speakers in the series include geography Professor Arn Keeling and��history Professor John Sandlos from Memorial University, and geography Professor Graeme Wynn,��history Professor Tina Loo��and Professor Emerita of geography Julie Cruikshank, all of UBC.����

The series is run in conjunction with a series at UBC's Green College with additional support from Networks in Canadian Studies and the Environment (NICHE) and the UBC Canadian Studies Program.

The Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies is located on the��seventh floor of the 91��ɫ Research Tower.

For more information, visit the��Robarts Centre website, or contact Laura Taman, Robarts project coordinator, at llt@yorku.ca.

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

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Although environmental protection is considered a strategic issue in China today, how it is discussed and perceived can vary from one ethnic minority to another. Nimrod Baranovitch, a lecturer in Chinese culture and society in the Department of East Asian Studies at Haifa University in Israel, will discuss what environmental protection means in China at his upcoming talk at 91��ɫ.

His talk, “Fear of Extinction: Environmental Protection as Political Metaphor among China's Ethnic Minorities”, will take place Wednesday, Sept. 21, from 1 to 3pm, at 626 91��ɫ Research Tower, Keele campus.

Right: Nimrod Baranovitch

“My talk will focus on the discourse and meanings of environmental protection among several ethnic minorities in China, particularly the Tibetans, the Uyghurs and the Mongols,” says , also a��research Fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “Among these minorities, the topic is heavily politicized and often also loaded with metaphoric meanings.”

Ethnic minorities in China often see themselves as an integral part of the natural environment, whereas environmental destruction is associated with the Han majority. “In this context, the environment is perceived as a very specific territory, and environmental protection is not just in the narrow sense of maintaining clean water and air, but as the right of the minority group to control its territory and to maintain its traditional way of life and distinctive identity,” says Baranovitch.

He will show how the legitimate discourse of environmental protection is used by ethnic minorities to express illegitimate sentiments that cannot be expressed in public otherwise.
To illustrate his points, he will also present and analyze several video clips of rock songs by Tibetan, Mongol and Uyghur musicians, who live, create and perform in China.

The talk is sponsored by the 91��ɫ Centre for Asian Research (YCAR) and is presented by the Literatures & Human Rights in Asia and Asian Diaspora project, as well as the Critical China Studies Group.

For more information, visit the YCAR website.

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

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The Canadian-born-and-raised Papadopoulos has called Britain home for the past 14 years. She is known there as both a leading academic and as "Dr. Linda", a popular media commentator and adviser to the British government. She has her own skin-care line, LP Skin Therapy, which retails, among other places, in the luxury British department store Harrods.����

"The skin and the psyche are interconnected. You don't have to be a psychologist to understand the link stress has to your skin," says Papadopoulos, who is the author of eight books, ranging from the academic text Psychodermatology: The Psychological Impact of Skin Disorders to Mirror Mirror: Dr. Linda's Body Image Revolution.����

Papadopoulos became interested in the effect skin conditions have on personality because her cousin had vitiligo, a relatively rare disorder that causes depigmentation, creating light patches of skin. "She went from being open to being very quiet," she recalls.����

"You realize that in our beauty obsessed society, if you look less than perfect, it can have a profound impact on your self-esteem. Girls feel valued by how they look," says Papadopoulos, who did her undergraduate degree at Toronto's 91��ɫ before moving to Britain to do graduate work. She is a correspondent to the BBC and CNN, and a contributing editor to Cosmopolitan magazine's British edition.����

Listen to your skin and realize it is a reflection of more than beauty, she urges.����

One of the best ways to be resilient is to have a self-esteem that goes far beyond how you look, says Papadopoulos, who was commissioned by the British Home Office to write a series of recommendations for the government on the sexualization of children and teens. (Among her recommendations: put warning symbols on magazine spreads that feature photoshopped models, which help convince impressionable girls that praying mantis-skinny is normal.)����

Self-worth has to be built on factors other than good looks, she says. "It should be based on how funny you are, how smart, how well you play the cello."����

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

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