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.聽 Through her research, Davis is working with聽community partners to help black youth 聽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.聽 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.聽鈥淭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.聽 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. 聽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 ,聽or join the community on .

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

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For more than 1,400 years, Muslims have held multiple and diverging views about their religious tradition. Yet especially since Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims are commonly portrayed as homogeneous and dogmatic.

In his new book, , 91亚色 anthropologist challenges that view. The 253-page volume published by I.B. Tauris and launched at Harvard University this fall features essays by world-class scholars that explore Islam and Muslim societies聽and cultures from a range of perspectives.

The book arose from a seminar series on Muslim pluralism hosted at the London-based Institute of Ismaili Studies in 2002 and 2003 in response to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, explains Hirji in his editor鈥檚 note. 鈥淪ince that moment, words and images concerning Islam and the histories, beliefs and practices of Muslims have proliferated globally.鈥�

This complex portrait of Islam 鈥渃hallenges the notions that Muslims everywhere are the same or should be the same,鈥� wrote Hirji. Like the seminar series, the book aims not to present the social fact that Muslims are diverse, he added, but to examine how Muslims frame their own diversity over time and in different contexts.

As a social historian as well as an聽anthropologist in 91亚色鈥檚 Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, Hirji is interested in how Muslim聽societies express their sense of community. He has contributed the first of eight essays in Diversity and Pluralism in Islam, 鈥淒ebating Islam from Within: Muslim Constructions of the Internal Other鈥�.

Hirji co-authored and co-edited , a comprehensive account of Ismaili history and intellectual achievements, set in the wider contexts of Islamic and world history. He has co-edited Places of Worship and Devotion in Muslim Societies, expected out soon.聽He has also recently completed a 25-minute film on Tehreema Mitha (see YFile May 7, 2009), a classical and contemporary dancer from Pakistan, and is working with the Textile Museum of Canada on an exhibition of聽Muslim material culture and heritage in Africa to open in May.

Right: Zulfikar Hirji

At 91亚色, he teaches senior undergraduate and graduate courses on Islam and Muslim societies,聽visual anthropology and the anthropology of the senses.

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A picture may tell a thousand words, but what if the image is distorted or the meaning misconstrued? The newly published Photographs, Histories, and Meanings, co-edited by 91亚色 Professor Marlene Kadar, re-examines photographs and their social history, exploring the ideological, ethical, political and esthetic forces that influence their interpretation.

Photographs, Histories, and Meanings (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) looks at how photographs have shaped public perception and social meaning for the last century and a half. Its contributors trace shifting historical contexts, intentional or accidental interpretive distortions, and ambiguous and multiple meanings.

They search for the answers to how images can be believed given the public鈥檚 awareness of the uncertainty of meaning. In the end, the contributors believe the histories conveyed in these photographs tell the stories of our lives. To know the photographs is to know ourselves with all our ambiguities, distortions and complexities on display.

鈥淢any photographs had a particular meaning at the time they were taken, but now something dramatic or traumatic has happened to change the way we鈥檝e received these images,鈥� says Kadar. She points to the practice of Nazi photographers taking photographs of concentration camps as they were constructed or altered so as to maintain a record of them. The photos were also used to demonstrate to organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross that nothing was amiss in the camps鈥� operations.

Photos taken of Ravensbr眉ck Concentration Camp portray women working on camp grounds, appearing healthy, well-nourished and adequately dressed, says Kadar. But these photos were completely staged. Some contemporary scholars, however, refer to them in their research as if they were accurate depictions of daily life. She contends that people must be vigilant in their interpretation of archival and artifactual materials, considering them in the context of politics, culture and history.

Right: Marlene Kadar

The essays in Photographs, Histories, and Meanings, range from 鈥淪trange Birth: Reading Hands, Reflecting Race in Richard Wright鈥檚 Twelve Million Black Voices鈥� by Petra Dreiser and 鈥淎mbivalent Image: Twisted Use鈥� by Kadar to 鈥淐aptured Childhoods: Photographs in Indian Residential School Memoir鈥� by Linda Warley and 鈥淒ocumenting Disaster: Rothstein鈥檚 鈥楽teer Skull鈥� and the Use of Photographic Evidence in Environmental and Political Narratives鈥� by James Hewitson.

Kadar is a humanities and women鈥檚 studies professor in聽91亚色's Faculty of Liberal Arts聽& Professional Studies聽and former director of the Graduate Program in Interdisciplinary Studies in the Faculty of Graduate Studies. She is the editor of the at Wilfrid Laurier University Press, which to date has published聽38 books, and is the literary editor of Canadian Woman Studies. Previous edited works include the reader Reading Life Writing (Oxford University Press, 1993) and Essays on Life Writing: From Genre to Critical Practice (University of Toronto Press, 1992), which won the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Criticism聽in 1993.

She also co-edited Tracing the Autobiographical with Jeanne Perreault, Linda Warley and Susanna Egan. Her current research focuses on the life and career of a former concentration camp guard, and on the memoir of a Hungarian-born survivor of the Holocaust who spent the most difficult years in the former Yugoslavia.

In 2008, Kadar was聽named one of Canada鈥檚 most powerful women in the category of Trailblazers聽& Trendsetters by the Women鈥檚 Executive Network (WXN), an advocacy organization for women in the workplace. She was one of 100 top female winners chosen in eight categories from across Canada. Her聽inclusion in聽Canada's聽Most Powerful Women: Top 100 by WXN recognizes her work in forging a new path for autobiography.

Photographs, Histories, and Meanings was co-edited聽with Warley, an English professor at the University of Waterloo, and Perreault, an English professor at the University of Calgary.

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

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