Carleton University scholars are taking the stage during the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Now in its 82nd year, this event takes place May 24-30, 2014 and is Canada’s largest gathering of scholars across disciplines. Congress brings together academics, researchers, policy-makers and practitioners to share findings, refine ideas and build partnerships that will help shape the Canada of tomorrow.
This year, the presenters from Carleton are available to discuss their research before and during the event. They include:
Tim Cook
Adjunct Research professor, Department of History
The borders between life and death: Stories of the supernatural and uncanny among Canada’s Great War soldiers
Death-dealing weapons ruled No Man’s Land and the trenches on the Western Front during the Great War. This borderland space created a dislocated environment for soldiers who fought at the front and it spawned stories of ghosts and haunting. Within this space, some Canadian soldiers also embraced the magical, the uncanny and the supernatural to make meaning of their war experiences and to cope with the stress of combat. Cook’s lecture will explore how these “grave beliefs” redefine and reconfigure the cultural history of Canada’s soldiers during the First World War.
About Cook:
Cook is the First World War historian at the Canadian War Museum, an adjunct research professor at Carleton University and a former director for Canada’s History Society. He has published six books, including the two-volume history of Canadians fighting in the Great War, At the Sharp End, which won the 2007 J.W. Dafoe Prize and 2008 Ottawa Book Award, and Shock Troops, which won the 2009 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. The Madman and the Butcher: The Sensational Wars of Sam Hughes and General Arthur Currie, was a finalist for several writing awards, including the Shaunessy-Cohen prize for political writing, the J.W Dafoe Prize, and the Ottawa Book Award. His most recent book, Warlords: Borden, Mackenzie King and the Canada’s World Wars, was a finalist for the 2013 Charles Taylor prize. In 2012, he was awarded a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal for his contributions to Canadian history and, in 2013 he was awarded the Pierre Berton medal.
Nduka Otiono
Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of African Studies
Orality in a digital age: Reflections on new forms of popular cultural production in Africa
The ongoing digital revolution has necessitated a shift in the study of traditional forms of artistic expression in Africa. Perhaps in no other field of cultural experience is this most exemplified than in popular arts in Africa—especially in oral performances. Whereas scholars of oral literature in Africa had adopted an ethnographic methodology that required fieldwork in specific locales, apprehending orality in the digital age requires a more sophisticated and fluid approach that allows scholars to track popular cultural production in the widening World Wide Web and the growing mobile digital media platforms.
Otiono’s ideas are informed by my experience researching what he calls “street stories” in postcolonial African cities. Thus, this paper proposes new directions in the study of Africa’s popular arts with specific reference to “street stories”, including what he has described as “the Akpos narrative phenomenon” at his Brown Bag Talk at Carleton’s Institute of African Studies entitled The Adventures of Akpos, the Maverick: Street Stories, Humor, and the Nigerian Digital Imaginary. Unlike localized oral texts performed in specific contexts in “traditional” Africa by griots, new digital technologies have ignited continuously evolving, viral, and global narratives shared instantaneously in ways that defy and redefine the classic theories of narratology.
About Otiono
Otiono obtained his PhD from the University of Alberta as a Killam Scholar, and joined Carleton University from Brown University where he held a one-year postdoctoral fellowship, worked closely with Chinua Achebe as senior research assistant, and was appointed a visiting assistant professor. A fellow of the William Joiner Centre for War and Social Consequences, University of Massachusetts, he has been a journalist, cultural activist, and general secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). Otiono’s scholarly essays have appeared in academic journals and books. His published works of creative writing include: The Night Hides with a Knife, which won the ANA/Spectrum Prize; Voices in the Rainbow a finalist for the ANA/Cadbury Poetry Prize; Love in a Time of Nightmares for which he was awarded the James Patrick Folinsbee Memorial Scholarship in Creative Writing. He has co-edited We-Men: An Anthology of Men Writing on Women, and Camouflage: Best of Contemporary Writing from Nigeria.
Agnes Malkinson
Master of Arts, Music and Culture
How the West was (sonically) won: Italian westerns and musical materiality
According to Michel Chion, Ennio Morricone’s music for the Italian westerns of Sergio Leone was exemplary in its approach to music as “sound,” foregrounding its aurality by exploiting the material properties of sounds. Hence the music and sound of the Italian western differed from American forerunners, in the choice of instrumentation, recording techniques and sound-image matching in post-production. Malkinson’s paper will explore how material presence in the Leone/Morricone collaborations produces an aural trace of the place of production.
About Malkinson
Malkinson will begin doctoral studies in the Communication program at Carleton University this fall. Her research interests lie in the area of film music, with a focus on the motion picture sound theory of Michel Chion. Her current work centers the materiality of sound in Ennio Morricone’s scores for Sergio Leone’s Italian western films and sound/music for promotional audiovisual film paratexts. Malkinson currently works on The Trailer Music Research Project, under the direction of James Deaville, ongoing since its launch in mid-2012.
John Osborne
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and professor of Art History
Hair as a signifier of identity in eighth‐century Italy
Osborne’s paper begins with two passages in the Liber pontificalis that speak of identifiable “Roman” versus “Lombard” hairstyles in eighth century Italy. What did hairstyle signify to its viewers in terms of political identity? And are there surviving images in which these styles are depicted?
About Osborne:
Osborne is a medievalist and cultural historian, with a special focus on the art and archaeology of the cities of Rome and Venice in the period between the fifth and 13th centuries. His publications cover topics as varied as the Roman catacombs, the fragmentary mural paintings from excavated churches such as San Clemente and S. Maria Antiqua, the decorative program of the church of San Marco in Venice, 17th-century antiquarian drawings of medieval monuments, and the medieval understanding and use of Rome’s heritage of ancient buildings and statuary. He is also interested in problems of cultural transmission between Western Europe and Byzantium.
Charlotte Hoelke
Phd candidate in Canadian Studies
‘Rez/Erect’: Fostering Cross-Cultural Dialogue Through Sex and Humor
Edible seaweed panties, a phallic geoduck carving and an image of a naked woman posing in a painted ceremonial mask…These are just a few of the playful, humorous, sexy and sensual artworks featured in Rez/Erect: Native Erotica, an exhibition of native erotic art of the Northwest coast. This paper explores what this exhibition highlights and shares about indigenous culture, history and contemporary experience in North America. How and why are the artists and curators utilizing humour and sexuality to entertain and enlighten their audiences? How does this exhibition inform and challenge views and understanding of sexuality and indigenous peoples?
About Hoelke:
Hoelke completed a BA in Native Studies and Religions and Cultures at Nipissing University in 2010, an MA in Religion and Public Life at Carleton University in 2012, and a MA in Canadian Studies at Carleton University in 2013. She is currently in the second year of the PhD program in Canadian Studies at Carleton. Her research explores humour and sexuality in indigenous artwork and indigenous erotic art.
Christina Muehlberger
PhD candidate in Sociology and Political Economy
Check your privilege in 140 characters or less: The limitations of Privilege-checking in Building Solidarity Online
Since Peggy McIntosh’s seminal text on white privilege, there has been an outpouring of work on privilege by both academics and non-academics. Of particular interest is the rise of the language of privilege in social media.
Increasingly, individuals engaging on online forums are called to “check their privilege” and reflect on how their position within systems of oppression affects their opinions. As a result, a debate has emerged between bloggers and commentators on the potential for and limitations of this privilege-checking for online communication around social justice issues. While many participants in these online forums see this language of privilege as essential for creating dialogue and supporting productive action against systems of oppression, others have raised several critiques of the motivations of privilege-checking and the effects this language has on both the spaces for online communication and broader struggles for social justice offline.
About Muehlberger:
In her MA thesis, Muehlberger conducted a spatial analysis of Carleton University, particularly the newly built River Building, to explore the tension between the changing structure of the contemporary university and the growing engagement agenda within Canadian universities. She intends to continue this research in her dissertation.
Jenna Johnson
Master of Social Work Program, Carleton University
Exploring the social experiences of adults on the autism spectrum: views on friendships, dating and partnerships
This presentation will focus on original research findings from Johnson’s thesis. In most of the literature, there is a focus on causes and cures from outside perspectives (teachers, health-care providers and family members) with little attention paid to the viewpoints of people with autism or Asperger’s syndrome. They were surveyed regarding their experiences and opinions of relationships, their day-to-day experiences and their aspirations. The survey provided an opportunity for respondents to share both negative and positive experiences.
About Johnson:
Johnson is a recent graduate of the Master of Social Work Program at Carleton University. She also works as an employment counsellor for people with disabilities at Causeway Work Centre in Ottawa, Ontario.
James Deaville
Professor in the School for Studies of Art and Culture: Music
Schumann’s “Song of (Mad) Love:” A Composer’s Insanity in Moving Images
The term “madness” or “insanity” customarily appears in the Schumann literature to identify the composer’s deteriorating mental state in the last years of his life. Schumann arguably serves as the canonic Western composer most closely associated with progressively debilitating mental illness, as represented in print and film.
A close reading of major biopics reveals narratives that position the composer’s madness primarily within the 19th and 20th century archetype of the “mad genius,” a figure well-represented in psychiatric and film discourses.
About Deaville:
Deaville delivered the paper Pox on Composers: Syphilis, Genius and Dementia in Musical Discourse for the Music and Disability Interest Group at the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, New Orleans, 2012 and presented the talk Sounds of Mind: Music and Madness in the Popular Imagination at the City University of New York—in May 2013. He has been commissioned to write an essay on madness for the Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability.
Sylvia Reitonanova
Master of Social Work Program, Carleton University
Social work leadership in health care: Challenging hospitals to shift the frontiers of diversity, inclusion and equity
Drawing on semi-structured surveys with clinical nurse managers and reproductive health services users of minority backgrounds, the current status of diversity-inclusiveness of policies and practices in the Ottawa Hospital system were examined. The findings indicated that there is great room for improving inclusivity and equity in all aspects of hospital operations in terms of institutional policies and practices, service planning, staff recruitment and training, physical environment, décor and health education materials. Hospital staff may also need to improve their knowledge, skills and attitudes in addressing diversity and the needs of minority patients.
About Reitmanova:
Reitmanova earned a master’s and PhD in community health at Memorial University of Newfoundland after obtaining her medical degree in Slovakia. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Ottawa, Reitmanova decided to pursue a master’s degree in Social Work at Carleton to continue her research on health and social inequities.
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