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What do global poverty and inequality require of us, morally speaking? Should citizens and governments in affluent countries lead global poverty reduction efforts, or might poor-centered movements and initiatives in developing countries offer more empowering response? These are questions that drive Dr. Deveaux’s research on global justice. One project |
Featured Researcher
Professor McCarthy’s research focuses on two areas of choral music: repertoire and gesture. Focusing on Canadian contemporary music, particularly on the late Robert Evans, whose family entrusted her with a complete collection of his work, she studies Evans’ humanitarian projects because of her interest in choral art as a vehicle of personal growth and social change – she is vitally engaged in a growing field that inspires her practice as a conductor: “music and social justice.” She questions the role of music educators, the choices of repertoire, the processes used to teach and learn music, and (for conductors), the many ways gesture is used as an organic and primordial form of representing knowledge, to relate to singers (the people actually making the music!)
The Advanced Digital Audio Production and Performance Studio (ADAPPS) supports research in soundscape recording and composition, multi-channel recording, mixing, production, and interactive performance technologies incorporating controllers, sensors, and amplified acoustic instruments. James Harley (Principal Investigator), School of Fine Art and Music, is an internationally recognized composer who works in a variety of media. His ongoing Wild Fruits series incorporates field recordings and spoken word into a creative and immersive sonic environments. The collaborative ~spin~ project combines studio production with interactive performance involving real-time spatialization and signal processing of sampled sounds and instruments.
Professor Cairnie's research examines childhood in Zimbabwe focusing on its literature. The country's most pressing problems—AIDS, orphans, education, food and water, healthcare, or law and order—pivot around children who have played key roles in a tumultuous history: Cecil Rhodes' invasion of Mashona and Ndebele land in 1890 was achieved by teenaged boys and motivated by a desire to place white families there; Robert Mugabe's invasion of titled white farms in 2000 used boys and young men as warriors and proved detrimental to millions of children. Her current research probes the relationship between Zimbabwe's rich range of literature and the social change it both reflects and enacts.
The Digital Haptic Lab, a CFI-funded joint project between the School of Fine Art and Music and the School of Engineering, is a unique initiative allowing researchers to realize public projects that have very real effects on communities. Working in the wide realm of public sculpture is exciting and frightening because it affords a chance to assert aesthetic desires into a public discourse that can have a real impact on people's daily lives. These works will be assessed for years to come by communities that can't be fully anticipated which makes public art the most potentially rewarding, while being fraught with the greatest risk.
Not the zombies you were thinking of…
Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Professor Bailey is asking the big questions about the nature of consciousness. In conjunction with neuroscientists, experimental psychologists, and linguists, among others Andrew Bailey is pursuing a testable, empirical, scientific theory of how consciousness arises, how it is related to the brain, and what one might discover in the zombie paradigm if consciousness could be subtracted from the brain.
The Social Network, à la française
The prix Femina is one of most prestigious literary awards in France and plays a central role in modern French cultural life. Despite this, little is known about the creation of the prize in 1904. Professor Irvine’s inquiry explores for the first time the complex nature of the networks that existed between the women of letters who went on to found the prize, convinced that they were excluded from the forms of consecration of literary talent open to their male counterparts and seeking a voice of their own in literary debates. Dr. Irvine’s early examination of the archives and unpublished correspondence of many of the women who sat on the jury of the prize reveals the previously unstudied strategies for gaining recognition used by women writers during the first decades of the twentieth century. Looking at the role of prizes, literary juries and networks as vehicles to increased prestige within the literary
"French on a box of Corn Flakes! Quelle horreur!"
Bilingualism provokes vigorous debate in Canada. Advocates tout its contributions to national unity and its benefits for career advancement. Critics see it as a waste of money in an English-dominated world or part of a French conspiracy to take over the country. Matthew Hayday's research examines the history of bilingualism in Canada: its promotion by government agencies, civil society groups and keen individuals; its reception in English-
My research entails both my own creative practice in theatre and film design as well as the study of theatrical design in Canada as an art form. This involves investigation into theatrical design in its social and historical context and the place of scenography in the creation of a theatrical performance. As a new field of research, it entails the reanimation of archival material using a variety of new and traditional media.
Dorothy Odartey-Wellington’s research examines the literature that was published in the colonial press of Equatorial Guinea, the former Spanish colony which used to be known as Spanish Guinea with a view to producing an anthology of the primary sources as well as critical essays on the colonial literary culture and its socio-political climate.
She became aware of the need for this project while researching contemporary Equatorial Guinean writers currently living in exile in Spain. References to Equatorial Guinean colonial literature were limited to the two novels that were published by Africans, Cuando los
