Visual Art professor and indigenous filmmaker Dana Claxton was awarded Best Experimental and $1,000 at the 14th annual imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival in Toronto. In her film He Who Dreams, Claxton addresses the trauma wrought by the imposition of Western values, customs, and systems upon the First Nations of North America and the resurgence of an indigenous cultural presence. For more information, click here.
Upon the announcement of Alice Munro receiving the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, Yukiko Toda, a professor visiting UBC from Japan, was asked to comment on the significance of Munro and Canadian literature in Japan to Japanese media.
Toda is a member of The Canadian Literary Society of Japan, a team of Japanese scholars who are translating The Cambridge History of Canadian Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2009), a history co–edited by UBC English professor Eva-Marie Kroller. Toda is translating the chapters on Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields and Mavis Gallant.
The Canadian Literary Society of Japan is the only association dedicated to the study of Canadian literature in Japan. For more information, visit their website.
The UBC Alumni Centre (approved by the Board of Governors in September) has launched a new video and website. The building is scheduled to open in mid-2015 and is prominently highlighted in lights as part of the ‘Points of Light’ promotion to fundraise for the Centre. The contribution of those who donate or fundraise $1,000 will be represented as a point of light on the interactive website along with their thoughts and memories of UBC.
After months of feedback, an audit, customer analytics and user testing sessions, a new and improved startanevolution.ca website features improved user experience with simplified menus, popular searches, easier navigation and a clearer call to action and information about the start an evolution campaign. The website bounce rate has dropped by over 40 per cent and user retention has improved significantly. Suggestions and feedback are welcome and can be sent to juliana.fridman@ubc.ca.
UBC alumni and students including Shane Beaton (BASc ’12), Xue Hong Chen (BSN ’12) and Integrated Engineering student Jack Park were part of a Canadian delegation who won 10 gold, three silver and two bronze medals at the World Dragon Boat Racing Championship held on July 23-28 in Szeged, Hungary. The team competed against teams from 29 countries. For more information, click here.
Victor Padilla, a PhD student in the Corrosion Group in the Department of Materials Engineering, won the best student paper award at the 2013 Transportation Association of Canada Conference held in Winnipeg in September. Padilla placed first among more than 360 papers for “A Novel Model to Predict the Corrosion of Mechanically Stabilized Earth Structures.” Click here for more info.
UBC students will present their experiences as academic participants, activists for social change and key actors in interdisciplinary discourse at the 2013 TEDx Terry Talks on November 2. In her talk How to Complete Your Degree in 7 Years, Materials Engineering student Shannon Hoekstra will speak about change throughout her university career and the opportunities that engineering has provided. For more, click here.
Award-winning Ojibway author Richard Wagamese will read from his latest novel Indian Horse, a story of a man whose life is drastically changed by an Indian residential school.
Date: October 31
Time: 2 p.m.
Place: Lillooet Room, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (third floor)
Info: http://library.ubc.ca/
Canadian children’s author Charles van Sandwyk follows in the footsteps of Arthur Rackham, Beatrix Potter, and Ernest Shepard with his drawings of fairies, anthropomorphic animals, and dream worlds.
Date: October 30
Time: 12 – 1:30 p.m.
Place: Dodson Room, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (third floor)
Info: http://rbsc.library.ubc.ca/
Until January 5, 2014, the Beaty Biodiversity Museum will feature an exhibition of high-tech images of microbial life refashioned as metal sculpture, wood carvings and large-scale portraiture by Kevin Carpenter, Erick James and Patrick Keeling. The artists are current or former researchers at UBC’s Biodiversity Research Centre exploring the field of microbes, particularly protists. For more information, click here.
For the 11th year, UBC Library and the Alma Mater Society (AMS) are running their Food For Fines campaign. Library users can bring in non-perishable food items and have their Library fines waived ($2 per item, to a maximum of $30). Food items will be distributed to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank and the AMS Food Bank. Click here for more information.
Applied Science will hold their second annual pumpkin carving contest to raise funds for United Way. Suggested donation is $20 per team (register here). Contributions can also be made through a bake sale or judging tokens ($2 each to the United Way).
Date: October 29, 2013
Time: 12 p.m.
Place: 2332 Main Mall Vancouver BC (KAIS 2020)
