My name is Ayla, I鈥檓 an undergraduate English student at 杏吧原创 University, and I’m currently finishing up my three-term Co-op experience. When I first began, I thought I would be working 鈥楨nglish-specific鈥� jobs like technical editing or working as an intern at a publishing house. Now, towards the end, I鈥檝e learned that the skills I鈥檝e built during my degree have allowed me to contribute meaningfully in a variety of professional environments: the , and .听

Kanata North Business Association (KNBA)

It comes as a surprise to some that as an English major, I spent the first of my three Co-op work terms immersed in technology. 

My first placement was with the Kanata North Business Association (KNBA). The KNBA represents the 540+ member companies which are in Kanata North Tech Park鈥攁 designated business improvement area. 

One of the major events that I helped to plan was the Annual Technata Hackathon. The event focused on sustainability and invited students from 杏吧原创, the University of Ottawa and Algonquin College to participate in group mentorship and problem solving. Planning the event was a test to my time management skills, which were luckily already quite strong from balancing assignments in university. From organizing the catering to organizing the participants and mentors, I learned how to juggle not only my own time and expectations, but others鈥� as well.  

One of the highlights from this event was interviewing the participants, mentors and sponsors, whose responses I used to write an article on the event. In my degree, the lectures and materials have always invited discussion. The interpersonal skills acquired through these discussions allowed me to interview confidently and effectively. This article led to my favourite project of the work term, which was organizing and editing the KNBA鈥檚 annual publication TechTalk. This magazine was printed and distributed at the annual partner鈥檚 summit, and it included my article on the Hackathon.

For a few of my written deliverables, I was asked to write on topics which I was not familiar with, featuring 鈥榰p-and-coming鈥� technology. One such instance was when I was asked to write a blog post on semiconductors, which was meant to kick-start Chip Month (October). I didn鈥檛 have a clue what a semiconductor was, and up until this point, would have guessed it was some kind of semi-truck. However, my degree has helped hone my research abilities. After asking a friend in engineering to explain the concept, reading through various articles and publications and asking AI to help simplify the topic, I was able to write a blog post explaining the 鈥榳hat鈥� and 鈥榳hy鈥� of a semiconductor. 

Working in the Kanata North Tech Park, I learned how versatile my degree was, and how many opportunities there were for an English major that no one thinks or talks about. 

Library and Archives Canada

My second work term was spent at the Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) branch of Library and Archives Canada (LAC). While it is difficult to picture an English major in a Tech Park, LAC is exactly where you would picture one. 

I worked largely on one project throughout the summer term, which I will first contextualize. Under the Privacy Act, there are exceptions for when LAC can release information which would normally be redacted. One of these exceptions is 8(2)(m)(i), which allows government institutions to release information in the 鈥榩ublic interest.鈥� However, 鈥榩ublic interest鈥� is interpretive, and it is therefore difficult to determine when an invasion of privacy is warranted. LAC is investigating how this section could be applied to Indigenous information. Like the rest of ATIP鈥檚 teams, the Indigenous records team is backlogged. Normally, information is released through an informal processing of requests under 8(2)(k) of the Privacy Act, however, this too is time-consuming. Unlike a non-Indigenous citizen requesting information, these requests often pertain to land claims, historical grievances, etc. which are often urgent in nature. Additionally, under OCAP (ownership, control, access, and privacy) which are the governing principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty, First Nation, Inuit and M茅tis governments require access to their own information to properly practice self-governance. Canada has committed to reconciliation, and data sovereignty is a part of that.

While a Library and Archives might be an expected workplace for an English major, policy work is not necessarily included in that association. However, once again, my research skills were advantageous in this role. My work involved researching various Indigenous, First Nation and M茅tis organizations and reading through the reports that they had published concerning the Privacy and Access to Information Acts. Additionally, it involved reading through suggested policy changes and familiarizing myself with the concept on Indigenous Data Sovereignty. 

This research accumulated into a 25-page report wherein I made the case for why LAC needed a policy for releasing Indigenous information under 8(2)(m)(i) (鈥榩ublic interest鈥�), as the current structures were an obstacle to Indigenous Data Sovereignty鈥攁n incredibly important issue. 

This work term was incredibly fulfilling, as it allowed me to work on a real-world issue, and broaden my understanding of information, data and ownership. Bringing this knowledge back to my degree, I have a greater appreciation for information accessible to me in my studies. 

Hydro Ottawa

My third, and current, work term is with Hydro Ottawa. Again, this is a position not expected for an English major, and I often receive confused looks when I tell people that I work for an energy corporation. Despite this, I believe this placement to be the most related to my degree. 

I work on the Corporate Planning team responsible for internal reporting. Internal reporting includes deliverables such as the Annual Reports, Quarterly Reports, the CEO鈥檚 communications, the Board鈥檚 presentations to Hydro Ottawa鈥檚 shareholder (the ), and the 5-year Strategic Direction.听

Thus far in my placement, I have worked on confidential presentations for my supervisor and for the board and am currently assisting in authoring the new 5-year Strategic Direction. I am incredibly excited to be working on this document, as it details the company鈥檚 plans for the next five years. Additionally, both through working on the presentations and now on the Strategic Direction, I am learning to write in a completely new way. Corporate writing is incredibly concise and should be accessible for most people. This means breaking down syntax, and asking myself 鈥淲hat am I trying to say? Can I say it in fewer words?鈥� While building on my written communication skills from my degree, I am also adding new ones. 

Another learning curve has been the operational pace of the team. Because we have so many deadlines, it is an incredibly fast-paced working environment. It has pushed me to be even more efficient in my time-management, and to work under tight deadlines. This has been incredibly rewarding as I am able to directly see where my work is going and the impact it is having. And… I am writing and reading… All day, every day (an English major鈥檚 dream). 

I am learning an incredible amount in this work term鈥攁bout energy, my own writing and the corporate setting in general. It is demanding, but it is rewarding, and it has pushed and challenged me in ways that, I believe, will best prepare me for any work environment that I might enter after graduation.

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When I chose English as my major, the question I was asked was: 鈥淲hat are you going to do with that degree?鈥� Before I went into the program, my answer was straight-forward: 鈥淎n editor.鈥� Now, after two and half Co-op experiences, my answer has been to reframe the question itself. Rather than: 鈥淲hat are you going to do with that degree?鈥� (because, really, to list off the various jobs seems a bit tedious), I would instead prefer to respond to the question of: 鈥淲hat skills and experiences are you gaining through an English degree?鈥� I am learning communications, interpersonal relations, analysis, and, while I could go on, I will end with, critical thinking.

This last one is especially important in countering the new, though no less intimidating, question of: 鈥淲ell, isn鈥檛 AI just going to replace you anyways?鈥�. In some ways this question felt more insulting鈥攖he idea that a machine could do (better) what we’re spending years studying.

My initial reaction to society’s obsession with AI was to ignore its existence entirely. I refused to engage with any of the platforms outside of the few class assignments which mandated AI exploration. This approach worked while I was in school, and the idea that, if my will was strong enough, I could put the cat back in the bag was believable for a time.

So, imagine my surprise, when, on my second day of Co-op work at the Kanata North Business Association (KNBA), I was asked what they could be doing to better implement AI into their workflows. Apparently, I belong to the 鈥榯echnological鈥� generation, and I should just 鈥榢now these things.鈥� What I had just spent the last year resisting, I would now have to wholeheartedly embrace and… advise on?

When I first started working with AI, it felt like a betrayal to my English degree. It felt like I was training the very entity that would eventually replace me. However, it was also through working with AI that I learned that would not happen, and that I was not replaceable.

On my first day of work at Hydro Ottawa, I was told by my supervisor that they were specifically looking to hire an English major. Rather than taking AI鈥檚 outputs at face value, I am able to read, analyse, comprehend and think critically on the content it is producing, which are all desirable skills.

One such example is writing a blog on semiconductors at the KNBA. I was tasked with simplifying the subject so that it was digestible for a wide audience. However, this was a technology that I was not familiar with. I did my own research, but the terminology was foreign 鈥� so how could I break it down for others, if I did not understand it myself?

Because I didn鈥檛 have the time to research extensively, I put my notes into ChatGPT and asked it to explain the information as if it were speaking to a ten-year-old. This helped me to understand what semiconductors were, and why they were important, so that I could write the blog post in a way that made sense to others.

AI did not do my work for me, it did not replace my abilities or skills, but rather it enhanced my productivity.  

The post What Are You Going to Do with that English Degree? The BA in an AI World appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

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By: Emily Putnam

A brand-new history course called From Walkmans to West Edmonton Mall: The material culture of the 1980s in Canada offers a hands-on exploration of object-based research, shedding light on the cultural shifts and iconic artifacts that defined a generation.

The upcoming full-year, fourth-year course (2024-2025) on the eccentric 1980s was created as part of the Students as Partners Program (SaPP) and in collaboration with . It will offer an immersive experience to students, allowing them to explore, observe, and even use authentic items from a national museum’s collection of signature objects from ‘the decade of decadence.’

But as History Professor James Opp, co-creator of the course, explains, the cultural world of the 80s was a lot more complex than how it is often caricatured in contemporary media.

Notably, the course will allow students to tell new stories about the objects in creative ways, working in multi-media formats that link the object to the sounds and sights of the decade.

While Opp will encourage students to use new media and technology for their work in the course, they will be prompted to venture beyond nostalgia and deeply consider the impact of new technologies in a pre-digital world. 

He notes that the 1980s were the last decade of the Cold War, when nuclear threats were still very real, the purges of gay and lesbian civil servants and military personnel were ongoing, the unequal impacts of deindustrialization were starting to be felt, and the AIDS crisis created new moral panics. 

Angela Mortimer, a final-year history student who helped Opp develop the course through SaPP, shares Opp’s fascination with the decade and believes one way to better comprehend the multifarious juncture of time is to explore its hallmark tangible artifacts.

“Material culture and object-based research are a great way to feel more of a personal connection to history. There is an opportunity to use more of your senses; it is not just looking and reading; it is touching, smelling, and listening to the object.”

Moreover, Mortimer underscores the power of material culture to connect with history when a personal link endures.

Professor Opp is thrilled to have Ingenium as a partner for this course, as it will provide students with an extraordinary opportunity to experience the object firsthand and gain insight into how museum mandates govern what and how is collected and the deep research that goes into these collections.    

Mortimer also expresses her excitement: “Students will be writing, researching, and creating their final projects about their chosen tangible objects that Professor Opp and I have requested, and Ingenium will so kindly set aside. This means real hands-on experience working with artifacts.”

Notably, the course will allow students to tell new stories about the objects in creative ways, working in multi-media formats that link the object to the sounds and sights of the decade.

While Opp and Mortimer will encourage students to use new media and technology for their work in the course, they will urge them to venture beyond nostalgia and deeply consider the impact of new technologies in a pre-digital world.

“Looking back at the 1980s puts this digital revolution into relief and allows us to rethink how we interact with material objects and how our current relationship to material media has been altered and reshaped,” says Opp. 

The post Decoding the Decades: Looking at Canada in the 1980s in New Object-based History Course appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

Lightning Interviews with Our Community

Name: Paul Keen
Academic Title: Associate Dean, Professor
Email: paul_keen@carleton.ca
FASS Affiliation(s): Department of English Language and Literature, Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture

How would you explain your research to someone with no experience in your field?

My research focuses on a set of connected debates that people in Britain were having about the meaning of literature in the Romantic period. Most of these debates sprang from much wider issues such as the political struggle for democracy that spilled over into Britain in the years after the French Revolution, and questions about what it meant to be a professional author in the midst of Britain’s accelerating shift into a modern commercial nation driven by fashion, credit, and conspicuous consumption as a status marker in an unstable world. These changes were compounded by related pressures unleashed by highly political debates about modern science, the politics of empire, women’s rights, and education. All of these issues foregrounded questions about literature that are strikingly current in our own day: How should we even define the word “literature”? What use was it? What social role or public value should it have? Who should be reading and writing what, and how much should this be regulated?

My most recent project is related to this. It explores the arguments that advocates were making for the public value of the humanities in the early nineteenth century, which is the time when modern humanities programs (including the first courses in English literature) were being set up in Britain’s new universities. These advocates’ arguments are especially interesting because, like our own age’s obsession with STEM, this was a utilitarian age, so the claims they developed on behalf of the liberal arts still ring true today!

What first sparked your interest in your discipline and research?

I got hooked by a fourth-year undergraduate course on the 1790s poets (mainly and ) which highlighted the powerful influence of the French Revolution on their writing. Like most of the brightest thinkers of their generation, they were obsessed with it. William Wordsworth wrote a lot of radical poetry in his early days, and went to live in France during the Revolution (as did many other writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Helen Maria Williams). Coleridge dropped out of university and became a radical writer and public speaker. I was intrigued by the energizing mix of poetry and radical politics, idealism and activism that energized their generation. They believed that the arts could be a powerful force for reshaping society in better ways. In some ways, it was a lot like the civil rights movement of the 1960s, especially because of the galvanizing effect of reformers’ opposition to Britain’s war with the new government in France, which they denounced as an unjust reactionary war, much the way that protestors rejected the Vietnam war in the 60s. It’s not hard to find parallels with our own day as well.

What’s one fact about your research area that most people are surprised to learn?

The fact that most people are surprised by is the same one that surprised me most as I got into my research: that people thought of literature, not as the fairly narrow aesthetic category that we do today, but really as the late eighteenth-century version of social media. William Godwin, who was one of the leading writers of the day defined literature as “the diffusion of knowledge through the medium of discussion, whether written or oral.” That’s completely different than how we think of it today but it was actually pretty standard at the time. It didn’t mean that poetry and other types of creative writing were less valued; it makes the arts more interesting because it reminds us that they were part of a much larger set of social and political forms of debate that comprised what they thought of as the public sphere. Again, I was struck by just how strongly all of this resonated with our own debates about social media today!

What’s the biggest misconception about your research area?

It’s probably the same misconception that we all have about history generally, and it’s one that we never fully manage to work our way out of. We tend to think of these earlier ages as somehow “traditional” or old-fashioned, as though they were all 200 years old and wearing hopelessly out-of-date clothing, just because a couple of centuries passed since then. We sometimes approach writers from these earlier ages like they were born and raised inside the Norton anthology, and were writing their poetry and novels for our university English classes. It’s rare to remember that, in every age, people were living in the present tense. Like us, they were living in the most modern age that had ever existed and (again like us) one that was dealing with unprecedented changes like revolution, imperialism, urbanization, and the effects of capitalism. A lot of the writers that we study today were both brilliant and confused, arrogant and idealistic, political and professionally ambitious. They were trying to think their way through extraordinary questions and contradictions, and to use their writing as a way to intervene in all of these things, but without the benefit of hindsight or any kind of instruction manual. That sense of their modernity, which can be hard to fully embrace, makes historical study far more compelling.

Do you have a favourite class to teach?

I love teaching courses in Romantic literature, for all of the reasons that I’ve been discussing above.

Do you have any current or upcoming academic projects that you’re excited about?

My most recent book,, explores the ways that critics writing in the early nineteenth century developed arguments in favour of the humanities in the face of utilitarian pressures that dismissed the arts as self-indulgent pursuits incapable of addressing real-world problems. Its focus reflects the ways that similar pressures today have foregrounded all over again the question of how to make the case for the value of the humanities. Evidence of these problems surrounds us, but the core of my argument is that these pressures also constitute an important opportunity: a chance to re-imagine our answers to questions about the nature and role of the humanities, their potential benefits to contemporary life, and how we might channel these benefits back into the larger society. The good news is that in many ways, this self-reflexive challenge is precisely what the humanities have always done best: highlight the nature and the force of the narratives that have helped to define how we understand our society 鈥� its various pasts and its possible futures 鈥� and to suggest the larger contexts within which these issues must ultimately be situated. History repeats itself, but never in quite the same way: knowing more about past debates will provide a crucial basis for moving forward as universities, and the humanities in particular, position themselves to respond to new challenges during an age of radical change.

My current project, The Joke of Literature: A History of the Essay in English, tracks the history of that most elusive of genres, 鈥渢he essay,鈥� over the three centuries since its meteoric rise in popularity after the appearance of The Spectator in 1711. G. K. Chesterton鈥檚 description of the essay as 鈥渢he joke鈥� of literature typified the genre鈥檚 uncertain history, always on the margins of those more ambitious forms of writing that could be embraced as 鈥渓iterary.鈥� But this apparent limitation may help to explain both the essay鈥檚 enduring popularity across different historical periods and the renewed critical interest in the genre鈥檚 unruly status as 鈥渁n experiment鈥� or 鈥渁 try-on,鈥� as Montaigne called it, whose provisional nature unsettled the possibility of categorical certainties. Flaunting essays鈥� association with fragmentary and discontinuous writing that traded in the quotidian and the ephemeral, essay writers reveled in its democratic ethos, contrasting the immediacy of their everyday focus with the obscurity of more ponderous works that remained largely irrelevant to most readers.

The post FASS in a Flash – with Associate Dean Dr. Paul Keen appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

Lightning Interviews with Our Community

Name: Janne Cleveland
Academic Title: Associate Dean, Instructor
Email: jannecleveland@cunet.carleton.ca
FASS Affiliation(s): 杏吧原创 Dominion-Chalmers Centre, Department of English Language and Literature, School for Studies in Art and Culture, Drama Studies

How would you explain your research to someone with no experience in your field?

I examine how theatre can be a force for positive social change, especially in its use of comedy and the function of laughter to disrupt and empower.

What first sparked your interest in your discipline and research?

As an undergrad I was already interested in the power of the arts, and entered graduate studies with a literary study in mind. Then I clandestinely encountered a puppet play by Canadian Master Puppeteer, . It changed everything! I subsequently did my doctoral dissertation on puppetry with a focus on Burkett’s work.

What’s one fact about your research area that most people are surprised to learn?

Puppets make really good dissidents because they can get away with saying things that human actors cannot.

What’s the biggest misconception about your research area?

That puppets are just “kid stuff”. Children gravitate to them seemingly naturally, but they are much more than that!

Do you have a favourite class to teach?

I’m a teacher first, so I love the “aha!” moments that happen for students who are working out their own ideas, and these can come from any class. Senior courses are wonderful for really drilling down to deep ideas, but first-year classes are great for introducing students to concepts about the world and their place in it that they might not have considered previously.

Is there a reading or course from your time as a university student that significantly changed the way you think about the world?

Freud’s exploration of The Unconscious was a game changer for me.

What media and/or popular culture content have you recently enjoyed?

When I rule the world, everyone will see “Barbie” at least once. It’s smart and playful and is a designer’s dream!

What’s your favourite spot on campus?

In summer I love to walk by the river and watch for herons. In September it’s great to sit in the quad and feel all the excitement as it becomes filled with the energy of returning students.

Do you have any current or upcoming academic projects that you’re excited about?

I’m going to start working on my stand-up routine again!

The post FASS in a Flash – with Associate Dean Dr. Janne Cleveland appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

As the room began to fill up before her lecture, film studies professor Malini Guha wanted to test the AV for the film she鈥檇 be screening 鈥� directed by John Akomfrah and produced by the Black Audio Film Collective.

The film flashed across the screen, and for a moment, there was a familiar voice singing the blues.

鈥淎re we watching a documentary about Robert Johnson?鈥� music student Mubarak Farah enthusiastically called out from the back of the classroom. 鈥淗e鈥檚 the best singer of all time.鈥�

鈥淪ort of!鈥� replied Guha. 鈥淭he music students in the room will like this one. It鈥檚 a film about music.鈥�

The course, titled Race and Representation in the Arts, took place in the fall of 2023 and was co-taught by School for Studies in Art and Culture Professors Malini Guha (Film Studies), G眉l Kale (Art and Architectural History), and Kathy Armstrong (Music).

It used an interdisciplinary approach to equip students in and outside arts programs with skills to examine representation in the arts and influence positive change in their future career endeavors.

Guha, sharing her vision for the course, expresses, “By resisting the traditional boundaries of 鈥榙iscipline鈥�, our course opens up space for students and instructors alike to share their existing knowledge on these topics as represented across music, architectural history, and film while also learning from each other.”

The lectures were split into three-week segments taught by Armstrong, Kale, then Guha. Students engaged in cross-disciplinary and collaborative work along the way, building a portfolio of their work together in small groups, and exploring everything from city soundscapes, to race in modern architectural discourse, to Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurism.

Armstrong, a percussionist who studies Ghanaian music and participatory music-making, underscores the course’s impact by pointing out how students, right from the first class, spoke to one another about personal experiences.

“We wanted the course to engage with lived experiences rather than being merely theoretical reflections,” says Kale, a trained architect and architectural historian, who hopes the course empowers students to implement positive changes in their interactions with the world and diverse communities.

Mubarak Farah, a music student and professional pianist, says he loved the long discussions that took place with his peers and instructors throughout the course, and “appreciate[d] that every voice was heard.”

“I think the value that can be gained here is people from each of these disciplines can take what they’ve learned from the course and use it to make their respective industries much more fair and inclusive,” says Farah.

The post Race and Representation in the Arts Course Covers New Ground appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

Lightning Interviews with Our Community

Name: Anne Bowker
Academic Title: Interim Dean
Email: anne.bowker@carleton.ca
FASS Affiliation(s): Department of Psychology
Owner of Milo, a 杏吧原创 Therapy Dog

How would you explain your research to someone with no experience in your field?

I am a developmental psychologist interested in developmental transitions. I’m interested in university transitions (i.e., the transition to 1st year university) and what factors might affect how smooth the transition is. I’m also interested in mid-life transitions and changes that occur between 40 and 65, particularly the menopausal transition.

What first sparked your interest in your discipline and research?

I took a Developmental Psychology course in my second year of university which involved doing some behavioral observations in a daycare and looking at young children’s pretend or make-believe play. I was hooked.

What’s one fact about your research area that most people are surprised to learn?

My current work is on menopause, and most people know very little about the menopausal transition, even middle aged women, because we don’t feel comfortable talking about these issues in public, or even with our doctors.

What’s the biggest misconception about your research area?

I think many people think that development stops once you hit adulthood, but we continue to develop and change throughout our lifespan.

Read Dr. Bowker’s message to all new and returning students of the 2023/2024 school year!

Do you have a favourite class to teach?

I have taught several first year seminars – one on emerging adulthood and aging, the other one on the psychology of success, a course that I teach with Matt Sorley, an instructor in Psychology. I love teaching with Matt!

Is there a reading or course from your time as a university student that significantly changed the way you think about the world?

by Virginia Axline. It was a book about the use of play therapy for a troubled child. It made me want to become a psychologist, and I did work as a psychometrist for awhile and even did some play therapy. But I was also hooked by the academic life of research and teaching.

What media and/or popular culture content have you recently enjoyed?

I read all the time. Some of my favourite books this year are The Fraud by Zadie Smith; Do you remember being born? by Sean Michaels; Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, and I’m halfway through Outlive by Peter Attia, which is a non-fiction book on how to live longer and healthier.

What’s your favourite spot on campus?

I love sitting by the Rideau Canal (although I guess that isn’t really on campus); I like going to Bridgehead, so I guess the lobby of the Nicol Building is another favourite spot.

Do you have any current or upcoming academic projects that you’re excited about?

My co-authors and I are working on a book about menopause, based on 60 interviews that we did with menopausal women. And my co-authors include two anthropology students (one of whom is my daughter Emma, who is working on her PhD) and my good friend Janet Mantler in Psychology. I love working with all of them, it’s a really collaborative project.

The post FASS in a Flash – with Interim Dean Dr. Anne Bowker appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

Have coffee and a casual chat with a FASS prof!

Have you ever wanted to have an in-depth conversation with one of your professors? Are you interested in asking them about their career path, experiences, or simply what it’s like to be an academic? Perhaps you’d like some candid advice that might help you achieve your personal goals? Well, now is your chance!

To set up a coffee chat, please follow these three steps:  

Step 1: Contact the professor of your choice from our list of participating faculty members (see below) and find a mutually convenient time for your meeting.  We鈥檒l pay for your coffee at the campus Bridgehead in the Nicol Building or you can meet virtually over Zoom.

Step 2: Once you have confirmation from the professor, please email Jesse McClintock with the details of your coffee chat.

Step 3: If you鈥檙e meeting in person, tell the employees behind the counter at Bridgehead that you鈥檙e participating in the Coffee with a Prof program and your coffee will be paid for!  If you鈥檙e meeting online, you or the prof can schedule a Zoom meeting at a time convenient to you both.

Winter program dates: January 16 鈥� April 10, 2024

Choose Your Professor

• Childhood and Youth Studies
• Cognitive Science
• College of Humanities
• English
• Feminist Institute of Social Transformation
• French
• Geography and Environmental Studies
• History
• Human Rights and Social Justice
• Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art, and Culture
• Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies
• Linguistics and Language Studies
• Studies in Art and Culture (SSAC)
• Philosophy
• Psychology
• Sociology and Anthropology

Dr. Alexandra Arraiz Matute (Alexandra.Arraiz-Matute@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Arraiz Matute is an Assistant Professor in the Childhood & Youth Studies program. Her research sits at the intersections of identity, culture, race, and migration. Currently, she鈥檚 working with racialized immigrant families in Ottawa to understand their experiences with the public education system and online learning. As a former international student, she is happy to chat with students about transitions into university and post-secondary culture, working in education, working and researching with the community, or sharing good Netflix recommendations.

Dr. Julie Garlen (Julie.garlen@carleton.ca)
Available: On-campus by appointment
Dr. Garlen (she/her) is a critical cultural theorist with interest in childhood, education, and curriculum studies. She is currently the Director of the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies and a Professor of Childhood and Youth Studies. Previously, she worked as a primary school teacher and early childhood teacher educator in the southern US. While much of her early career was focused on children鈥檚 popular and media culture, her recent work has looked at how the Western myth of childhood innocence informs work with and understandings of children in North American contexts. Since 2018, she鈥檚 been working with a team of researchers on how memories shape understandings of childhood among adults preparing for careers involving work with children. Currently, she is the primary investigator of a SSHRC-funded research project, 鈥淕irls in the Digital World,鈥� which explores how to facilitate participatory action research (PAR) with children. She would love to talk with students about childhood, education, and children鈥檚 popular culture, especially social media or anything Disney-related!

Dr. Jim Davies (Jim.Davies@carleton.ca)
Available: in person, 10:00-11:30 a.m. and 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. on Fridays
Dr. Jim Davies is a Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science. He teaches the popular Mysteries of the Mind course and is co-host of the podcast Minding the Brain. He is happy to talk to students about careers in science, science fiction, and cognitive science. Lately, he is interested in ethics, imagination, creativity, and consciousness.  

Dr. Deidre Butler (Deidre.Butler@carleton.ca)
Available: On campus or on Zoom, by appointment
Deidre Butler is the Director of the Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies and an Associate Professor specializing in Jewish Studies in the Religion program at 杏吧原创 University鈥檚 College of Humanities. Butler teaches in the areas of modern Judaism, gender, sexuality, and the body, theory and method in religion, and religious and philosophical responses to the Holocaust. Her research operates at the intersections of Jewish studies, religion, ethics, and feminist thought. Her current SSHRC funded research project, in collaboration with Professor Betina Appel Kuzmarov (Law and Legal Studies), is an interdisciplinary ethnographic (interview-based) project that investigates the phenomenon of Jewish religious divorce in Canada. The project interrogates the problem of Get abuse; the phenomenon of husbands delaying or refusing to grant their wives Jewish religious divorces or delaying or refusing religious divorces in order to extort more favourable terms in a civil divorce. She is also wrapping up the Hear Our Voices: Survivors speak of trauma and hate project which is an open-source online educational resource for students, educators, and researchers that centres on oral history interviews in the study of the Holocaust and Antisemitism. In addition to developing research interview footage with survivors from the HOV project, she is collaborating with director Francine Zuckerman on an animated documentary about Alma Ros茅. Ros茅 was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and was forced to direct an orchestra of her fellow female prisoners. Antisemitism has become a key scholarly concern for Dr. Butler over the last several years, extending beyond in her teaching, into her service at the university, and advocacy and consulting at the provincial and national levels. She has just completed a program in Critical Antisemitism Studies as a Visiting Scholar at Oxford and is developing a new course on antisemitism with Dr. Pamela Walker (History). It is a pleasure to mentor students and help them think about how studying religion translates into future study and future careers.

Dr. Elizabeth Kennedy-Klaassen (Liz.Klaassen@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Klaassen is an Instructor III in the College of the Humanities. Her research concerns the ancient world, particularly Roman literature, and its intersection with Greek literature and Roman history. This year she is teaching courses in Archaeology and the Latin language.

Dr. Yukai Li (Yukai.Li@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Li is an Associate Professor in Greek & Roman Studies in the College of the Humanities. He teaches a range of courses in the ancient Greek language, literature, history, and culture. His research aims to bridge ancient literature, classical scholarship, and modern theory, and so he would be as happy chatting about psychoanalysis, (post)structuralism, and Deleuze as about Homer, tragedy, or pastoral poetry. He also has experience with graduate study in the US and the UK and would be happy to pass on any insights.

Dr. Jaclyn Neel (Jaclyn.Neel@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Neel is an Assistant Professor in the College of Humanities and is an intellectual historian specializing in Roman mythology. She also is interested in the history of scholarship about Greco-Roman antiquity, including in creative works.

Dr. Dana Dragunoiu (Dana.Dragunoiu@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Dragunoiu is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature. She loves teaching and is delighted to participate in the 鈥淐offee with a Prof鈥� initiative. Her first book on Nabokov, titled Vladimir Nabokov and the Poetics of Liberalism, was published in 2011 by Northwestern University Press. Her second book, Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Moral Acts, came out in September 2021 with the same press. In addition to her work on Nabokov, she has also published scholarly articles on Marcel Proust, J.M. Coetzee, Ernest Hemingway, Stendhal, and contemporary film. Currently, she is working on a short biography on Nabokov to be included in the Simply Charly series. She is excited to be writing about Nabokov for a general readership.

Dr. Andrew Wallace (Andrew.Wallace@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Wallace is a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature. His academic interests range widely, from Ancient Greece (Sappho, tragedy) and Rome (Virgil, Ovid) through the Middle Ages (Dante, Chaucer) and Early Modern (Shakespeare, etc.) periods. In addition to teaching and writing on these periods and authors, he regularly teaches a first-year grammar course. He is happy to chat about anything from learning languages to music theory to modern poetry and novels.

Dr. Katie Bausch (Katharine.Bausch@carleton.ca)
Available: On campus or on Zoom, Wednesdays  between 1:30 p.m. 鈥� 4:00 p.m. and Thursdays between 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. by appointment 
Dr. Bausch is an Instructor III in the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation where she can combine her two passions: all things about social justice and all things about popular culture. Katie has a Ph.D. in US History and is currently working on creating pedagogy for teaching about race and racism in higher education.

Dr. C茅line Bonnotte-Hoover (Celine.Bonnotte-Hoover@carleton.ca)
Available: On campus or on Zoom, by appointment
Dr. Bonnotte-Hoover is an Instructor II in the Department of French. She teaches intermediate language classes, written French, and grammar. She is available to chat in French on topics such as languages, traveling, and food. She would prefer to have students just reach out because apart from the days she teaches, she plans on being flexible with her presence on campus.

Dr. Carmen L. LeBlanc (Carmen.LeBlanc@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. LeBlanc is Chair of the Department of French and an Associate Professor of French linguistics. She is passionate about everything related to language. Her research focuses on the historical and linguistic links between varieties, past and present, of French communities in North America. More generally, she seeks to understand how and why languages change or die. What determines the fate of a dialect facing competition from a more powerful one? What part do individuals and groups play in language maintenance? How do we know a language is changing or endangered? Her past publications dealt with society, history, and language in Ontario, Qu茅bec, and Acadia.

Dr. Frenand Leger (FrenandLeger@cunet.carleton.ca)
Available: In person on campus, by appointment
Dr. Frenand L茅ger studied education sciences, linguistics, and literature. As an Instructor II in the Department of French, he primarily teaches and coordinate French language courses, as well as literature and language teaching methods. He is also a founding member of the Haitian Creole Academy and a courtesy Professor of Haitian Studies at Florida International University.  

His research in three major fields (literature, educational linguistics, and sociolinguistics) adopts an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach, focusing on the intersections of languages, cultures, ideologies, identities, and politics in Haiti and in other former colonies in the Caribbean. His work in literature mainly focuses on questions of language, identity, and orality in fictional stories in the French-speaking Caribbean area. His upcoming book on Francophone literature examines a body of fictional literary texts written by major Haitian novelists and short story writers from the nineteenth century to the present day. It aims to validate the influence of Haitian literature on Francophone writers of the global South, particularly on Caribbean and African writers. 

He has also authored many scholarly articles on Haiti鈥檚 sociolinguistic situation and on Haitian literature. His articles and book chapters have appeared in journals and monographs published by prestigious international publishing houses such as Cambridge University Press, University of Toronto Press, University Press of Florida, University Press of Laval, ect. He has created Paw貌l Lakay, the most comprehensive and up-to-date higher education textbook for the teaching and learning of the Haitian-Creole language and culture. He has also been working on the creation of a series of higher education advanced French language textbooks that follow the action-oriented approach of the Council of Europe. 

Dr. 脡milie Urbain (emilie.urbain@carleton.ca)
Available: on campus by appointment
脡milie Urbain is an associate professor of French linguistics in the Department of French of Belgian origin. Her research projects in sociolinguistics all share a common interest in studying the relationship between languages, multilingualism, power, and social inequalities. She studies how processes of categorization, legitimization and hierarchization of language practices unfold in North American French-speaking communities (mostly Canada and Louisiana), and what that entails in terms of inclusion and exclusion of speakers. With several colleagues, she has published on language ideological debates in Acadia and other French-speaking minorities in Canada. Her recent research focus on the historical intersection between language, nationalism, and settler colonialism in the Acadian communities of New-Brunswick, Canada. She is also passionate about music (especially blues and jazz) and an avid vinyl records collector.

Dr. Dipto Sarkar (Dipto.Sarkar@carleton.ca)
Available: On campus, by appointment
Dr. Sarkar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. His research is situated at the crossroads of GIScience, human geography, and digital geography. His primary research interest is to model interactions, especially in a spatial context. He has developed a suite of methods and has applied them in a variety of application scenarios ranging from digital geography, and urban geography, to biodiversity conservation and ecology. Coming from a multi-disciplinary background, Dipto values work that transcends disciplinary silos. In his free time, he likes to play and watch soccer. If you like maps, geography, biodiversity conservation, or soccer, you will have a lot of things to talk about.

Dr. Dominique Marshall (dominique.marshall@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
I teach and research the past of social policy, children鈥檚 rights, humanitarian aid, refugees, disability, science and technology, and the extraction of natural resources. I coordinate the Canadian Network on Humanitarian History, which supports the rescue of archives of Canadian development and aid, co-direct the 杏吧原创 University Disability Research Group, the program Gendered Design in STEAM and I am a Co-Investigator of the Partnership Local Engagement Refugee Research Network. I also work on the teaching website Recipro: the history of international and humanitarian aid.

I would be glad to talk about good history books (see the little piece on this I wrote for the Canadian Historical Association this Fall), the pleasure of collaborative research and collaborative teaching, how to write history 鈥渋n an age of abundance鈥� of documents, how to prepare for graduate school, how to support communities to work on their past. I am also ready to think with you about possible (paid or unpaid) undergraduate research assistantships linked to the research groups above, to entertain a conversation in French as it is my first language, to speak about my Twitter account (@Dominiq92516944), and to discuss the role of historians in the fight against complot theories and fake news.

I have just finished writing an article about archives and disability, another about how to teach the history of human rights, and I am finishing a chapter on Leslie Chance, the Canadian who directed the deliberations at the United Nations which lead to the 1951 Refugee Convention. This is not available for reading yet. But to read or watch published results, or to see whose research I helped along, visit my page.

Dr. Rod Phillips (Roderick.Phillips@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Phillips is a Professor in the Department of History. He is a specialist in the history of the family, the French Revolution, and the history of food and drink and teaches courses on these subjects. He has published widely and is the editor of the Journal of Family History. Dr. Phillips is also a wine writer and wine judge. He travels the world to visit wine regions, has written several books on wine, writes for the international wine media, and judges in wine competitions. He鈥檚 happy to chat about history, the French Revolution, and wine.

Dr. Marc Saurette (Marc.Saurette@carleton.ca)
Available: Thursdays between 9:30 a.m. 鈥� 3:00 p.m., by appointment
Dr. Saurette is an Associate Professor of Mediaeval History.
He wants students to learn that the Middle Ages is more than the knights, princesses, and fairy tales that video games and movies represent. In addition to teaching courses about the Medieval World, he has begun to teach more about how games represent the past and encourages his students to design games in class. His research explores the twelfth-century monastery of Cluny and its abbot, Peter the Venerable, who sought to harness the power of literacy to rewrite the rules of Cluniac monasticism. He is willing to talk about monks or historical games studies at the drop of a hat 鈥� longer than any person could bear in one sitting. 

Dr. Pamela Walker (Pamela.Walker@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Walker is a Professor in the Department of History who is interested in gender and women鈥檚 history, African American history, and the history of religion. Her most memorable research experience was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where she worked with other professors on the history of Christianity in Africa. Her most exciting teaching experience is an immersive historical game that she plays with her first-year students. She spends time every week swing dancing and is trying to perfect the tandem Charleston.

Dr. Shazia Sadaf (Shazia.Sadaf@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Sadaf is an Instructor II in the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies (Human Rights). She was a tenured Associate Professor at Peshawar University in Pakistan before emigrating to Canada in 2013 due to Taliban unrest in the region. After arriving in Canada, she completed a second doctoral degree at Western University in postcolonial studies, specifically in the intersectional areas of War on Terror studies, human rights discourse, and post 9/11 literature. Shazia joined 杏吧原创 University in July 2018 and teaches Human Rights.

Dr. Monica Patterson (Monica.Patterson@carleton.ca)
Availability: By appointment
Monica Eileen Patterson is an anthropologist, historian, and curator who is interested in the connections between memory, violence, and childhood in postcolonial Africa, particularly South Africans鈥� memories of childhood from the apartheid period. Her most recent project on Children鈥檚 Museology attempts to forge a new domain of scholarship and practice in which children are treated as valuable contributors to museums rather than just visitors in need of education or entertainment.  She is also Assistant Director of 杏吧原创鈥檚 graduate program in Curatorial Studies, and is interested in how museums and exhibitions can better engage with pressing issues of social justice such as racism, homophobia and transphobia, climate change, the legacies of the Indian Residential Schools, and children鈥檚 issues. 

She would love to talk with students about their future goals, student experience, and any shared interests, including 杏吧原创鈥檚 one-year graduate diploma in Curatorial Studies, museums and exhibitions, childhood and youth, memory, history, and the legacies of past violence and inequality. She is also always looking for restaurant, movie, travel, and exhibition recommendations!

Dr. Evelyn Mayanja (evelyn.mayanja@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Namakula Mayanja鈥� is an Assistant professor in the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies.  She is an interdisciplinary scholar who combines many disciplines to research and teach social issues. Her research and teaching follow trajectories of critical analysis, decolonization, and African Indigenous philosophy at the intersection of global political economy, natural resources, race, politics, and governance. Her primary area of research focuses on the struggle of those marginalized by colonial and neocolonial systems of oppression and exploitation, neoliberal authoritarianism, and political repression. I am currently researching mineral resource-based wars/armed conflict, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and the hype of renewable/green energy in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). My teaching and research also combine my experiences of being born in Africa, traveling, and living on five continents. In other words, my life and work follow a global trajectory.  I am very interested in young people and passionate about working with them to create a better world where every person will live in peace and freedom.

Dr. Peggy Hartwick (PeggyHartwick@Cunet.杏吧原创.Ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Hartwick is an assistant professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies. Her research interests focus primarily on the potential learning benefits afforded by digital technologies and online spaces in learning and teaching contexts (including assessment practices). Peggy is fascinated by innovative teaching practices and continuously looks to evolve her teaching according to 鈥榖est practice鈥� and research. She has taught all levels of ESLA and ALDS 1001, 2203, and 4906. She is teaching ALDS 5302 and 5002 in the 2023/24 academic year.

Dr. Masako (Mako) Hirotani (Mako.Hirotani@carleton.ca)
Availability: By appointment
Dr. Mako Hirotani is an Associate Professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies. Her research focuses on the investigation of cognitive mechanisms for human sentence processing and their neurological basis, using experimental techniques such as Event Related Potentials (brain waves), brain imaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging), and eye-movements. She teaches various courses in linguistics, including courses in psycholinguistics, cognitive neuroscience of language, and research methods.

Dr. Karen Jesney (Karen.Jesney@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Jesney is an Assistant Professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies.  Her research focuses on how children acquire the sounds of their language, and what this can tell us about adults鈥� cognitive representations.  She teaches various courses in Linguistics, including courses in child language development and phonology.

Dr. Beth MacLeod (Beth.MacLeod@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. MacLeod is an Assistant Professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies. In her research, Dr. MacLeod explores how social meaning is encoded in phonetic variation; that is, what kind of information we can express to others via our pronunciation and what do others understand about us from how we pronounce our words. She teaches various Linguistics and Applied Linguistics courses, but her specialty is Phonetics.

Dr. Brian Strong (brian.strong@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Brian Strong is an Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies. His research interests include second language acquisition and second language vocabulary acquisition and teaching. Brian has over 20 years of experience teaching English as a foreign and second language. He loves talking about teaching English as another language and ways to investigate how languages are learned. His availability varies by week, but he is happy to find a time that works.

Dr. Nick Treanor (NickTreanor@cunet.carleton.ca) 
Available: By appointment
Nick is a prof at the University of Edinburgh and has a visiting appointment at 杏吧原创. He鈥檚 originally from Canada, studied in Canada and the US, and then moved to the UK in 2008. His research focuses on questions that can be put very simply, like 鈥榳hat must the world be like if I can know more about it now than I did 30 years ago?鈥� He very nearly failed out of university as an undergraduate and tries to never forget that. He is interested in almost everything and loves to learn about other subjects by talking to students who are studying them. He’s happy to talk to students about philosophy, grad school, studying in other countries, what they鈥檙e studying at 杏吧原创, or even just about what to do if everything at university seems to be going wrong.

Dr. Deepthi Kamawar (Deepthi.Kamawar@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Kamawar is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and cross-appointed with the Department of Cognitive Science. Her research area is cognitive development, with a focus on the preschool period. She is currently working on projects examining children’s understanding of saving and children’s moral development. Outside of work, she likes to play board games with her family, watch crime dramas, and bake. Deepthi would be happy to talk about her path from undergrad to becoming a professor, her research, and baking.

Dr. Janet Mantler (Janet.Mantler@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Janet Mantler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, as well as the Director of the Centre for Initiatives in Education. As an Organizational Psychologist, she is interested in people鈥檚 lives at work 鈥� whether it is the role of work stress in the mental health of employees, the role of implicit bias on attitudes toward leaders, or the transition from university to career. She鈥檚 always to discuss your university journey, your thoughts on what you want to do following university, and anything to do with your work life. 

Dr. Kira McCabe (Kira.McCabe@carleton.ca)
Available: On campus or on Zoom, Mondays and Tuesdays, by appointment
Dr. McCabe is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology. As a personality psychologist, she studies how individual differences and personality are important for key outcomes in life (such as career success, health, and happiness). Her main research interests investigate the relationship between goal pursuit and personality, and specifically, how we use our personality to achieve our goals in a given moment. She also teaches a second-year course on Introduction to the Study of Personality.

Dr. Christopher Motz (Chris.Motz@carleton.ca)
Available: On campus or on Zoom, by appointment
Chris is an Instructor III in the Department of Psychology and over the last one million years has taught a wide variety of courses in psychology. More recently Chris has been working on developing his YouTube channel: The Science of Academic Success. A focus on academic success feels like the right research topic for Chris, as the instructor position places an emphasis on teaching. In addition to psychology and academic success, Chris is also geeky about a number of other topics, including, but not limited to, jazz and marketing/advertising.

Dr. Lorena Ruci, (LorenaRuci@cunet.carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Ruci is an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Psychology. She teaches first, second, and third-year courses at 杏吧原创 while providing psychological services at the Sports Medicine Clinic at 杏吧原创 and in her private practice. She is a proponent of the researcher-practitioner model, conducting mental health research in post-concussion syndrome and personality. Her hobbies include baking, planting trees and flowers, and going on long walks with her dog Toby.

Dr. Matthew Hawkins (Matthew.Hawkins@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment 
Dr. Hawkins is an Instructor II in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. He is an anthropologist who studies soccer cultures with a focus on fandom in Argentina, where he has conducted fieldwork on the stadium terraces of San Lorenzo de Almagro. Recently, his research has been with fan and player activists who are creating a 鈥渇eminist football鈥� culture in Argentina. He is interested more broadly in the social and cultural significance of sport, public and shared emotions, Latin American music (especially cumbia!), ethnographic research, and transformative political movements.

Dr. Beatriz Ju谩rez-Rodr铆guez (Beatriz.JuarezRodriguez@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment 
Dr. Ju谩rez-Rodr铆guez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Her academic research has focused on the intersection of ethnic, racial, and gender identities, Black women鈥檚 social organizations, and social movements, and the state in Venezuela and Ecuador. Her current research involves ethnographic work with and alongside Afro women鈥檚 organizations in the northern highland region of Ecuador, analyzing their political practices and antiracist and antisexist discourses to show how they are fighting against multiple forms of oppression while challenging exclusionary public policies. A related research interest is the politics of memory and how social organizations, and community members engage in collective processes of recovering their past and mobilize local historical memories as political strategies to create a shared history of resistance and struggles against national oblivion, political oppression, and social injustice. She has explored these themes both in her research in Ecuador and through her participation in a collaborative team research project in El Salvador, called 鈥淪urviving Memory in Post-Civil War El Salvador鈥�.

Dr. William Walters (William.Walters@carleton.ca)
Available: By appointment
Dr. Walters is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. He trained in chemistry at Imperial College, London, before doing graduate studies in politics at City University of New York and York University, Toronto. He has published widely in the areas of political sociology, citizenship theories, and Foucault studies. His current research looks at secrecy, mystery, conspiracy, deception, and revelation within politics and culture. His hobbies include football/soccer (Liverpool FC), music (indie, electronic, alt-folk), running, and travel.

Dr. James Wright (James.Wright@carleton.ca)
Available: On campus or on Zoom, by appointment
Dr. Wright is a Professor of Music in both the School of Studies in Art & Culture and the College of the Humanities. He is an active composer and musicologist with expertise in research areas including music theory and analysis, music history, music perception/cognition, ludomusicology, film music, Arnold Schoenberg studies and Glenn Gould studies. Dr. Wright’s geekiness also extends to other topic areas such as prog rock, musical theatre, and the Montreal Canadiens.  He always enjoys chatting with students about their interests and goals, or about any aspect of university or post-university life.

The post Coffee with a Prof 2024 appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

To all new and returning students, welcome to the 2023/2024 school year at 杏吧原创 University!

My name is Anne Bowker, and I have the distinct honour of serving as your interim Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences for this academic year.

Let me take a moment to introduce myself. In addition to my responsibilities as Dean, I also hold a faculty position in the Department of Psychology, where my research interests centre around two main areas 鈥� the experiences of emerging adults during their transition to university life and the psychological aspects of menopause, including impacts on relationships, body image and overall well-being.

Being a member of the 杏吧原创 community means a lot to me, as a leader, an academic, and as a parent of two 杏吧原创 graduates. If you happen to cross paths with me on campus, you might notice that I often have my CU Therapy Dog, , by my side. If you do spot me, please stop and say hello!聽聽

While I’m still relatively new in my role as Dean, I’ve already come to realize that one of the most rewarding aspects of this position is getting to know you, our dynamic students who study across our diverse programs. I would be delighted if you’d share a little bit about your FASS experience with me.

As many of you have already discovered, our Faculty is home to outstanding interdisciplinary scholars, cutting-edge research, and innovative teaching that focuses on crucial issues such as social justice, identity, sustainability, mental health, and the power of art and creativity.

Given the nature of many of today’s challenges, I believe that perhaps more than ever, the world needs skilled arts and social sciences graduates. Therefore, our mission is to provide you with an enriching learning environment that will equip you to become the innovators, advocates, and leaders of tomorrow.

We are only a week into September, and I am livened by the bustling energy around campus, and I hope you are, too.

As you embark on your 2023/2024 academic journey, please believe in yourself, embrace new opportunities to learn and grow, and get to know your FASS and peers.

We are so proud to have you as a member of FASS, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that our Faculty is a remarkable community to be a part of and one that will support you to meet your vast potential.

I can’t wait to see what you’ll accomplish this year.

Dr. Anne Bowker        
Interim Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences 

The post Dean鈥檚 Welcome Message to Students appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.