November 14, 2022
Professor
Dr. Antje Ellermann latest book “The Comparative Politics of Immigration: Policy Choices in Germany, Canada, Switzerland, and the United States” recently won the Charles H. Levine Memorial Book Prize (co-winner) by the International Political Science Association.
October 15, 2022
Stephen Guy-BrayProfessor, F.R.S.C.
Dr. Guy-Bray recently published his book “Line Endings in Renaissance Poetry” , London: Anthem Press.
September 15, 2022
David GramlingProfessor, Department Head CENES
Dr. Gramling’s book-length co-translation (with Aron Aji) of Murathan Mungan’s Turkish-language Shahmeran story cycle “Valor Stories” (Cenk Hikayeleri) got published with Northwestern University Press.
August 11, 2022
Gaby PailerAssociate Professor of German Literature
Dr. Pailer was awarded an SSHRC grant for her conference “Con/Figurations of Female Adventure: Dynamics, Spaces, and Alliances” held in August, and her project on “Women’s Drama and Theatre in German-speaking Europe, 1600-2025.”
July 26, 2022
Tim FrandyAssistant Professor of Nordic Studies
Dr. Tim Frandy (Assistant Professor of Nordic Studies) co-edited “Culture Work: Folklore for the Public Good” , published in July 2022.
June 16, 2022
Anna Casas AguilarAssistant Professor of Spanish, Associate Graduate Advisor
This July, Dr. Anna Casas Aguilar (assistant professor of Hispanic Studies) published her book “Bilingual Legacies: Father Figures in Self-Writing from Barcelona“ (Toronto University Press, 2022).
June 07, 2022
Professor, Department of History
Dr. Kojevnikov co-edited “Oxford Handbook of the History of Quantum Interpretations“.
April 01, 2022
Associate Professor; Director, Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions
Dr. Tworek’s “Negotiating Sovereignty in German History: Historiographical Challenges” was published by Central European History this spring.
March 01, 2022
Kyle FrackmanAssociate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies
Dr. Frackman published his book “Coming Out” , which examines the creation, context, and significance of the first and only East German feature film about homosexuality. He also co-edited “Queer Temporality and Possibilities in German Studies“ and “Queer Time and Contemporary” German Cinema.
June 17, 2022
CES Advisory Board Member, Canada Research Chair in Health Communications, Associate Professor of International History and Public Policy
Professor Heidi Tworek has been awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant for her project “Digital Governance in Canada: Politics, Players, and Struggles for Influence”. A total of 44 projects led by UBC researchers have been awarded combined funding of $9.7 million. Find out all the details here.
June 15, 2022
CES Faculty Affiliate and Associate Professor of Political Science
Dr Tiberghien has been appointed to the Indo-Pacific Advisory Committee. Read the announcement on the Government of Canada website here and find further details about the appointment here.
June 02, 2022
Centre for European Studies Director and Associate Professor, CENES
Dr Bowers has been awarded a 2022 UBC Public Engagement Award from the UBC Public Humanities Hub for her on-going public scholarship in the field of Dostoevsky studies, including a virtual public program for the Dostoevsky bicentenary in 2021 and her editorship of Bloggers Karamazov, and her organization of the Flash Teach-In on Ukraine and other events in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. She is one of 5 winners this year.
The award committee wrote the following about Dr Bowers’s work:
“[Dr. Bower’s] nomination package provided a compelling summary of the ways in which [she has] exhibited outstanding public humanities engagement in the past two years. [Her] use of both conventional and creative channels to foster multi-directional exchanges about current events and to mobilize humanistic knowledge is exemplary: exactly the kind of public humanities work that the Hub wishes to encourage, so we are delighted to award [her] this prize.
The Hub’s adjudication committee were unanimous in their appreciation of [her] file. [Her] publicly engaged work has had a measurable impact on UBC, on the field, and on both national and international communities. The committee particularly appreciated the care [Dr. Bowers has] taken to mentor students in public humanities and public engagement in addition to producing [her] own work. Members of the committee remarked on [her] innovative approaches to advancing scholarship in [her] field and the extensive reach of [her] open education resources.”
Congratulations to Dr Bowers!
More information about her publicly engaged scholarship can be found on her website.
May 15, 2022
CES Faculty Affiliate and Assistant Professor of Spanish, FHIS
Dr Aguilar’s book, Bilingual Legacies: Father Figures in Self-Writing from Barcelona, University of Toronto Press, will be published July, 2022.
Bilingual Legacies examines fatherhood in the work of four canonical Spanish authors born in Barcelona and raised during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Drawing on the autobiographical texts of Juan Goytisolo, Carlos Barral, Terenci Moix, and Clara Janés, the book explores how these authors understood gender roles and paternal figures as well as how they positioned themselves in relation to Spanish and Catalan literary traditions.
Anna Casas Aguilar contends that through their presentation of father figures, these authors subvert static ideas surrounding fatherhood. She argues that this diversity was crucial in opening the door to revised gender models in Spain during the democratic period. Moving beyond the shadow of the dictator, Casas Aguilar shows how these writers distinguished between the patriarchal “father of the nation” and their own paternal figures. In doing so, Bilingual Legacies sheds light on the complexity of Spanish conceptions of gender, language, and family and illustrates how notions of masculinity, authorship, and canon are interrelated.
University of Toronto Press – Bilingual Legacies (utorontopress.com)
Reviews of the work include:
“Through an illuminating reading of the autobiographical works of four major literary figures – Juan Goytisolo, Carlos Barral, Terenci Moix, and Clara Janés – Anna Casas Aguilar interrogates the complex interplay of compliance and rebellion and exposes how familial affiliation impacted their lives as writers and particularly their choice of literary language.”
Mario Santana, Associate Professor of Spanish Literature, University of Chicago
“Through brilliant close readings, Bilingual Legacies tackles politically fraught issues of literary, linguistic, and gender subjectivity. It also reveals the centrality, as well as the potential lines of fracture, of the masculinist and patriarchal literary economy in which the authors operated. This is an important book, one that helps us better understand the linguistic and gender dynamics of contemporary literary discourses in Spain and Catalonia.”
Javier Krauel, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Colorado at Boulder
“An important contribution to both the study of autobiography and bilingualism in post-Franco Spain. A richly detailed analysis of canonical and less known titles puts them in a new light where the politics of language become inseparable from family stories. Bilingual Legacies is essential reading about the intricacies of literary depictions of Spanish and Catalan linguistic identities.”
Alberto Medina, Professor of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University
April 25, 2022
CES Faculty Affiliate and Assistant Professor of German Studies, CENES
Dr. Ervin Malakaj is the inaugural recipient of the CENES Outstanding Mentorship Award. Read more here.
April 21, 2022
Centre for European Studies Director and Associate Professor, CENES
Dr Katherine Bowers has published her first monograph, Writing Fear: Russian Realism and the Gothic. The book was printed last week and is now available from the University of Toronto Press website: https://utorontopress.com/9781487526924/writing-fear/
About the book:
In Russia, gothic fiction is often seen as an aside – a literary curiosity that experienced a brief heyday and then disappeared. In fact, its legacy is much more enduring, persisting within later Russian literary movements. Writing Fear explores Russian literature’s engagement with the gothic by analysing the practices of borrowing and adaptation. Katherine Bowers shows how these practices shaped literary realism from its romantic beginnings through the big novels of the 1860s and 1870s to its transformation during the modernist period.
Bowers traces the development of gothic realism with an emphasis on the affective power of fear. She then investigates the hybrid genre’s function in a series of case studies focused on literary texts that address social and political issues such as urban life, the woman question, revolutionary terrorism, and the decline of the family. By mapping the myriad ways political and cultural anxiety take shape via the gothic mode in the age of realism, Writing Fear challenges the conventional literary history of nineteenth-century Russia.
Praise:
“Writing Fear is a rich and innovative study that reinterprets the Russian realist tradition by tracing the pervasive presence of gothic thematics and aesthetics throughout the period that we usually perceive as more ‘modern’ and socially focused and thus unconcerned with the fantastic, gothic, or sublime. This is a major contribution to Russian literary studies, as well as studies of realism and the gothic more generally.”
Valeria Sobol, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
“The scholarship presented here is excellent. Writing Fear demonstrates a striking depth and breadth of reading not only of secondary literature but also of the various primary texts it discusses. Katherine Bowers impressively brings together works from the Russian, British, and other European traditions to offer comparative readings of the exploitation of gothic imagery, preoccupations, and plots in order to throw new light on the interpretation of these works. This text will become essential reading for courses on Russian literature and the gothic, and is just as valuable in terms of its studies of individual authors and works.”
Claire Whitehead, Reader in Russian, University of St Andrews
April 19, 2022
CES Faculty Affiliate and Associate Professor, CENES
Markus Hallensleben and Elizabeth Nijdam (co-investigator) have received a SSHRC Connection Grant for a Workshop on Decolonizing and Indigenizing European and Migration Studies through Indigenous Storywork Methodologies. Collaborators are Maria Jose Athie Martinez (EDCP), Dorothee Leesing (CENES) and David Gaertner (FNIS), co-sponsored by CES, CMS, CENES, Humboldt University, Berlin (Regina Römhild), and the University of Potsdam (Anja Schwarz and Nicole Waller). It is also part of the Research Group on Narratives https://narratives.migration.ubc.ca and will centre Jo-ann Archibald Q’um Q’um Xiiem’s educational storywork methodologies.
This workshop will take place from August 29 to September 1, 2022, at the Liu Institute of Global Studies and the Centre for Migration Studies. Participation will be by invitation only. More details to come!
Image credit: “sʔi:ɬqəy̓ qeqən (Double-Headed Serpent Post)” Brent Sparrow Jr., Musqueam
April 13, 2022
CES Advisory Board Member and Assistant Professor of Italian Studies
For his study leave during the academic year 2022-23, Dr. Gaoheng Zhang will work on a book project tentatively titled “Scrambles for East Africa: Public Perceptions and Cultural Debates between China, Western Europe, and East Africa.” The Belt and Road Initiative is China’s most ambitious development strategy and governance project. While the empirical details of technological and economic change can be documented in other kinds of sources, the media becomes a nexus for the jockeying for global significance and reputation, especially through covering issues related to economic development and environment. Deploying theoretical tools from mobilities and postcolonial studies, the study dissects case studies from Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, and Tanzania in order to shape an argument about the Chinese media’s intersection of commercial, capital, workforce, knowledge, and media mobilities and about the Italian, French, and British media’s focus on various aspects of mal d’Afrique, including neocolonialism, environmental degradation, and labour exploitation. To assist him with this project, Dr. Zhang has received a UBC Killam Faculty Research Fellowship from the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Fund for Advanced Studies and a Jean Monnet Fellowship based at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.