Social Sciences & Humanities: Lectures, Debates, Forums

Writer and educator Stan Chung explored the intersections of identity and culture with IETP workshop participants. Using an indigenous framework, the session considered a critical question: how do we find new connection and consciousness in a time of increasing cultural polarity? How do we create new ceremonies that resist the dominance of globalized mass culture? Participants examined improvisation and attempted to articulate those ceremonies that bridge cultures, deepen empathy, and transform both personal and institutional identity. Chung is Vice President Academic and Research at Red River College, Winnipeg.

Drawing on selected videos and his recent book, Macho, varon, masculino. Estudios de Masculinidades en Cuba (Macho, Male, Masculine. Studies of Masculinity in Cuba), Dr. Julio Cesar Gonzalez Pages will lead a discussion and debate that considers the links between culture and sport and expressions of violence. Given the importance of culture and sport to both women and men, Dr. Pages argues that these issues must be a focus of the global development agenda. The consumption of culture and sport is full of sexist and male chauvinist stereotypes that help to incite violence. How can this be prevented? How can we intervene? Dr. Pages is a historian and a researcher on gender and masculinities.

Since independence, growing economic hardship, increasing opportunities for female employment and education, and changing societal attitudes towards female employment and education in combination have facilitated the entry of women into the paid labour force in Bangladesh. Bangladeshi women, both urban and rural, are no longer hesitant to join the paid labor force whenever opportunities arise. Despite the anti-dowry legislation, the dowry system has continued and shifted as a result of women's increasing paid labour force activity. When women started participating in paid employment, men adopted various strategies to accumulate wealth from their wives. Their attitude is: 'We do not want dowry. We want working women.' Women's income is considered as 'sufficient compensation for waiving dowry demands.' Dower and maintenance, to be provided at the husband's expense with food, clothing, accommodation and other necessaries of life, is the lawful right of the wife in Bangladesh. I argue that the practice of appropriation of wives' income or controlling wives' income by their husbands or in-laws should be considered as a form of dowry and hence a criminal offence because of the presence of Islamic dower and maintenance laws in Bangladesh. To prevent appropriation of wives' income, Bangladeshi law should recognize it as a new form of dowry and criminalize it.


Those who oppose privatization are often confronted with the objection that they present no alternative. And yet there are countless cases of successful public services around the world. This talk explores theoretical concepts of what does (and does not) constitute a 'public' service, what makes them 'successful', and why critical research on this topic matters for scholars, practitioners and activists. The presentation draws on extensive empirical research in Asia, Africa and Latin America, examining public service initiatives in the water, health and electricity sectors in over 40 countries.

Some of Bob’s current work includes working on the Siting Process with the Nuclear Waste Management Organization and as an Adjunct Professor and Fellow in the School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University. Bob also works on a human rights matters and assisting corporations to development partnerships with Aboriginal communities. Bob is a frequent speaker regarding Aboriginal issues and in particular the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He is a former CEO of the Assembly of First Nations and before that the Interim Executive Director of the Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which will examine and make recommendations regarding the Indian Residential School era and its legacy. Bob lead the process, with support from across Canada and internationally, to establish the Commission. Bob served as the Chief of Staff to the AFN National Chief Phil Fontaine, and was a member of the team which negotiated the historic Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. A former Assistant Deputy Minister for the Government of Canada, Bob is a graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and Fellow at the Harvard Law School. Bob has been involved in many major Indigenous issues in Canada over the past twenty years. Bob has taught, debated and lectured at a number of universities in Canada and the United States and at the Canada School of Public Service. Bob is from Mohawk and Ojibway ancestry and is a member of the Six Nations Reserve. http://www.queensu.ca/sps/events/policyspeakerseries/pss201213/bobwatts.html

Beverley Baines is a Professor in the Faculty of Law at Queen’s and cross appointed to the School of Policy Studies and to the Department of Gender Studies in the Faculty of Arts & Science. In the 2012 fall term she taught Public Law and Law Gender Equality; currently she teaches Constitutional Law and, in the School of Policy Studies, Law and Public Policy. Since acting as an advisor to some women’s groups during the drafting of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Professor Baines’ research interests have consistently focused on how courts, especially the Canadian Supreme Court, interpret the Charter guarantee of sex equality in women’s cases. Recent projects include analyzing cases and legislation restricting faith-based family law arbitrations, criminalizing polygamy, and banning (or failing to reasonably accommodate) the niqab from the perspective of the women who seek constitutional recognition of their intersecting rights to sex equality and religious freedom. Her research also includes a reflection on whether feminist judges must self-identify as feminists and a paper examining feminist legal reasoning in the judgments of Justice Bertha Wilson, the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1982. Baines co-edited Feminist Constitutionalism: Global Perspectives (Cambridge, 2012) with Israeli Justice Daphne Barak-Erez and Professor Tsvi Kahana (Queen’s), and The Gender of Constitutional Jurisprudence(Cambridge, 2005) with Professor Ruth Rubio-Marin (Faculty of Law, University of Seville). http://law.queensu.ca/facultyAndStaff/facultyDirectory/baines.html

Recorded Saturday May 26, 2012 at Queen's University MiniU. Every day seems to bring another contentious story about Canada’s energy supply. Whether we’re discussing new pipelines to the west or into the USA, oil-sands development in Alberta and Saskatchewan, or the creation of wind farms across Ontario, everybody has an opinion. How is it that a country like ours – so dependent upon energy development for our GDP, and such heavy users of energy on a per capita basis – has no strategy for the future development of our resources? This talk will cover the very combative past of Canadian energy policy, including insights into the National Energy Program and its legacy. You’ll get a glimpse into the world of energy demand and an understanding of where our energy products are going. Finally, we’ll ask our audience to help us plan an energy future. What do we want and how will we get it? Hopefully, we’ll arrive at a solution that can deliver power to the people. Dr. Mabee is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in Geography and the School of Policy Studies, Associate Director of Queen’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy (QIEEP) and the Sustainable Bioeconomy Centre (SBC). His research focuses on the interface between renewable energy policy and technologies, with particular emphasis on wood energy and biofuels. His interests also include environmental policy, international approaches to renewable energy development, and commercialization of new products and processes.

For four traumatic months in the fall of 1969 and the winter of 1970, Queen's campus was galvanized by the Edwards Affair, which plunged the university into the mainstream of Sixties student activism. Allegations of political persecution and Mounties snooping on campus boiled over and resulted in a full-blown inquiry that obliged the whole university to look closely at the liberal values it had long cherished.

The Tunisian revolution had taken the world by surprise. Never before in the history of the modern Arab world had a grassroots uprising toppled an entrenched dictator of Ben Ali's caliber and longevity without recourse to any form of established ideology or political party nor to foreign intervention, which has until recently been bandied about as the only midwife to real democracy in the Arab world. The aim of this talk is to reflect on the making of the Tunisian revolution with particular focus on the role of culture as a vehicle of popular discontent against the regime before and after the revolution. Literature, cinema, poetry and music kept alive the critical repository on which the mass mobilization of Tunisians hinged. The talk will conclude by assessing the challenges and prospects for the success of the Tunisian revolution both in the near and far future.

Dr. David Wilson is Professor of Social and Cultural Geography and a faculty member in the unit for Criticism and Interpretative Theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is an internationally recognized, interdisciplinary scholar and his work has contributed significantly to numerous fields including geography, sociology, urban and regional planning, and political science.

Dr. David Murakami Wood, Canada Research Chair in Surveillance Studies is interested in how surveillance is used in multiple urban contexts.

Recorded on November 14th 2007 by CFRC, 101.9 FM. Dr. Turk delivers his address from the symposium, "What's at stake? Academic Freedom in the 21st century."

Recorded on November 14th 2007 by CFRC, 101.9 FM. Dr. Schrecker delivers her address from the symposium, "What's at Stake? Academic Freedom in the 21st century." The introductory remarks are by Dr. Ariel Salzmann and moderator Stanley Corbett.

Recorded on November 21st 2007 by CFRC, 101.9 FM. Major Beardsley delivers his address for the event "Remembering Rwanda to Defend Darfur", with closing remarks by Mimi Kashira.

Recorded on June 16th, 2007 by CFRC 101.9 FM. Dr. Smart's lecture is entitled "For an independent socialist Canada: The Queen's History Department and the birth of the Waffle Movement" and was delivered during the New World Coming Conference: The Sixties

Recorded on June 14th, 2007 by CFRC 101.9 FM. Dr. Palmer's lecture is entitled "Canada's New Left Liberationists" and was delivered during the "New World Coming Conference: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness" held at Queen's University.

Recorded on June 14th, 2007 by CFRC 101.9 FM. Dr. Frankel's lecture is entitled "What's in a name?: The Black Panthers movement in Israel" and was delivered during the "New World Coming Conference: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness" held

Recorded on June 14th, 2007 by CFRC 101.9 FM. Dr. Sean Purdy deliveres his lecture entitled "Constructing Pariah Spaces in the Americans: Newspaper Representation of Slums, Ghettos and Favelas in the 1960's", for the "New World Coming Conference".

Recorded on May 5th, 2007 by CFRC 101.9 FM. Cultivating Peace Conference. Introduction by Rev. Paul Bowman

Recorded on March 21st, 2007 by CFRC 101.9 FM. Dr. Tator delivered this talk at Queen's University on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Recorded May 27th, 2006 by CFRC 101.9 FM. Dr Kobayashi's lecture is entitled "Shock and Horror in New orleans: Emotive Media Representations of Race and Place"