Professor Laurence Packer in the Faculty of Science & Engineering's Department of Biology spoke to Global News February 12 about the sudden death of the Royal Ontario Museum's bee colony. Over 20,000 bees died in a 48-hour period. You can watch the segment on the Global News website. Packer is a bee expert who has […]
We all know they’re out there, prying open garbage cans, scurrying across fences and maybe even bunking under your deck, wrote the Toronto Star Feb. 10: But urban raccoons – who look just like their country cousins but live very different lives – are rarely studied, leaving humans in the dark about what the nocturnal […]
In her recent book, Berliner Chic: A Locational History of Berlin Fashion, York humanities Professor Susan Ingram explores the emergence of Berlin as a fashion capital against a backdrop of politics, ideology and war. The launch of Berliner Chic will take place Wednesday, Feb. 2, from 4 to 6pm in the Senior Common Room, 010 […]
CBC Radio's Ideas program is re-airing "It's a Girl's World," Lynn Glazier's audio documentary about the social world of girls where a hidden culture of nastiness lurks beneath a cultural facade of niceness. The series examines the tumultuous nature of female relationships from girlhood to adulthood. The radio series, and its companion National Film Board […]
A new video from York University President & Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri offers a welcome back message to students returning for the winter term. Building on the success of his fall welcome message, the president offers a recap of the major milestones and news events of the past term. In the high-definition video filmed in the Learning Commons at […]
A York University professor’s new book aims to integrate the Inuit experience of climate change with Western climate research, and includes an Inuktitut companion to the volume, making it accessible across cultures. Climate, Culture, Change: Inuit and Western Dialogues with a Warming North, released this week by University of Ottawa Press, calls for a shift […]
Is snacking on morsels of human flesh wrong? Apparently it is, if it involves murdering the person first – even if you’re stranded at sea without food or water. According to common law, necessity is no defence to murder. Such a 19th-century case of murder and cannibalism is highlighted in Osgoode Hall Law School Professor Allan Hutchinson's […]
In her ongoing effort to illuminate the experience of Muslims in the West, York Professor Haideh Moghissi has recently produced her second book on the subject, Muslim Diaspora in the West: Negotiating Gender, Home and Belonging. Released in December, the volume of essays by scholars from both sides of the Atlantic explores issues of race […]
Like all athletes, dancers are prone to injuries, and the risk increases among those performing at the elite level. From stress fractures to overuse syndromes, dance injuries have a serious impact on a performer’s current and future ability. York dance Professor Donna Krasnow first began conducting research after she personally experienced a series of injuries. Now […]
For more than a century, English monks bent over manuscripts scratching out by hand thousands of stories about miracles performed posthumously by saints, many in Canterbury cathedral. Often, all it took was a prayer to a saint or a visit to a saint's tomb for a miracle to take place, and if it was the […]
For more than 1,400 years, Muslims have held multiple and diverging views about their religious tradition. Yet especially since Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims are commonly portrayed as homogeneous and dogmatic. In his new book, Diversity and Pluralism in Islam: Historical and Contemporary Discourses amongst Muslims, York anthropologist Zulfikar Hirji challenges that view. The 253-page volume […]
In her new book Freud and Education, author Deborah Britzman follows the threads of the concept of education – its dangers and promises and its illusions and revelations – throughout Sigmund Freud’s body of work. Britzman, a Distinguished Research Professor in York's Faculty of Education, defines how fundamental Freudian concepts such as the psychical apparatus, the […]
Why does homosexuality incite vitriolic rhetoric, hate and violence around the world, and does homophobia operate differently across social, political and economic terrains? Those are just some of the questions examined in the book Homophobias: Lust and Loathing across Time and Space, edited by York anthropology Professor David Murray. Published by Duke University Press, Homophobias looks […]
Professor Stephen Gaetz in the Faculty of Education participated in York's inaugural TedxYorku event earlier this month. His talk is now available on youtube: Gaetz’s research agenda foregrounds social justice and attempts to make research relevant to policy and program development. He comes to this work at York University after several years of working in the […]
A special double issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies – also being published as a book – examines the role that militarization plays in our lives and its effects on civic culture. “Cultures of Militarization,” edited by Jody Berland (right), professor in York’s Department of Humanities, and Blake Fitzpatrick, professor in the School […]
In their new book, The Trouble with Billionaires, York Professor Neil Brooks, a tax law expert at Osgoode Hall Law School, and Canadian author Linda McQuaig make the case that the massive fortunes of the ultra-rich – widely considered benign or even beneficial to society – are actually detrimental to everyone else. The glittering lives of […]
Sports and poetry aren’t usually thought of as intertwining, but York English Professor Priscila Uppal is almost as much a sports fan as she is a poet. Given that she was the Canadian Athletes Now Fund (CANFund) poet-in-residence during the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and Paralympic Games, it’s not surprising that her poems have made their way […]
A new book by a York University professor argues that the act of copying, much maligned in our culture, is fundamentally necessary to our evolution. In Praise of Copying, which was officially launched last night in Toronto, explores different aspects of copying and looks at everything from quilting and cooking to gang warfare and martial […]
Why is it that some smart people do really dumb things? That’s the question York psychology Professor Maggie Toplak is trying to answer through her research on rationality. What she’s found is that intelligence as measured by IQ tests is not the same as rationality or a rationality quotient (RQ). “There’s a folk idea that […]
It's not enough to plant trees in exchange for carbon emissions in the fight to mitigate climate change, say York environmental studies Professor Anders Sandberg and York environmental studies master’s student Tor Sandberg in their new co-edited book Climate Change – Who’s Carrying the Burden?: The Chilly Climates of the Global Environmental Dilemma. Nor is […]