Dr. Wendy Chan, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, SFU
Dr. Chan’s current research interests focus on gender, race and class differences in the criminal justice system, criminalization and women’s mental health, immigration enforcement and the racialization of immigration, and feminist perspectives on violence against women. She has published four books, most recently Criminalizing Race, Criminalizing Poverty (2007). She is also co-Director of the Feminist Institute for Studies on Law and Society.

Dr. Krishna Pendakur, Department of Economics SFU
Dr. Pendakur’s research interests include empirical research on the measurement of well-being, poverty, discrimination and economic inequality. Dr. Pendakur was the past Co-Director of Metropolis British Columbia (MBC), Center of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Diversity.

Zool Suleman is a Canadian Immigration Lawyer, Policy Consultant and Law Instructor at Douglas College. He was the co-founder and ran Rungh Magazine, a South Asian Journal of Culture Comment and Criticism from 1992-1997 and is the Director of the MARU Society, which examines the intersection of issues related to Migration, Art, and Race. He has also been a member of the Mayor’s Working Group on Immigration for the City of Vancouver since 2005 andis the author of the City of Vancouver’s Dialogues Project book in 2011.

Harsha Walia, South Asian activist and writer on Coast Salish territories. She is formally trained in the law and is a co-founder of No One is Illegal, has worked on refugee and migrant justice issues for over a decade.

Discussant: Dr. Mike Ma, Department of Criminology and co-founder of Social Justice Centre, Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Chair and Organizer: Dr. Davina Bhandar, Adjunct Professor, SFU School of Communication and Professor, Canadian Studies, Trent University

All Welcome; No registration fee; for more info contact cmnscpcc@sfu.ca; also supported by the CPCC’s Working Group on Diaspora, Migration and Social Justice (Lara Campbell, Dara Culhane, Helen Leung, Kirsten McAllister, Davina Bhandar and Catherine Murray) and Dr. Mike Ma, Kwantlen University; organized in conjunction with CMNS 424-855.

HARBOUR CENTRE
515 WEST HASTINGS
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

May 25th, 2012
Room HC 7000 (elevator to the to 7th floor Harbour Centre)

Qualified candidates must have a completed Ph.D. in hand. They should provide evidence of a coherent research program related to one or more of the above areas.

The successful candidate will be expected to teach four courses per academic year, to contribute to Honours and graduate student supervision, and to participate in service to the School and University. Courses the candidate may be expected to teach include CMNS 110 (Introduction to Communication Studies) or 130 (Communication and Social Change); a methods course such asCMNS 260 (Empirical Communication Research Methods), CMNS 261(Documentary Research in Communication), CMNS 362 (Evaluation Methods for Applied Communication Research), CMNS 363 (Approaches to Media and Audience Research); and CMNS 230 (The Cultural Industries in Canada: Global Context). Additional courses may include CMNS 235 (News Media, The Public and Democracy), CMNS 321 (Cultural Production of Popular Music), CMNS 333 (Broadcast Policy and Regulation in the Global Context), CMNS 432 (Opinion, Propaganda and Political Communication), CMNS 433 (Issues in Communication and Cultural Policy), CMNS 435 (Information Rights in the Information Age).

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.

Simon Fraser University is committed to employment equity and welcomes applications from all qualified women and men, including visible minorities, aboriginal people, persons withdisabilities, gay men and lesbians. All appointments are subject to funding. Under the authority of the University Act, personal information that is required by the University for academicappointment competitions will be collected. For further details, see http://www.sfu.ca/vpacademic/faculty_openings/Collection_Notice.html

Applications should include a CV, a statement of research interests and a sample of published work (or a work prepared for publication), a statement of teaching interests, and a teaching dossier. Applicants should ask three referees to submit letters directly to the School. Applications and reference letters may be submitted electronically and must be received by May 16, 2012 addressed to:

Dr. Alison Beale, Director
c/o Brenda Baldwin, Director’s Secretary
School of Communication
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, BC Canada V5A 1S6
Email address: bebaldwi@sfu.ca
http://www.cmns.sfu.ca/ http://www.fcat.sfu.ca/

led by Jenni Schine and Cat Main

Sunday, April 15, 2012 | 2PM

Meeting point:  Commercial Drive and East 14th Avenue.

As we walk through familiar places, we inscribe our own stories onto the routes that we make. What do these everyday places sound like? Come explore the personal and public sounds of our neighbourhood’s domestic soundscape.

Please wear appropriate footwear and clothing for an hour-long walk.

NOTE: Space for this walk is limited to 20 participants; please email footprints@newmusic.org to reserve a spot.

The Sounds of Sustainability – led by Tyler Kinnear

Meeting point: main entrance to the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability.

Coinciding with Earth Day, this soundwalk invites participants to open their ears to “green” spaces on the campus of UBC, including the recently constructed Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability.

Please wear appropriate clothing and shoes, as the walk will take place rain or shine.

Click for Poster

SFU Communication’s own Itrath Syed and Nawal Musleh-Motut presented at the 2012 MEICON-BC Student Conference. Click the links below to view their abstracts:

The Rising: the Ballad of Mangal Pandey – A postcolonial reading (Itrath Syed)

Memory, Storytelling and Publicness: An Arendtian Approach to the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict (Nawal Musleh-Motut)

It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the fourth annual student conference sponsored by the Middle East and Islamic Consortium of British Columbia (MEICON-BC). This year we have twenty-six papers divided into eight diverse panels with students from nine different universities and colleges: Simon Fraser University, University of Victoria, University of British Columbia, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, University of Alberta, Temple University, Emory University, Florida State University, and King’s College London. This is a sign of the stature of the conference and reinforces the growing strength and breadth of the field of Middle East and Islamic Studies throughout the province.
It is a delight for our Centre to host the student conference at our Vancouver campus.

Derryl MacLean, PhD

Director, Centre for the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures
Click here to go to the Conference’s Web site

The 2012 Dallas Smythe lecture was a great success and can now be viewed online:

http://vimeo.com/38763567

Time: 9:30 AM

Diasporic Media in Multicultural Cities: A Comparative Study on Korean Media in Vancouver and Los Angeles

Committee

• Senior Supervisor: Catherine Murray (School of Communication / Gender, Sexuality, & Women’s Studies, SFU)
• Supervisor: Alison Beale (School of Communication, SFU)
• Supervisor: Mary Lynn Young (Sing Tao School of Journalism, UBC)
• Internal Examiner: Kirsten McAllister (School of Communication, SFU)
• External Examiner: Myria Georgiou (Dept. of Media and Communications, London School of Economics)
• Chair: Jan Marontate (School of Communication, SFU)

Abstract

In multicultural cities, what are the opportunities and challenges for creating interculturally inclusive media systems, as a means of enhancing multicultural citizenship and cultural literacy among all members of society? This study explores the rapidly growing, yet understudied, Korean media sector in Vancouver and Los Angeles. The passage of Korea‘s new election law in 2009, which extends voting rights to overseas Koreans, is likely to intensify the connection between the home country and one of the most monolingual and first-generation-dominant diaspora in Canada and the U.S. This dissertation advances the field of diasporic media by taking an interdisciplinary approach across the fields of multiculturalism and media. By synthesizing Will Kymlicka’s theory of multicultural citizenship and institutional integration for proper social inclusion, and Sandra Ball-Rokeach’s theory of urban communication infrastructure as a storytelling system, this study offers a critical analysis of multiculturalism as theory, policy, and practice, tracing its influence on diasporic communication infrastructure. Offering the largest media analysis yet assembled, this dissertation maps the social structure, media organizations, style of media content, and social interaction of diasporic Korean actors. By using Peter Dahlgren‘s four-fold typology of the public sphere, structural and institutional conditions are identified as well as city-specific and ethnicity-specific factors in the production and distribution of diasporic media in general, and diasporic Korean storytelling in particular. Consistent with Kymlicka’s proposition that liberal multicultural citizenship must integrate diasporic identities in the public sphere, this study concludes that the Korean media in both cities do contribute to creating a vital local public sphere. Nevertheless, regardless of the different official status of multiculturalism and regulatory contexts, Korean media have been constructed largely in the commercial sector, in which prevalent in-language marketing combined with the lack of proper policy supports results in the underutilization of Korean media as a means of enhancing cultural literacy for all members of society. Such a shortcoming requires more critical multiculturalism and communication theories and policies, in order to re-examine the existing conception of diasporic inclusion in mainstream institutions, to extend the benefits of diasporic media beyond diasporic communities, and establish an interculturally inclusive media system.

Location: WAC Bennett Library, Thesis Defence Room (2020)

Time: 1:30 PM

Online games as a medium of cultural communication: An ethnographic study of sociotechnical transformation

Committee

• Senior Supervisor: Richard Smith (School of Communication, SFU)
• Supervisor: Andrew Feenberg (School of Communication, SFU)
• Supervisor: J. Adam Holbrook (School of Communication, SFU)
• Supervisor: Roman Onufrijchuk (School of Communication, SFU)
• Internal Examiner: Ann Travers (Department of Sociology, SFU)
• External Examiner: Bonnie Nardi (School of Information and Computer Sciences, UC–Irvine)
• Chair: Stuart Poyntz (School of Communication, SFU)

Abstract

This dissertation explores the place and meaning of online games in everyday life. In South Korea, online games are a prominent part of popular culture and this medium has come under public criticism for various societal ills, such as Internet addiction and a hopeless dependence upon online games. Humanistic accounts of Information-Communication Technology (ICT) usage are still a minority body of research.  All too often, studies of engagement with technology reduce questions to their basic variables and social aspects are omitted in the name of science.

Exactly how has it come to pass, that online games have come to occupy such a prominent place in the media ecology in South Korea, and yet not been replicated in other national contexts?   The first chapter discusses addiction as it pertains to online games and suggest some scholarly support for the viewpoint that the rhetoric surrounding a biomedical interpretation of online game addiction may not be the most appropriate way to address problems that have been typically laid at the feet of online gaming (or any other new form of media).  The second chapter transitions into discussing my rationale for approaching South Korea as a fieldsite, the ethnographic methodology employed, and how this examination of online games is a particularly illustrative case of the profound role played by culture, social structure, infrastructure, and policy in audience reception. The third chapter on the rise of Korean gaming delves into the foundational aspects of Korean social history and culture that I assert, set the stage for the present new media scene in South Korea.  The fourth chapter explores what games mean in the lives of Korean youth according to the ethnographic data I have been collecting during research stays in 2004, 2008/2009 and 2010, having analyzed the emergent practices involved in online game activity. The last chapter examines the Korean games industry and the role it has to play in the upward mobility of young Koreans.  Overall, this dissertation examines the contextual factors of which a medium of communication in the sociotechnical transformation of South Korea can begin to be understood within the porous boundaries of its national circumstances.

Location: Harbour Centre Room 2270

Time: 12:00 PM

Cultural Production, Neoliberalization, and the Global Humour Market:

An Analysis of the Current Field of Canadian Stand-up Comedy

Committee

• Senior Supervisor: Zoë Druick (School of Communication, SFU)
• Supervisor: Gary McCarron (School of Communication, SFU)
• Supervisor: Richard Gruneau (School of Communication, SFU)
• Internal Examiner: Catherine Murray (School of Communication / Gender, Sexuality, & Women’s Studies, SFU)
• External Examiner: Ira Wagman (Department of Communication, Carlton University)
• Chair: Dal Yong Jin (School of Communication, SFU)

Abstract

This dissertation considers the production of Canadian stand-up comedy in relation to neoliberalization, the creative economy, and cultural labour. I synthesize theories of humour as well as contemporary applications of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of culture in order to develop an approach to the study of comedy that accounts for its relation to prevailing social/cultural/political issues as well as the structuring of agents within the field of production. I draw upon naturalistic observation conducted at Just for Laughs/Juste pour rire in 2008-2010, archival research, and media analysis in order to present a multi-disciplinary and methodologically pluralist study. I find that comedy offers an exemplary case study for understanding Canadian cultural production in relation to globalization, neoliberalization, and the creative economy. It also offers critical insights into the labour conditions of the creative workforce and the ways that actors in the field of cultural production negotiate expectations and navigate the terrain of gatekeepers. Canadian stand-up, as fleeting, popular, ambivalent, and irreconcilably complex provides an honest and nuanced illustration of Canadian cultural identity, the cultural industries, and the unique labour challenges faced by workers in the rapidly growing creative economy.

Location: WAC Bennett Library Thesis Defence Room (2020)

Time: 10:00 AM

Post-modemism: The role of user adoption of teletext, videotex & bulletin board systems in the history of the Internet

Committee

• Senior Supervisor: Richard Smith (School of Communication)
• Supervisor: Peter Anderson (School of Communication
• Examiner: J. Adam Holbrook (School of Communication)
• Chair: Roman Onufrijchuk (School of Communication)

Abstract
The enduring policy conflicts of the Information Age increasingly demand a history of technology that acknowledges the legacy of accumulated user experience across successive paradigms and generations of communication media. Interrogation of the histories of Internet, teletext, videotex and bulletin board system (BBS) technologies, reveal the 1980s as a watershed decade for the radically decentralized socialization of digital communication. While each new technical paradigm requires cultural practices to socialize the products of engineering, the prevalence of elite- and infrastructure-focused histories reflect a systematic preference for describing centralized processes of engineering. This work integrates disparate accounts of technological innovation, diffusion, adoption and translation, pointing the way toward a more flexible, user-focused, people’s history of the Internet.

Location: Harbour Centre Room 1425

Click for larger image

Presented by the Centre for Policy Studies on Communities and Culture.

Everyone Welcome!

In the field of oral history, historians work closely with the knowledge and memory of participants. The roots of oral history lie in deconstructing hierarchies of knowledge production, the decentering of archival documentation, and the desire to document the history of often marginalized groups. As the field of oral history has developed and achieved a degree of institutional and academic recognition, how has the field changed in terms of its theory and methodology? How do various disciplines understand and utilize interviewing, shared storytelling, collaborative research and oral history? What is the role of oral history in the university space, especially in a bureaucratic institution which claims to value community engagement? How is oral history situated within participant (and nonacademic) communities? Has oral history come close to achieving its goal of ‘shared authority?’

• ELISE CHENIER, DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, SFU
• ADRIENNE BURK, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY,SFU
• SOPHIE MCCALL, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, SFU
• LESLIE ROBERTSON, CENTRE FOR WOMEN’S AND GENDERSTUDIES, UBC
• CHAIR: LARA CAMPBELL, DEPARTMENT OF GENDER, SEXUALITY AND WOMEN’S STUDIES, SFU

HARBOUR CENTRE
515 WEST HASTINGS
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
FRIDAY APRIL 13
ROOM HC 16003:00-5:00 PM