Past Events
Photo Group | March 31
Theme: "In the Forest"
As always, you can send photos on other themes, and the photos can be recent (preferred!) or from your catalog.
Please send two photos to Richard Spencer on this theme (or your choice) before the meeting.
If you would like to join, please contact Richard Spencer at richard@rhspencer.ca for Zoom details
Check out the Photo Group’s new Flickr account to view photos from their last meeting.
Save the Date: Thursday, April 6, Neil leNobel will be giving a talk at UBC on “How to Take and Make a Better Photo”. We will meet for lunch before the talk. Please contact Richard Spencer at richard@rhspencer.ca for more details
Friday, 31 March 2023 - 3:00pm
Series at Green College | March 30
'Disciplines Over Time: Making, Keeping and Breaking the Boundaries of Knowledge' is a cross departmental collaboration between UBC's Green College and Emeritus College.
This series will bring together scholars who inhabit the same academic discipline or field of study, and are at different stages of their careers, to talk about how the boundaries separating their field of specialization from other fields have changed over time. The conversation will inevitably lead to a consideration of cross-disciplinary influences and interdisciplinary trends, as participants account for changes in the cognitive strength of sub-disciplines and the rise and fall of disciplinary paradigms. The intent will be to identify underlying reasons for the observed changes and, by the end of the series, to draw some general conclusions about mechanisms of (inter)disciplinary interaction and development, in the spirit—if not necessarily the style—of Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault.
Series Convener: Donald Fisher, Past-Principal, UBC Emeritus College
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY OVER TIME: DOING BIOCHEMISTRY WITHOUT A LICENCE
George Mackie, Professor Emeritus, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology;
Anna Blakney, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering;
Annie Ciernia, Assistant Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology;
Beth Davenport, PhD student, Microbiology and Immunology
This series, co-hosted with UBC Emeritus College, brings together scholars who inhabit the same academic discipline or field of study, and are at different stages of their careers, to talk about how the boundaries separating their field of specialization from other fields have shifted over time. This fifth event in the series will stage a conversation between scholars of Molecular Biology. The moderator will ask the panelists a series of questions about their perspectives on the discipline, and the discussion will be opened at an early stage to members of the audience. The goal of the event is to grasp the interdisciplinary nexus that is ‘Molecular Biology’ in Canadian and other universities and to peer into possible futures of the field.
HYBRID FORMAT
Join us in-person at Green College on the UBC Vancouver Campus or virtually. The session will be followed by a reception.
Co-Hosts
Emeritus College and Green College
Thursday, 30 March 2023 - 5:00pmSeries at Green College | March 29
Trauma/Resilience Lecture Series
Challenge, Stress, Trauma: Pathogenesis and Salutogenesis
with Dr. Peter Suedfeld
The road of life is marked by many obstacles to success and happiness, peace and quiet. The emphasis of many experts in the helping professions is that these obstacles lead to psychological damage ranging from mild frustration to a shattered life. The presentation will assess these beliefs and propose a different perspective: how the threats are overcome, and how they may even be sources of psychological strength and growth.
Peter Suedfeld survived the Nazi Holocaust in Hungary. After emigration in 1948, he was educated in the U.S. (BA, Queens College, City University of New York, MA and PhD, Princeton). He is a veteran of the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force Reserve and has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Canada. Prior to coming to UBC as Head of the Department of Psychology in 1972, he taught at the University of Illinois and Rutgers. His research deals primarily with adaptation and resilience during and after challenging, dangerous, and/or extreme environments and experiences. These have included restricted environmental stimulation, life and work in the two polar regions and space, high-level political and military decision-making and information processing under stress, and experiences in environmental disasters, solitary confinement, persecution, and genocide. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and has received various Canadian, American, and international awards for his research. In 2019, he was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada.
HYBRID FORMAT
Join us in-person at Green College on the UBC Vancouver Campus or virtually. The session will be followed by a reception.
Co-Hosts
Emeritus College and Green College
Wednesday, 29 March 2023 - 5:00pm
Vancouver Institute Lecture | March 25
Protecting Humankind’s Common Cultural Heritage: The Problem of Cultural Appropriation
Dr. Cécile Fabre, Senior Research Fellow in Politics, All Souls College, Professor of Political Philosophy, Oxford University
Dr. Fabre is a political philosopher whose research interests include theories of distributive and reparative justice, the philosophy of democracy, and the moral and political philosophy of cultural heritage. A prolific scholar, her most recent publications include Spying Through a Glass Darkly: The Ethics of Espionage and Counter-Intelligence (2022), Economic Statecraft: Human Rights, Sanctions, and Conditionality (2018), preceded by Cosmopolitan Peace (2016), The Morality of Defensive War, co-edited with Seth Lazar (2014), and Cosmopolitan War (2012). Her works have been published in journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, International Affairs, and the Journal of Political Philosophy. Dr. Fabre is a Fellow of the British Academy. She has also taught at the London School of Economics and the University of Edinburgh.
Saturday, 25 March 2023 - 8:15pm
General Meeting | March 22
Photo credits: Tereska, courtesy of David Seymour-Chim Estate/Magnum Photos
My Uncle, the Legendary Photographer David Seymour-Chim (1911-1956)
Ben Shneiderman, Adjunct Professor, Computer Science, UBC
Dawid Szymin was born in Warsaw to respected publisher Benjamin Szymin, whose home was a center for the Yiddish and Jewish culture of that time. He went to Paris in 1932 to study at the Sorbonne, but took up photography to report on the lively intellectual communities and the political activism of the Front Populaire. Then he became world famous for his coverage of the Spanish Civil War. He served in the US Army during World War II, taking the name David Seymour (see website), and then picked up his camera to photograph the post-war rebuilding efforts and the plight of the orphans of war for UNESCO.
He founded the celebrated Magnum Photos collaborative in 1947, with his close friends Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and George Rodger. Chim's capacity to connect with his subjects gave him the opportunity to photograph Hollywood stars like Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, and Kirk Douglas. Chim's work appeared regularly in LIFE Magazine, but his life was tragically cut short when he was killed while covering the 1956 Suez Crisis for Newsweek Magazine.
This talk will show his work and his impact, which continues to grow, most recently by the deeply researched and poetically written biography by Carole Naggar, Searching for the Light and the accompanying video.
SCHEDULE:
2:00pm Business meeting
2:15pm Talk by Ben Shneiderman
3:00pm Q&A
Vancouver Institute Lecture | March 18
The Defense of Cultural Space
Mr. Brendan de Caires, Executive Director, PEN Canada
As head of PEN Canada for over a decade, Mr. de Caires defends freedom of expression, and helps exiled writers to establish in Canada. In this capacity Mr. de Caires has edited and co-authored country studies of Mexico, Honduras, India and Guatemala. He is the author of The Winter of a Hundred Books (2010), and A Country Worth Living In (2010). After writing Honduras: Journalism in the Shadow of Impunity (2013), he joined a PEN delegation to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for a special session on impunity in Honduras. He has been a contributor to the Literary Review of Canada and book reviewer for publications in Canada, the United States and the Caribbean.
Saturday, 18 March 2023 - 8:15pm