Focusing on the upcoming 2014 World Cup in Brazil, this research project aims to contribute to theoretical and empirical understandings of the intersections between major sporting events, moral panics and anti-prostitution/trafficking campaigns.  While the scholarly literature on this issue provides substantial evidence of the use of anti-trafficking campaigns to promote the abolition of prostitution, little is known of the ways in which these types of campaigns unfold locally through specific cultural contexts.  This project seeks to address this gap through an ethnographic analysis of the campaigns against sex tourism during the World Cup 2014 in Brazil, with a focus on the city of Natal, one of the twelve host cities.  Natal offers a unique case in point due to both its long history of anti-sex tourism campaigns and the processes of gentrification expressed through these campaigns.  The proposed investigation thus seek to analyse whether the campaigns linked to the 2014 World Cup might further stigmatize, criminalize and spatially marginalize the women engaging in practices of sex tourism.

Christine Duff (Department of French): Lire le zombi: Haïti et au-delà/ Reading the Zombie: Haiti and Beyond

The last few years have seen a resurgence of popular interest in the zombie in North America: witness the advent of Zombie Walks and the use of the zombie metaphor in the Occupy Movement.  There have been international conferences devoted to the subject, two recently taking place in Montreal: Autopsie du zombi in May 2012, and Invasion Montréal: colloque international sur le zombi in July of the same year.  In short, the undead are experiencing a renaissance.  While the zombie is a useful metaphor in contemporary debates regarding exploitation and oppression, its contemporary revival obscures its origins, along with much of its signifying potential.  Literature represents one of the richest arenas in which this signifying potential plays out.  In literary studies, however, work on the zombie has focused exclusively on Haitian literary production, extending only recently to writings of the Haitian diaspora.

The proposed project seeks to: 1) establish the extent to which the motif of zombification is present in the literatures of the Americas (in the hemispheric sense of the term); and 2) determine overarching tendencies in its use and explore their implications.  The trope of zombification undergirds a larger number of literary works than is currently acknowledged.  If, as Kaiama Glover maintains in her 2005 article on Haitian literature, the zombie is a particularly rich site of metaphorical potential and is “highly exploitable as a literary device”, it is my assertion that the full and myriad implications of the zombie and zombification as literary devices remain to be identified and articulated, especially with regard to literatures outside of Haiti.

Michel Hogue (Department of History): Empire of Possibilities: Isaac Cowie and the Making of the Prairie West

In putting his recollections to paper, former fur trader Isaac Cowie sought to preserve in print some of his experiences during a critical period in the Prairie West’s history.  “These papers may prove interesting,” Cowie suggested, “to anyone connected with the ‘days of auld lang syne’ in Western Canada, and perhaps to a few of the numerous newcomers who have come to build an empire of infinite possibilities therein.”  Born in the Shetland Islands, Cowie entered the Hudson’s Bay Company’s (HBC) service at Fort Qu’Appelle in 1867 at a critical moment in both the history of the fur trade and that of the Prairie West.  He was an active participant in the final days of the Plains fur trade and in the promotion of the economic and social order that displaced it.  When success in his business ventures eluded him, Cowie found a career as an advocate for “pioneers” seeking government recognition and as an amateur ethnographer and historian preserving and promoting aspects of the western past, particularly the exploits of its early settlers.  Cowie’s “empire of possibilities” evoked the enduring and cherished myth of the orderly and peaceful nature of the Canadian West’s settlement and embodied his own personal hopes and dreams.  It overlooked, however, the people for whom “settlement” meant dispossession or marginalization, not opportunity.  By narrating Cowie’s own version of his life alongside stories of the Metis and First Nations with whom he lived, worked, and traded, whose land he bought and sold, and whose histories and material culture he collected, this project will re-contextualize Cowie’s narrative of the West and interweave the stories of “pioneers” with those of Indigenous peoples.  In so doing, it will open a new window on the processes of dispossession and repossession that made the Prairie West.

Jody Mason (Department of English Language and Literature): Workers, Readers, Citizens: Canada’s Frontier College, 1899-1950

This project will study the vast archive of Canada’s most significant adult literacy initiative, Frontier College.  The College, founded as the Canadian Reading Camp Association in 1899 by Protestant minister Alfred Fitzpatrick, developed a labourer-teacher model that enabled its work among immigrant labourers in Canada’s resource frontier.  Frontier College is an organization with roots in the social gospel movement and, by the interwar period, it was actively involved in discouraging political radicalism in work camps through its promotion of democratic citizenship and naturalization.

While much is known about the institutional history of Frontier College, I aim to use the organization’s archive at Library and Archives Canada to learn more about the workers as learners, as readers, and as consumers of culture in the first half of the twentieth century.  This research has several main objectives: it will study, synthesize, and analyze a large body of largely unstudied archival material, while enriching nascent work on the history of reading in Canada and fostering important interdisciplinary links among literary and cultural studies, labour history, book history and print culture studies, and the study of immigration and ethnicity.

Mohammed Rustom (College of the Humanities): The Philosophical Mysticism of ‘Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani (d. 1131)

Rustom’s first book on the famous Persian philosopher Mulla Sadra (d. 1640) has afforded him with the ability to understand how a number of key figures’ ideas came together in Sadra’s own synthetic project, the most prominent example being the work of the controversial Andalusian Sufi Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240) and the immediate generations of his followers (somewhat misleadingly referred to as the “school of Ibn ‘Arabi”).  Yet what can be said about the phase immediately before Ibn ‘Arabi, that is, the twelfth century?  We admittedly have a great deal of information concerning the early development of Islamic theology and philosophy from the eighth century to the beginning of the twelfth century.  But when we come to the twelfth century proper, many important questions remain unanswered.

In other words, the one area of inquiry which has largely been neglected is the phase between the famous Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1111) and Ibn ‘Arabi.  This period is particularly problematic owing to its indebtedness to the earlier Islamic philosophical tradition, particularly the work Avicenna (d. 1037).  Rustom’s background in Islamic theology and philosophy in general and the writings of Avicenna and al-Ghazali in particular, coupled with his work in Islamic thought from Ibn ‘Arabi onwards, has positioned him well in terms of grappling with the complexity of the twelfth century of Islamic thought, which, he argues, bears witness to a very unique shift in Islamic intellectual history.

Although there are a number of key authors who belong to the era in question, Rustom maintains that one of the most important is the great martyr ‘Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani (d. 1131).  This figure is famous for having been the student of Ahmad Ghazali (d. 1126) (the brother of the aforementioned al-Ghazali), and for having been put to death by the Seljuq government, ostensibly on charges of “heresy.”  Yet, to date, there is not a single, thorough presentation of ‘Ayn al-Qudat’s thought and influence.  Rustom’s project seeks to fill this lacuna by demonstrating ‘Ayn al-Qudat’s pivotal role in the development of the Persian poetic tradition on the one hand, and the Islamic intellectual tradition on the other.

Paul Mkandawire (Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies – Human Rights): Indigenous Knowledge Transfer and Adaptation to Climate Change Among Orphans in Malawi 

This research project aims at examining whether pathways for transmitting traditional ecological knowledge between the elderly and the youth are dissolving under the weight of heavy adult mortality in Malawi in a context where more than 1.3 million children live without one or both biological parents due to HIV/AIDS. While contributing the least amount of greenhouse gases, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) will experience the vilest impacts of global warming in the foreseeable future.  Unfortunately, the region also doubles as home to the overwhelming majority of the world’s orphaned and vulnerable children. The prime focus accorded to vulnerable groups in the global agenda on combating the negative effects of global warming means that future efforts aimed at building social resilience in communities in SSA cannot proceed without considering the unique needs of this expanding group of youth coming of age without natal parents.

While orphans’ vulnerabilities in other domains such as healthcare, schooling, discrimination, stigma, and HIV/AIDS have largely been documented, not much is known as to whether this cohort is similarly disadvantaged with regard to access to indigenous ecological knowledge vital for mitigating and adapting to climate change.  This study draws upon an ecosystem approach and employs qualitative approaches to explore how heavy adult mortality being triggered by the AIDS epidemic in Malawi is affecting the transfer of indigenous climatic knowledge between elders and youth. Though often bypassed in scientific discourse, indigenous knowledge, rooted in African smallholder farming systems and longstanding familiarity with local climatological events, can significantly improve the ability of marginalized populations to adapt to climate change.

Julie Murray (Department of English Language and Literature): British Women Writers and the Forms of Life, 1790-1840

In this project, Murray argues that the life-writing produced in the early decades of the nineteenth century is intimately linked to the politicization of “bare life” that writers such as Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, and before them, Edmund Burke, argue is a result of the discourse of the “rights of man.”  The link is a sure sign of the chilling effect that a universalizing concept of rights has on life understood as bios.  Murray’s hypothesis is that writers’ desire to clothe a newly politicized (or, as Agamben puts it, formerly “creaturely”) “bare” or “naked” life motivates a range of experiments in life-writing in the early nineteenth century.  The texts that she examines replay a tension, however, already internal to 1790s political debates about the relationship between chivalry and rights, discussions of which are saturated with metaphors of the “naked” and the “clothed.”  Ultimately, this project examines the relationship between the biographical and the biopolitical at the turn of the nineteenth century, and takes seriously the “life” in life-writing in order to explore how literature is intimately bound up with the discursive terrain of life in this period and beyond.

David Wood (School of Linguistics and Language Studies): An Idiodynamic Investigation of the Relationship between Willingness to Communicate and Speech Fluency in a Second Language

Second language (L2) speech fluency has typically been identified as a set of observable temporal features of speech, but has not been analyzed in relation to learner factors in performance such as willingness to communicate (WTC), which can be defined as readiness to engage in communication at a specific time and with specific interlocutors.  With the exception of exploratory case study work by Wood (2012), focusing on general links between overall WTC and fluency gain over time, no researchers have examined  the relationship between WTC and L2 fluency.  A clearer, evidence-based perspective on the link between WTC and fluency can have significant implications for classroom teaching and assessment. Among other benefits, it can help in determining whether dysfluency influences WTC, and whether lowered WTC can lead to dysfluency, or whether the relationship between WTC and fluency development is more complex than that.

The proposed study is an exploratory, case-study attempt at answering the question of what the interrelationship is between L2 speech fluency and WTC. It presents an examination of the influence of WTC on fluency in monologic speech of for Chinese learners of English L2, with a non-Chinese interlocutor, in intensive English as a foreign language (EFL). Monologic narrative speech samples from the Chinese EFL learners in Canada will be analyzed for markers of fluency and interpreted in light of the learners’ WTC profiles and retrospective self-analysis of WTC in stimulated recall.  The results can potentially illuminate the relationship between dysfluency and WTC, particularly the directionality of the relationship, whether fluency breakdowns lead to lowered WTC or vice versa. This can serve to establish a research methodology foundation for a larger-scale study in future, focusing on larger groups of learners in several different learning contexts, such as EFL abroad, and part-time and full-time EFL intensive programs in their own country.

Dean Osborne receiving his medals at the Italian Embassy.

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and Professor of Art History and Humanities, John Osborne has been invested as a Cavaliere of the Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana by the Italian Ambassador for his exceptional research contributions to the study of Italian medieval material culture.

Dean Osborne’s award of Cavaliere of the Ordine al Merito, which roughly translates to “Knight of the Order  of  Merit of Italy,” is among that country’s  most prestigious honours – a nomination akin to being knighted by the Queen in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth.

“I am very deeply honoured,” said Osborne. “Italy has played a huge role in my life since I first discovered it at age 18, on a Canadian university course held in Venice.”

Evidently, Osborne’s first trip to Italy had a profound impact on him. After returning from his trip to Venice in 1970, he began his academic and professional journey by switching his B.A. major at Carleton to Art History. To this day, and to the great benefit of FASS students, Osborne remains a champion of studying abroad.

“That (summer in Venice) is one of the reasons why I now encourage Carleton programs to offer courses taught elsewhere in the spring session. Students return from such experiences with greater energy and greater focus. These are indeed life-changing moments.”

After graduating from Carleton, Osborne attended the University of Toronto where he completed an interdisciplinary Master’s degree in Medieval Studies. He followed this with a doctoral thesis at the University of London (Courtauld Institute of Art).

Dean Osborne has focused his research on the art and archaeology of Italy between the sixth and twelfth centuries, with a particular emphasis on the cities of Venice and Rome. His publications cover such diverse topics as the Roman catacombs, the topography of medieval Rome, saints’ cults, the fragmentary mural paintings from excavated churches such as San Clemente and S. Maria Antiqua, Venetian mosaics and sculpture, and the seventeenth-century antiquarian drawings of medieval monuments now preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor. Osborne has also published his work on the medieval understanding and use of Rome’s heritage of ancient buildings and statuary, as well as cultural ties between Italy and Byzantium.

Dean Osborne at the ceremony of conferral of his decoration of Knight of the Order to the Merit of the Republic of Italy. Seen here with Ambassador Gian Lorenzo Cornado.

Since graduating from Carleton in 1973, Dean Osborne has spent part of every year in Rome. In 2006, the British School – where his research is based – appointed him as a Honourary Fellow. When asked for his sentiments on his exceptional achievement, Osborne said he preferred to let the words of the great English poet Robert Browning speak for him:

“Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, ‘Italy’.
Such lovers old are I and she,
So it always was, so shall ever be.”

Fisher and McFarland pose in front of the Sphinx

If you have had any association with Carleton University over the past several years, it’s very likely that you have heard the phrase “Anything But Textbook.”

The slogan is meant to illustrate Carleton’s commitment to delivering a post-secondary education that breaches the confines of lecture halls and classrooms.  Professor in the College of the Humanities, Greg Fisher, believes resolutely in this approach to teaching, so whenever it is possible he does his best to facilitate Anything But Textbook experiences for his students.

A recent example of this was the role Fisher played in enabling fourth year undergraduate student, Kathleen McFarland to partake in an academic trip to Egypt, an experience that epitomized the Anything But Textbook mantra.

Fisher was scheduled to attend a conference in Egypt organized by the Orient-Institute Beirut, and saw it as excellent opportunity to permit McFarland a chance to experience her area of study first-hand.

A minor in History (majoring in Journalism), McFarland is currently in the process of completing her Honours project under Fisher’s supervision.  Her research looks at state/tribe relationships in the late Roman Empire and though her focus is Western empires, and this conference centered on Eastern situations, Fisher abides by the maxim that in one way or another, everything is connected.  In this case, he is certainly correct.  It is well known that many similarities existed in how Romans managed both Eastern and Western tribes.  Fisher was also aware that McFarland had been tactfully considering  a career in academia, and felt it would be beneficial for her to see how an academic conference functions.

“Kathleen is an engaged student who is well motivated and ambitious.  I think it’s crucial for students like her to learn outside of the classroom environment as often as possible,” said Fisher.

McFarland has always possessed an innate interest in human history and past civilizations, so visiting Egypt ranked very high on her to do list.

“I have been captivated by Egypt since I was a little girl – seeing the pyramids was something I’d dreamt of since I first developed the reading skills to devour those Magic Tree House history books.  The whole city was intoxicating; it floods all of your senses. In so many ways, it was an incredible learning experience.”

While in in the Land of the Pharoahs, McFarland and Fisher visited as many sites as possible and partook in a diverse range of learning activities.  They crawled through the Great Pyramid of Khufu and visited the Sphinx.  McFarland received a lesson on Islam in one of Cairo’s oldest Mosques, saw, in person, King Tut’s death mask and spoke to the many protestors in Tahrir Square about Egypt’s current juncture of fragile transition.

McFarland and the Pyramids

While touring Islamic Cairo on their last day in Egypt, McFarland and Fisher visited three separate mosques.  As they stepped inside the third mosque, the call to prayer rang out across the city.  At this moment, McFarland was very cognizant of the fact that she was truly experiencing a culture she had learnt so much about, and was so interested in, while living on the other side of the planet.

Mosque of Ibn Tulun

Though all these were stunning, eye-opening experiences for McFarland, what resonated most was being immersed in the potent state of a country in social flux.  Although she had been paying close attention to the events in Egypt through the news back home in Canada, McFarland quickly discerned that only so much can be understood when observing something dramatic from afar.

McFarland in Tahrir Square with protestors

“There is so much more to it than what fits in that three-minute news segment.  Egypt has held my fascination for so long. For me, to stand in this place and see some of the earliest roots of civilization, it was the realization of a personal dream. And then to have the amazing opportunity to stand with these people, most of whom were my peers, my generation, and seeing them fight for democracy; it was a remarkable juxtaposition of ancient civilization with modern civilization, still undergoing change. I had seen the Sphinx, the pyramids, King Tut’s artefacts; now, standing in Tahrir Square as people protested for their rights, it really demonstrated to me where our world has been and how it is changing. It makes you aware of civilization’s progress, and I was quite conscious of the fact that I was standing at an important point on that continuum. What will this place be like 10, 100, 1,000 years from now? Will there still be fighting for democracy? What will Canada be like? Civilization isn’t fixed; it is a very moving thing.”

Protestors in Tahrir Square

Egypt’s fight for democracy is something that affects the entire world, but standing with the people of Cairo, whose lives are impinged in every aspect by this upheaval, has given McFarland a more authentic global understanding.

“I think it gave me a much deeper appreciation for and better insight into a momentous event in Middle Eastern history and politics,” explains McFarland. “It was an unforgettable experience to be able to stand in the middle of it and understand everything it represented, especially for the Egyptian people.”

Anti-Morsi Posters in Tahrir Square

Submerging yourself within an entirely different context promises to cause a moment of contemplative introspection.  Yes, McFarland left Egypt with a finer understanding of the world; but she also left with many unanswered questions.

“There was much about Cairo that was difficult.  You do see some very raw scenes of poverty and squalor.  You need a strong stomach, and to accept that you can’t help them all.  But in a certain sense, it did motivate me to help in a longer-term way.  It has redirected my career interests in that way, as well as my own personal incentive to help in a non-professional context – for example, I am looking into volunteer initiatives in developing countries for next year before graduate school.  Specifically I would hope to use my degree to help with independent media initiatives, or to teach English.”

Since leaving Egypt, Mcfarland has begun work as a communications intern with CARE Canada, a non-profit organization who have been working against poverty in Egypt since 1954.

University is all about asking broad questions and self-discovery.  Fisher and McFarland’s adventures in Egypt emphatically addressed both of these crucial components of academic life.  For these reasons alone (and many others), McFarland would recommend students to seize these types of opportunities while completing their post-secondary education.

“Well, as Carleton likes to say, the experience was certainly Anything But Textbook. Opportunities like these provide a whole other dimension to academic studies; it is a chance to see the real-world applications of what you are learning. University is more than just writing papers and exams; it is also about personal, interpersonal and professional development, and I think that was a large incentive for me doing this trip. It is just a different learning experience than one inside a classroom. And really, quite honestly, it was just so much fun – which is always important, too!”

McFarland at the Mosque of Ibn Tulun

You are invited to a free public lecture by one of the world’s foremost Pali scholars.  In this lecture, Dr. Steven Collins places Buddhist ‘meditation’ in the larger context of spiritual practices and technologies of the self.  He begins by noting that “the denial that there is an eternal, unchanging self does not invalidate ordinary language talk about self; ‘practices of the self’ refers to an area of mental/physical focus, not to an item of metaphysics”

Steven Collins is the Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.  He specializes in he social and cultural history of Buddhism in premodern and modern South and Southeast Asia, and in Pali language and literature.  Among numerous other works in the field of Pali Buddhist Studies, Prof. Collins is the author of Selfless Persons: imagery and thought in Theravada Buddhism, Cambridge University Press, 1982, and Nirvana: concept, imagery, narrative. Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Friday April 19, 2:00 p.m. 303 Paterson Hall. Carleton University

Sponsored by the Edgar and Dorothy Davidson Fund in Religious Studies

Professor and Director in the College of the Humanities, Farhang Rajaee, has released a new book on the legacy of Kenneth W. Thompson as an international relation theorist.

Titled Kenneth W. Thompson, the Prophet of Norms – Thought and Practice, the book chronicles Thompson’s theories, thoughts and research.

Abstract

Kenneth W. Thompson’s legacy as an international relation theorist has been eclipsed by the voluminous works and multiplicity of topics he has authored, dealt with, edited, and published in more than half a century of public career in academia, national and international forums, and cultural institutions.

His work entitled Masters of International Thought (1980) includes the treatment of the thought of a host of modern international theorists such as Herbert Butterfield (1900-1979), Hans J. Morgenthau (1904-1980), Raymond Aron (1905-1983) and others. A major omission in that book is the name “Kenneth W. Thompson.”

Rajaee has rectified that omission in Kenneth W. Thompson, the Prophet of Norms . A theme that runs throughout the book is Thompson’s International Relations Theory and his contribution to the discipline’s development. Thompson’s career reveals that he has done this in three different ways; as an educator, as a facilitator of International Relations, scholarship and practice and more importantly as a theorist of norms. These three broad areas have shaped the organization of the present work.

Join The College of the Humanities for a multimedia lecture by Tibetologist Geoffrey Samuel on the various meanings and uses of Tibetan ritual dance.

Geoffrey Samuel is a Professor in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University, Director of the Body, Health and Religion (BAHAR) Research Group, and an Honorary Associate of the Department of Indian Sub-Continental Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. His recent publications include The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, 2008 and Introducing Tibetan Buddhism. Routledge, 2012. Recent research projects include a study of Tibetan yogic health practices and a project on contemporary versions of Tibetan ritual dance in Bhutan.

Wednesday, January 30, 7:30 p.m.
303 Paterson Hall
Reception to follow

In the summer of 2011, fourth year Greek and Roman Studies student, Shelley Hartman, participated in a historic archeological dig on Baffin Island.  Though the research conducted on this dig was tremendously important, it was an adventure that very few people would have been brave enough to even consider.

On a team led by Patricia Sutherland, adjunct professor of archeology at Memorial University, Hartman partook in the 2011 Arctic Field Season excavation in search of Viking artifacts at two sites on the south shore of Baffin Island.

Despite the callous nature of digging on such a remote location –no heat, little means to bathe, freeze dried food, 24 hour sunlight and a real threat of polar bear attack, Hartman couldn’t decline when Sutherland approached her with an offer to join her on this 5 week excursion.

“It was the most dangerous and outrageous offer I’d ever received,” explains the 60 year old Hartman.  “So naturally, I said yes!”

Accompanied by two PhD level archeologists, one master’s student, two Inuit archeological technicians and one Inuit bear monitor, Hartman and the team uncovered many artifacts that tell an untold tale of the Norse people, and their relationship with the land, and other populations.

To learn more about Hartman’s adventure and the research of Dr. Sutherland and her team, tune into CBC’s The Nature of Things at on Thursday, November 22^nd at 8:00pm, to watch The Norse: An Arctic Mystery, written and directed by another Carleton alumnus, Andrew Gregg.

This episode of The Nature of Things will feature Hartman and the team’s discoveries, which are also prominently covered in National Geographic (Hartman is in the foreground of the article’s first image).

Read more about Hartman’s dig in this article.

Papyrus fragment. Copyright Norman Cluley

Carleton University’s Religion Program (College of the Humanities) is pleased to announce the 2012 edition of the Edgar and Dorothy Davidson Lecture.  This year’s Davidson Lecture features Hollis Professor of Divinity, at the Harvard Divinity School, Dr. Karen L. King.

King’s appearance at Carleton is a timely one.  In recent weeks, she has been thrust to the center of a fervent international discussion over a piece of papyrus which she was the first to identify.   The papyrus is written in fourth-century Coptic and contains the words “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife…’”

Though King insists that the papyrus does not prove that Jesus was married, she does draw attention to the fact that Jesus’ marital status was a point of debate a mere approximate century after his death.

Predictably, the implication that the historical figure of Jesus Christ may have been married has generated a great deal of attention.

The finding was featured on page A1 of the September 19, 2012 edition of the New York Times under the headline “A Faded Piece of Papyrus Refers to Jesus’ Wife.”

King made the fragment of papyrus public on September 18th, 2012 at the International Congress of Coptic Studies.  The provenance of the finding is unknown, and its owner has asked to remain anonymous.

The mysterious origin of the papyrus has added to a debate that is already partly focused on authenticity.  The heart of the discussion lies in trying to decode what this finding could mean for Christianity and the role of women within the religion.

King will tackle these issues and more in her talk entitled “Controversies over Sexuality and Marriage among Early Christians:  What a New Papyrus Fragment Can (or Can’t) Tell Us.”

The 2012 Edgar and Dorothy Davidson Lecture featuring Karen L. King will be held on October 25th at 7:30pm, in Robertson Hall’s Senate Room.

Karen L. King

Karen L. King was appointed to the Divinity School in 1998 and from 2003 to 2009 served as the Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History. In October 2009, she became the first woman appointed as the Hollis Professor of Divinity, the oldest endowed chair in the United States (1721). Trained in comparative religions and historical studies, she pursues teaching and research specialties in the history of Christianity. Her books include The Secret Revelation of John; The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle; What Is Gnosticism?; Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity (with Elaine Pagels); and Revelation of the Unknowable God. Other publications include Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism (ed.) and Women and Goddess Traditions in Antiquity and Today (ed.). Her particular theoretical interests are in discourses of normativity (orthodoxy and heresy), gender studies, and religion and violence. She has received research grants and awards for excellence in teaching and research; among them are grants from the Luce Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst, and the Graves Foundation. King is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, the International Association for Coptic Studies, and Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.

More Information on the 2012 Davidson Lecture

Timotheos – Arrakis (Album cover)

Frank Herbert’s classic 1965 science fiction novel Dune has been the inspiration behind a seemingly infinite amount of media and art.  The Dune series has been adapted to television, theatre and was released as a hugely popular film in 1985.  It has inspired multiple comic book series, spinoff novels, board games, card games and video games.  Akin to series like George Lucas’s Star Wars and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Dune has cemented itself as one of the great fictional universes ever created.  Dune is one of only a handful of science fiction imaginings that have made an identifiable cultural dent that has subsequently changed the social perspective of millions of fans worldwide for the past half century.

Instructor in the College of the Humanities, Tim Pettipiece is one of those fans.  In addition to his work teaching and researching in the Classics and Religion, Pettipiece is also a talented musician with a number of album releases under his belt.  As a creator of ambient music, Pettipiece goes by the handle Timotheos, a nod to his love of ancient Greek culture.  His latest release is a sonic landscape meant to represent evocative aspects of the Dune series.  He attributes much of his interest in Dune to the intense correlation between the ‘Duniverse’ and his focus as an academic.

“I was surprised how much attention is paid to religious themes in the series, even though its attitude to religion is quite ambivalent,” explains Pettipiece.  “There’s a strong tension in the work between viewing religion as a cynical means of control while at the same time a means of human progress. This is the same tension one faces when studying religious traditions in an academic setting.”

Pettipiece grew up in southern Ontario just cross the river from Detroit.   Raised on classic rock, he got his first guitar at age thirteen.  During his budding teenage years he began his career as a performer, playing in various original and cover bands.  It was in high school that he realized his love for ambient and experimental music and eventually began recording.  This led to Pettipiece’s first release: a four track cassette entitled Astronomy.

As can be said for many young artists, as Pettipiece grew older, his music took a back seat to his education and professional life.  While pursuing a degree in Classical Languages and an MA and PhD in Religious Studies, he ultimately gave up playing music entirely.  It wasn’t until his graduation, when his wife surprised him with a new electrical guitar, that his passion for playing live music was re-ignited.

Five years on and countless live performances later, a major shift came in his music playing career when one of his Humanities students recorded a four song demo album as a creative project for one of his courses.  The student’s project was a four song exploration of the life of Simeon Stylites, an early Christian monk who famously lived on top of a pillar for much of his life.  This work inspired Pettipiece both sonically and thematically.

The project illuminated the world of ‘Do it Yourself’ digital recording to Pettipiece, and consequently, he has since recorded two full length album’s of ambient music, and two EP’s.

Tim Pettipiece

His first full-length project was called Hierosolyma: a Musical Meditation on Jerusalem (2010), and was inspired by a course on the origins of western religions which he taught at Carleton in the College of Humanities.

His most recent project is of course his newly released musical tribute to the Dune series.   As a lifelong aesthete of classic science fiction (particularly the work of Philip K. Dick), reading the Dune series was a pursuit Pettipiece had meaning to partake in for a number of years.  It was over the months of 2010-2011 that he was finally able to read the iconic series.  He describes this venture as one of the most profound reading experiences of his life.

“I was starting a new recording project while I was about midway through reading the series and was so totally immersed in the experience that it came through the creative process.”

Pettipiece has a wide range of influences from early music to Brian Eno, but throughout the course of recording Arrakis, Peter Gabriel’s Passion soundtrack to Martin Scorsese’s, The Last Temptation of Christ, Tangerine Dream’s Rubycon as well as some post-rock and neoclassical recordings played central roles of inspiration for his album.

After several months of recording and numerous technical setbacks, Arrakis: Music Inspired by Frank Herbert’s Dune, has just been released as a digital download.

Sample/Buy Here

Timotheos Site

Pettipiece Carleton Profile