Memory and Trauma Through History and Culture II panel announced on the theme of pandemics

We are pleased to announce, in collaboration with the Department of Humanities and Institute for the Humanities, "Memory and Trauma Through History and Culture II", an upcoming panel scheduled for Friday, November 20th. 

This panel brings together speakers from different disciplines who will offer critical reflections on the legacies of past pandemics and challenges in the present.

When:
Friday, November 20, 2020 at 2:30 PM PST

Where:
Online

How:
This event is free and open to the public. Register through Eventbrite. On the day of the event, you will have access to the webinar through Eventbrite. Contact hscomm@sfu.ca if you have any questions or concerns about your registration.

Event schedule

Friday, November 20th: 2:30 - 5:00 PM PST

Pandemics in the So-Called New World

Deanna Reder - Department of Indigenous Studies and the Department of English, Simon Fraser University

Deanna Reder (Cree-Métis) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies and the Department of English at Simon Fraser University. She is the current Chair of Indigenous Studies (2017-2020), and the past Director of the Masters of Arts for Teachers of English (MATE) program (2016-18). She teaches courses in Indigenous popular fiction and Canadian Indigenous literatures, especially autobiography. She is Principal Investigator, in partnership with co-applicants Dr. Margery Fee and Cherokee scholar Dr. Daniel Heath Justice of the University of British Columbia, on a five-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funded project for 2015-2020 called "The People and the Text: Indigenous Writing in Northern North America up to 1992." See www.thepeopleandthetext.ca. She is a founding member of the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA) and served on the ILSA council from 2015-2018 (see indigenousliterarystudies.org); currently she is co-chair, with Dr. Sam McKegney from Queen’s University, of the Indigenous Voices Awards. (see indigenousvoicesawards.org) She also is the Series Editor for the Indigenous Studies Series at Wilfrid Laurier University Press. In Fall 2018 she was inducted into the College of New Scholars, Artist, & Scientists in the Royal Society of Canada.

Anarchic, Leaderless, and Boundless: On the Democratic Characteristics of the Virus

Andreas Avgousti - SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies, Simon Fraser University

Dr. Andreas Avgousti studied political science at Columbia University, where he received his PhD in 2015 and holds a BSc (First Class) and an MSc (Merit) from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Portland State University and has previously held the post of Lecturer in Core Curriculum at Columbia University. During his time at the Centre, Dr. Avgousti will finalize his book manuscript, entitled Recovering Reputation: Plato and Demotic Power for Oxford University Press. He has also drafted a research article on the Athenian orator Isocrates entitled Counsels to the Athenian Democracy: On Isocrates’ Cyprian Orations and developed his next book-length project tentatively entitled A Democratic Good from Late Antiquity: Persuasion in John Chrysostom.

What's Writing Got to do with the Pandemic: The Chinese Experience

Shuyu Kong - Humanities Department, Simon Fraser University

Trained in literary and cultural studies, Dr. Kong has taught Asian content courses in the Department of Humanities and the Global Asia Program (formerly Asia-Canada Program) since 2008, and she is currently the co-director of the David Lam Center for International Communication. Shuyu also works on bilingual writing and travel-studies as a visiting scholar to universities in Asia, Europe and Australia. She is the author of Consuming Literature: Best Sellers and the Commercialization of Literary Production in Contemporary China (2005), Popular Media, Social Emotion and Public Discourse in Contemporary China (2014) and 故事照亮旅程（Stories Illuminating the Journey）北京：三联书店 (2020), as well as book chapters and articles on Chinese literature, art, and culture.

Pandemic: The Body as Illness in Asceticism

Sergio Basso - SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies, Simon Fraser University

Sergio Basso is this year’s Hellenisms Past and Present, Local and Global Postdoctoral Fellow at the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies. Over the past fifteen years, he has honed his communication strategies, developing crossmedia platforms for the web, broadcasting radio programs and shooting documentaries. He is a member of the Italian Association of Byzantine Studies; the International Association of Manichaean Studies; the European Academy of Religion; the Multiculturalism, Race & Ethnicity in Classics Consortium (MRECC); and the Centro di Ricerca sulle Minoranze (CERM) Università degli Studi dell’Insubria. Sarita, a musical written and directed by Dr. Basso which recently premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival, shares the odyssey of a thirteen-year-old refugee and her family, who are forced to overcome government suppression, displacement and a silent international community, in their pursuit to find a better future