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The Nicene Creed and the Question of the Filioque in Conversations Between Lutherans and Orthodox Christians in North America: 1993–2003
No full textNo. 45: Internal Migration, Climate Adaptation, and Food System Resilience in Namibia
No full textAs one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most arid countries, Namibia serves as a crucial example for studying the interactions between climate vulnerability, migration, and food systems. This study investigates how internal migration flows to Windhoek and northern towns (Oshakati, Ongwediva, Ondangwa) transform urban food networks while creating new patterns of risk and adaptation. Through household surveys, policy analysis, and stakeholder interviews, we uncover a paradox: despite escaping rural climate stressors, migrants often encounter new vulnerabilities such as precarious employment, inadequate housing, and unstable food access. However, they develop sophisticated adaptive strategies that span urban-rural divides: maintaining rural agricultural production through family networks, adapting urban farming to water scarcity, and creating informal food distribution systems connecting rural and urban markets. These resilience mechanisms face mounting pressure from intensifying droughts and institutional constraints. While remittance economies and informal networks help buffer shocks, climate impacts compound vulnerabilities across migrant and host populations. The study demonstrates how formal and informal systems mediate these challenges. We recommend policies that recognise internal migration as a climate adaptation strategy, strengthen urban-rural food linkages, and improve urban food governance. The Namibian case offers valuable lessons for other arid, urbanizing African regions facing similar climate-migration-food system dynamics
Becoming Part of the Town and Gown: A History of Wilfrid Laurier University\u27s First Racialized Faculty and Students
No full textIn this article, Tedla Desta explores the deep connection between Wilfrid Laurier University and the Kitchener-Waterloo region, focusing on the historical contributions of the Black community, which has been present in the area since the early 1800s. Early Black settlers, such as Peter Edward Susand and John Frederick Augustus Sykes Fayette, played key roles in shaping the region’s social and cultural foundations. Desta also addresses the increase in racialized students during the 1950s and 60s, particularly through the International Business Program, while questioning why the university prioritized international students over established local Black communities. Early Black students like Seth K. Bansa, the first Black graduate, and faculty like Edcil Wickham, the first tenured Black professor, both played key roles in the university and the towns. In a historical climate of pervasive discrimination, Black students and scholars made significant contributions to the university and community life
Soldiers, Alcohol, and Insanity at Richmond Asylum, 1860s-1900s
No full textThis article examines the role of alcohol in the etiology of madness through a case study of soldiers and veterans at Richmond Asylum in Dublin. It argues that the diagnostic process was a complex practice informed by medical and military authorities and patient and family histories. Like any medical records, Richmond casebooks are mediated through the medical gaze, but they do contain significant glimpses into what role patients and families believed alcohol played in soldiers’ mental health. The study highlights moments of consensus and disagreement rather than a singular theory on the role of alcohol in mental illness. Through a detailed study of casebooks and registers, the essay explores the connections between the carceral and asylum systems, competing charges of malingering and feigning sanity, and the specific influence of army life and imperial climate on soldiers’ drinking habits. This article is a case study exploring how the heated debates over alcohol’s role in mental illness unfolded around a military population in a civilian asylum
“I’M GLAD YOU\u27RE ALIVE.” SURVIVORS’ STORIES OF LEAVING INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE WHILE BRAIN INJURED, AND THE EMBODIED EXPERIENCE OF REBUILDING LIFE AND RELATIONSHIPS POST VIOLENCE.
Get PDFRelationships are a fundamental part of the human experience, providing a buffer against stress and helping individuals live longer, happier, and healthier lives. However, survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) who have experienced a brain injury (BI) encounter barriers to leaving violent relationships and engaging in new, non-violent connections. This qualitative research study drew from Indigenous and non-Indigenous methodologies to establish a blueprint for using storytelling in the IPV-BI population. Intersectionality theory, combined with critical disability theory, was employed as a transformative research paradigm to better analyze and explain the stories. Survivors encountered fear, trust concerns, continued violence from former partners, and chronic medical challenges inflicted during the violent relationship. Past research highlights that the individual challenges of IPV and BI for survivors are magnified when the two intersect; therefore, IPV-BI should be considered as its own unique and new identity. This study demonstrates that social supports are vital to leaving violent relationships and are integral in rebuilding a survivor’s romantic and non-romantic life after violence. Unfortunately, the study also highlights that current institutional policies and practices are not supportive of survivors, but survivors nevertheless engaged in thriving relationships post-violence. As a powerful counter-silencing tool, this research provided space for survivors’ stories to be heard, and it contributes to the IPV-BI literature by exploring how survivors engage in new relationships post-violence. As essential knowledge for researchers, policymakers, frontline staff, and the community at large, this study improves our understanding of how survivors engage in relationships post-violence, and augments support strategies using a trauma-informed, survivor-centred approach. Moving forward, this research offers an alternative narrative that allows for the possibility of thriving connections and a sense of hope for survivors who are afraid to engage in new relationships
USING LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY AND SPATIAL STATISTICS TO EXAMINE THE IMPACTS OF PROPOSED REMOVALS TO NATURAL HERITAGE SYSTEM AND THE AGRICULTURAL SYSTEM OF ONTARIO’S GREENBELT
Get PDFThe 2022 proposed removals from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Southern Ontario’s Greenbelt would have resulted in negative impacts including, reductions to the size and functionality of the Agricultural System and Natural Heritage System, which are components of protected Greenbelt area. Several removal sites were located either on or in close proximity to corridor areas of the NHS, reducing connectivity and negatively impacting the surrounding ecological area. The removal of Agricultural land primarily consisted of corn and soybeans, as well as large removals of woodland, wetland, and shrubland class areas. The removal sites on local Agricultural composition and configuration were potentially disruptive to local agricultural land and functions. Recent policy revisions dictate no that land area should be removed from Greenbelt designation. The socioeconomic pressures for urban development are increasing in response to growing population and urban sprawl, therefore, to protect the integrity of the environment and agricultural system, integrated policies that encompass both environmental protection and development needs are required. Future protection of Ontario’s Greenbelt will be dictated by the provincial government; therefore, protection of NHS and Agricultural land via policy regulation is contingent on political will
(Un)Happy Frictions: Mobilising (Un)Happiness Through Subaltern Bodies in South Asian Canadian Women\u27s Literature
No full textThis dissertation, “(Un)Happy Frictions: Mobilising (Un)Happiness Through Subaltern Bodies in South Asian Canadian Women’s Literature,” posits that the unifying narrative of Canadian multiculturalism (Kymlicka; Taylor) is a narrative of happiness (Ahmed). This study interrogates this happy narrative through the affect (Georgis) of the subaltern (Spivak) in South Asian Canadian women’s literature. Making an affective intervention in South Asian Canadian writing, this interdisciplinary project identifies four subaltern bodies—silenced/erased, trans, disabled, Muslim—in the poetry and fiction of South Asian Canadian women. Contextualizing the relationship between the Canadian nation state and its subaltern figures, each chapter explores the debates within its particular theoretical context and analyzes the ways in which the affects of their literary representations challenge and reconfigure Canada’s multicultural narrative of happiness.
Chapter 1 examines the representations of the silenced/erased bodies as subaltern ghosts in two works of poetry, Soraya Peerbaye’s Tell: poems for a girlhood (2015) and Renée Sarojini Saklikar’s children of air india (2013), theorizing the subaltern ghost through haunting (Brogan; Gordon; Derrida). Interrogating two violent events of Reena Virk’s murder in 1997 and 1985 Air India 182 bombing, respectively, these poets create alternate subaltern counter-narratives to challenge official public memories. Chapter 2 examines the politics of trans representations in Shani Mootoo’s Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab (2014) and Vivek Shraya’s She of the Mountains (2014), locating its analyses within transphobia in Canada, and the friction between Queer Studies and Trans Studies (Keegan). These writers reveal that the possibility for trans futurity (Rajat & Waller) lies in a trans character’s radical self-acceptance and self-love. Chapter 3 examines the representations of the disabled body as “absent citizens” (Prince) in Priscila Uppal’s To Whom It May Concern (2008) and Saleema Nawaz’s Bone and Bread (2013) through Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) in Canada, the friction between Disability Studies and Postcolonial Theory, and the frameworks of DisCrit (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri) and “crip-of-color critique” (Kim). While Nawaz’s depiction is one without hope, Uppal privileges the power of imagination as a “queer form of resistance” (Georgis). Contextualizing within the War on Terror rhetoric and rising Islamophobia in Canada, Chapter 4 examines Muslim female representations in Farzana Doctor’s Stealing Nasreen (2007) and Six Meters of Pavement (2011), and Yasmin Ladha’s Blue Sunflower Startle (2010). With a focus on queerness (Wahab; Halberstam), these writers represent their Muslim women as creators of their subjectivities, even when positioned within a doubly displaced exilic space (Said; Gopinath; Salgado; Sur).
As long as there is friction between the happy narrative of Canadian multiculturalism and the Canadian state’s “problematic [racialized] Others” (Day), the themes of home and belonging will remain underlying concerns in the works of South Asian Canadian writers. The only way to “queer[ly]… resist” (Georgis) the unifying happy narrative of Canadian multiculturalism is through the imaginations of these writers to use their stories as “emotional resources for political imagination and… political renewal” (Georgis) to reconfigure home
Weight Stigma in Health-Related Undergraduate Programs
No full textHealth-related undergraduate programs are common pathways for future health care providers and play a critical role in shaping attitudes toward weight, as biases formed during training often carry over into professional practice. While weight stigma (WS) has been examined among practicing professionals and medical students, little is known about how it is experienced by undergraduate students in different health-related programs, particularly across the weight spectrum. This qualitative study contributes to closing this gap by exploring and comparing how students in one kinesiology and one health sciences program experience WS within an academic setting.
Using Reflexive Thematic Analysis, open-ended survey responses (n = 138) were analyzed. Three key themes were identified: curriculum and course content, classroom environment, and program-specific assumptions and judgements. Kinesiology students often emphasized individual responsibility for health and adopted more rigid, weight-centric perspectives. In contrast, health sciences students tended to demonstrate a more holistic understanding of health, uniquely incorporating the social determinants of health into their responses. Participants across both programs reported stigmatizing experiences involving faculty, peers, and curricular practices (e.g., public weigh-ins, calorie-tracking assignments), contributing to a range of adverse outcomes such as internalized stigma, exclusion, and self-scrutiny.
Notably, students in both larger and smaller bodies described stigma-related harm, underscoring the need for inclusive approaches that address WS across the weight spectrum. These findings have significant implications for curriculum reform, faculty development, and student well-being, and can inform more equitable, weight-inclusive health care education and practice
Review of Freedom Soldiers: The Emancipation of Black Soldiers in Civil War Camps, Courts, and Prisons by Jonathan Lande
Get PDFReview of Freedom Soldiers: The Emancipation of Black Soldiers in Civil War Camps, Courts, and Prisons by Jonathan Land
Beyond the Event: Challenging the Hegemonic Account of Genocide
No full textArticle 1 A Genealogy of Genocide: The Politics of Genocide in Canada
The politics of genocide is comprised of the many discourses, contestations, rhetorical strategies and manoeuvres that shape how the concept of genocide is mobilized in the sphere of global governance. These political mobilizations establish the limits of the concept and dictates how genocide is defined deployed in global governance settings. Crucially, the politics of genocide determines the conditions of possibility through which violence may become intelligible as genocide. Over time, the politics of genocide has produced a hegemonic understanding of what can be understood and politicized as genocide. This account has been normalized, constructed as a common-sense interpretation of what constitutes genocide, and who is capable of perpetrating genocide. It rests on tacit assumptions that genocide is, and has always been, a self-evident concept that involves mass murder, static notions of identity, and a presumption that human action is driven by intent. This article outlines the development of the hegemonic account of genocide keyed to the Canadian experience and explores the particular role of Canada in the negotiations, ascendance and deployment of the hegemonic account of genocide. I argue that critical historical moments of discursive closure occurred during the development of the hegemonic account, and these closures have had an ongoing and stifling impact on our understanding of genocide, foreclosing any possibilities of genocide being understood otherwise. These closures have created the conditions by which certain experiences of genocide have been overlooked, excluded or even erased. The impacts of these exclusions are explored in the Canadian context as they pertain to wider issues of global governance. While the politics of genocide is often overshadowed in a field preoccupied by actual events of mass violence, or with preventing and responding to episodes of mass lethal violence, studying it is critically important because of the enduring power of this dominant account of genocide over political life.
Article 2 Beyond the ‘Event’: A More Expansive Understanding of Genocide
The customary understanding of genocide, as it has been applied both in international law and within the scholarly literature, generally pivots on hyper-visible events of mass physical destruction, frequently represented by reference to casualty figures. These events erupt with an identifiable beginning, proceed with a campaign of mass exterminatory violence against members of a specific group in substantial numbers, and terminate in a clear and decisive manner. This conventional understanding, however, is highly restrictive of who, and what, counts, and is inadequate to capture the plethora of experiences of genocide that exist beyond the scope of an event. Adherence to the hegemonic account has led to a particular understanding of how genocides are perpetrated, and further, how they end. However, genocidaires frequently rely on strategies of genocide that are often overlooked in the normative framing of the crime, and structural, slow, or indirect forms of genocide persist even in the absence of an easily identifiable perpetrator. This article offers a critique of the hegemonic account of genocide by highlighting these unconventional and/or unseen strategies of genocide and broadens understanding of the crime itself, and the many, nuanced ways that it can unfold. This critique further reveals alternative processes of destruction that challenge orthodox assumptions about how genocides ‘end’ as well.
Article 3 Consistency and Change in Canada’s Official Narrative of Genocide
States are perpetually constructing, and reconstructing, stories about their histories which they strategically use to build national identity and claims to political legitimacy. State narratives have an enduring impact on both domestic and international politics and inform how national communities understand themselves and their history. At times states harbour troubled histories in which large-scale or systematic human rights abuses have occurred for which the state bears complete or partial responsibility. Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples constitutes one such troubled past. In 2022, the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion recognizing the violence of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools as genocide. This was not the first time the term genocide had been deployed in Canada to describe violence against Indigenous peoples, however the bipartisan support for this motion appeared to mark a rhetorical reversal for many lawmakers. A similar motion was presented only one year prior but failed to pass, leading one to question: What provokes these narrative changes and how should they be interpreted? This article explores the evolution of Canada’s official narrative of genocide and tracks the political forces, both domestic and international, that have influenced it. The study is divided into two sections, first outlining a period of consistency between 1948-1990, during which the state narrative on genocide was characterized by disregard and avoidance. Next, the period between 1990-2022, marked by significant development and change in the official narrative of genocide. These narratives have been strategically deployed to banish perceptions of state complicity in criminal action, rationalize the seizure of Indigenous lands and children, and justify ongoing relations of discrimination and oppression. Tracing this narrative development will demonstrate that the motion does not signal a sudden reckoning with past wrongs. Rather, the content and context of Canada’s narrative suggests signs of consistency and continuity rather than transformation.
Article 4 How do Genocides End?: Three Alternative Scenarios of Genocide Endings
Genocides are commonly described with reference to casualty figures, often used to illustrate both the scale and scope of an atrocity. Measuring genocide in this manner is consistent with the hegemonic understanding of genocide which frames genocide as an event of mass, lethal violence. However, this preoccupation with casualty leaves much of the violence of genocide beyond recognition. Further, it implies that genocides are always terminal – not only in the sense that they must invariably result in wide-scale physical death, but also assuming the processes themselves necessarily do end. This article presents an alternative framing, instead proposing that not all cases conform to these assumptions. Using case studies, this article will present three alternative scenarios which are not necessarily conventionally recognized as genocide at all, but which nevertheless produce group destruction in a variety of complicated ways. Each of the scenarios occur outside the scope of a temporally bounded event of mass lethal group destruction, and do not necessarily require physical destruction as the exclusive endpoint, or goal. The scenarios explore persistent systems and structures of genocide, conditions of ‘long dyings’ and belated casualty, and conditions where genocides mutate or evolve in ways that victims of previous campaigns themselves become perpetrators, or whereby geopolitical circumstances created by one genocide generate a continuum of genocidal destruction in geographically distinct locales. Understanding these scenarios as processes of ongoing genocide requires us to complicate our accepted assumptions about genocide and denaturalize the dichotomy between fast and slow violence. In bringing these insights to the fore, this study will show that in some cases genocides do not end at all, but persist in often insidious ways that perpetuate group destruction, often long beyond the point where the killing stops, the bodies are counted, and the world has looked away