Series description
Watching the news media today, it is easy to see that we live in a world afflicted with political and social turmoil, wars, and environmental disasters. In the face of this it can be difficult to maintain a positive outlook, but in both the past and the present we can find examples that give us reasons to still be hopeful. Join us as instructors from various departments at Langara College explore some of these cases, showing us that hope can be found even in the gloomiest of times, sometimes in unexpected places.
All lectures will take place at Brock House, 3875 Point Grey Rd, Vancouver, BC, V6R 1B3, on the specified dates (Friday afternoons), 2:00-3:00 p.m.
Entry is free for Langara students.
Series dates
- Oct 3: Finding Hope: Visions of Utopia in the Global Sixties
- Oct 10: Hoping for Peace: Lessons from the Crusades
- Oct 17: Examining Discourses of Safety from the Perspective of Homeless Encampment Residents
- Oct 24: How Fairy Tales Can Fix the World
- Oct 31: “Cry out our loud grief, and learn all we may!”*: Aeschylus’ Persians and the Healing Technologies of Tragedy
- Nov 7: Finding Hope in/through Catastrophe: The Cases of Grimmelshausen and Grass
- Nov 14: The Eagle and the Bear: Peace across the Cold War Divide, 1981-1989
- Nov 28: Finding Hope in the Classroom: Teaching an Art History of Exclusion
Finding Hope: Visions of Utopia in the Global Sixties
October 3
Craig Keating (History)
Utopian experiments were a hallmark of sixties protest against the norms of modern, consumer capitalist society – from egalitarian communes to back-to-the-land movements, to other intentional forms of community. But utopian visions were equally part of broader “global sixties” that mobilized people beyond western Europe and North America. This lecture examines those visions and those experiments from a global perspective.
Hoping for Peace: Lessons from the Crusades
October 10
Niall Christie (History)
The crusades are often depicted in the media as a time of unrelenting wars between Christianity and Islam. However, this greatly misrepresents a period that, while at times witnessing vicious conflicts between Christians and Muslims, nonetheless saw extended periods of peace, trade, and cultural exchange. In this talk we will explore the wider interactions between the people who lived through these times, to see what lessons we can draw from the past that might help us in the present.
Examining Discourses of Safety from the Perspective of Homeless Encampment Residents
October 17
Terri Evans (Political Science)
Municipalities often invoke discourses of safety to mark unhomed people, their possessions, behaviours, and materiality as a threat to the public (whether real or perceived) and disruptive to the interests of property, especially in downtown commercial districts. Within these discourses, the safety needs and concerns of unhomed residents are frequently sidelined or silenced. One space that works to articulate and respond to these are homeless encampments. This talk examines the question “What role do homeless encampments serve in enhancing the safety of residents who call them home, including reducing the harms that they encounter in other spaces and places?”
How Fairy Tales Can Fix the World
October 24
Erin Robb (English)
We all need a Gretel, Alice, or Little Prince in our world—child heroes whose stands against despotic authority, commitment to justice, and ability to love make them more than just good role models for children. Following the breadcrumb trail of stories from fairytales to modern children’s literature, we will look at what we can learn from the wonderlands of fiction and find that there may just be a way to live happily ever after.
“Cry out our loud grief, and learn all we may!”*: Aeschylus’ Persians and the Healing Technologies of Tragedy
October 31
Kina Cavicchioli (English)
Aeschylus’s Persians is the oldest surviving Greek tragedy that we have. It is also the only surviving tragedy that deals directly with a “real” contemporary event, rather than a mythological subject: the war between the Greeks and the Persians, specifically the battle of Salamis, at which Aeschylus himself had fought less than 10 years before writing the play.
In the intensely military culture of 5th-century BCE Athens, with the Greek city states the unlikely victors against the mighty Persian Empire, what kind of play would you expect one of the victorious survivors to write, to be performed before fellow veterans, in the city that was still being rebuilt after being besieged and burned by the Persian army?
What Aeschylus does - and what Tragedy can do - will surprise you.
*The quotation is from Christopher Collard’s translation of Persians in Aeschylus: Persians & Other Plays (Oxford University Press, 2008), p.28.
Finding Hope in/through Catastrophe: The Cases of Grimmelshausen and Grass
November 7
Stefan Haag (English)
The seventeenth century Thirty Years’ War was a national catastrophe for Germany, leading to large-scale devastation and massive population decline. Yet twenty years after the war, Grimmelshausen published a tongue-in-cheek picaro novel that was steeped in powerful language to communicate to the world that Germany was back. Closer to our time, Günter Grass used Grimmelshausen to reflect on what another catastrophic war could mean for Germany. In this talk we will look at what both writers try to take away from the national catastrophes they lived through.
The Eagle and the Bear: Peace across the Cold War Divide, 1981-1989
November 14
Dale Montgomery (History)
The Cold War reached a new level of intensity in the early 1980s as the two Superpowers increased their military spending and aggressive rhetoric dramatically. Yet, by 1988 the American President and the Soviet General Secretary were photographed strolling together across Moscow’s Red Square in apparent amity. In this lecture, we will explain how the two leaders were able to overcome ideological, personal and national animosities to promote international peace, and how the example of these two leaders might provide lessons for achieving peace in our troubled times.
Finding Hope in the Classroom: Teaching an Art History of Exclusion
November 28
Randip Bakshi (Art History)
Should we ask painful questions in class? I start my course, Worldviews: A Global Approach to Art, with this prompt. I use Vancouver as an example of global currents, especially migration and movement, to ask difficult questions about our city’s past. By using neighbourhoods in Vancouver—some ethnic enclaves, others not so much—I introduce students to the idea of urban space and architecture as an art historical text. I also try and use the histories around these neighbourhoods as a way to ask difficult questions about our present. Issues such as belonging, ghettoization/homogenous neighbourhoods, integration, and/or racism become central to our class discussions. In this talk, I want to share how Vancouver is connected to larger global forces. I also want to share my students’ projects and the assignments in my classes to highlight the difficult questions we all need to hold space for. My students and I find hope in our classroom as we navigate these painful questions.
