Academic Appetizer Hour with Green College Leading Scholars

Bite-sized research presentations by recently appointed UBC Faculty Members across disciplines. Faculty presentations in this session by the 2023-25 Leading Scholars Program cohort include:

Hercules: Procreative Poetics and the Rise of the Opera Libretto
Katharina N. Piechocki, French, Hispanic and Italian Studies

My work focuses on 17th-century opera librettos and the joint question of poetic production and bodily reproduction which I explore through the figure of Hercules, often associated with the institutionalization of the arts and questions of procreation and filiation. Drawing inspiration from recent gender, masculinity, women and queer studies—often focused on the present times—and conducted against the backdrop of the affective turn and the history of medicine, this project redirects literary, opera and performative studies as it challenges common assumptions about early modern representations of absolutist power, gender politics and medical conceptions of the body.

Scale and Scope in Railroads
Ron Yang, Business

I am an economist specializing in industrial organization, transportation and urban economics. I am interested in how firms compete with each other in spatial settings, and how competition shapes transportation costs. My ongoing projects study long-haul drivers’ preferences to return home, returns to scale and congestion in freight railroad operations and the entry incentives of truckstops.