Current Lecture Series

Animating Archives: Memory, Community, Creation

Presented by Green College Leading Scholars

What and where is “the archive”? What does an archive do? And how can an archive be animated and activated in ways that both address its complex power structures and oft-times embeddedness in colonial, imperial or otherwise hegemonic epistemologies and modes of capture, and search for creative responses to and refusals of its defining absences and thefts? How do scholars, artists, archivists, librarians and activists differently engage with various archives in order to think through questions of history and (individual and collective) memory, embodiment and materiality, loss and recovery, absence and presence, violence and healing, theft and repatriation, silence and testimony? And how might these archival engagements serve as powerful starting points for creative acts, community action, and political intervention––including ones that turn toward other ways of knowing, remembering, and telling? This series begins with a roundtable conversation that approaches the question and the problem of the archive from multiple disciplinary perspectives. The following two sessions take the the form of critical duets, in which artists, activists, librarians and archivists enter into dialogue about the ways in which their research, art-making, and/or practice engages with, responds to, resists, revisions, disrupts, or abandons the archive.

Series Conveners: Olivia Michiko Gagnon, Theatre and Film; Kelly McCormick, History; Leora Morris, Theatre and Film; and Ori Tenenboim, Journalism, Writing and Media

Event Dates: Jan 11, Mar 9

“Characters are, perhaps, those parts of shadow or independent vitality within the psyche which the poet cannot integrate to his own person. They are cancers of the imagination insisting on their right to live outside the organism from which they are engendered (how long could a man endure with an Oedipus or a Lear locked inside him?) But whatever their relationship to the source of invention, dramatic personages assume their own integral being.”
--George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy

CANCERS OF THE IMAGINATION is the title given to Colleen Murphy's residency at Green College. From mid-January through mid-April, 2023, she will curate and host a series of three public events presenting guest writers who will read from their work and take part in discussions about how and why they create the characters and stories that they create.

For more information on Colleen Murphy, and on her residency, visit our Invited Residencies page.

Event Dates:  Jan 17, Feb 15, Mar 2, Mar 28

China Power

Co-hosted with the UBC Centre for Chinese Research

With China’s rise as a major player on the global stage, understanding the nature of Chinese power and how it is exercised has become increasingly important. This series of lectures brings together leading experts from a diverse range of fields to illuminate how power operates internally within Chinese society, and externally in its relations with the rest of the world. The series will explore how social relations (or guanxi) operate in Chinese society today, the role of cultural practices in reproducing and contesting state power in authoritarian China, the impact of a rising China on the established global order, and the projection of China’s soft power overseas. In examining the multiple dimensions of Chinese power—political, economic, cultural, social—these speakers will deepen our understanding of power in China as well as how it is exercised by China.

Series Conveners: Timothy Cheek, History, UBC; Kristen Hopewell, Public Policy and Global Affairs, UBC; and Renren Yang, Asian Studies, UBC

Event Dates: Oct 12, Nov 30, Feb 1, Mar 21

Democratizing Research and Teaching: Models for Action

Presented by Green College Leading Scholars

Much of research and teaching is designed and determined by a small group of people who are located within academic institutions. It is ironic that accessing and engaging in academic knowledge is a privilege afforded to only a few, when the overall goal is that research and teaching should be transformative to all of society. Participatory research and teaching takes us a step closer to challenging the status quo by decentering the role of the academic expert and democratizing knowledge production.

How can we engage with students and community members in knowledge creation and dissemination? What role should learners and community members play in generating knowledge and research that informs curriculum and our understanding of the world? This series considers the practical and ethical aspects of community engagement as we research and teach matters of community interest. The organizers explore the intricacies of participatory research and teaching in a three-part series engaging researchers, community members and people with lived experience, with the goal to stimulate conversation and new ideas for research and teaching.

Series Conveners: Sam Beswick, Law; Kristen Haase, Nursing; Priti Narayan, Geography; Julia Schmidt, Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy; and Renren Yang, Asian Studies

Event Dates: Oct 13, Nov 3, Nov 24

Disciplines Over Time: Making, Keeping and Breaking the Boundaries of Knowledge

Co-hosted with UBC Emeritus College

This series will bring together scholars who inhabit the same academic discipline or field of study, and are at different stages of their careers, to talk about how the boundaries separating their field of specialization from other fields have changed over time. The conversation will inevitably lead to a consideration of cross-disciplinary influences and interdisciplinary trends, as participants account for changes in the cognitive strength of sub-disciplines and the rise and fall of disciplinary paradigms. The intent will be to identify underlying reasons for the observed changes and, by the end of the series, to draw some general conclusions about mechanisms of (inter)disciplinary interaction and development, in the spirit—if not necessarily the style—of Thomas Kuhn and Michel Foucault.

Series Convener: Donald Fisher, Past-Principal, UBC Emeritus College

Event Dates: Oct 20, Nov 17, Jan 19, Feb 16, Mar 30, Apr 20

Early Music Vancouver at Green College

Early Music Vancouver presents music of the past in ways that are attentive to and inspired by styles, conventions and conditions that existed when the music was first conceived.

Event Dates: Sept 26, Dec 12

Growing Reparative Justice in Vancouver

Presented by Green College Leading Scholars

The city of Vancouver is often celebrated for its environmentalism and high quality of life for residents, but sitting with the harm of settler colonial influences on this land reveals deep-seated problems of cultural exclusion, environmental extraction and animal exploitation, real estate speculation and housing unaffordability, and social resistance to engage with antiracist critique. The series spotlights local activists and cultural practitioners who are creating counter-institutional mechanisms that confront the violence of settler colonialism and the unfettered extraction of environmental resources that has accompanied it. We invoke the term reparative justice to connote a range of activist practices that approach reparations, restitution and healing through cultural work and planning. This series features conversations that explore how the crumbling of social and material infrastructures can make space to build new systems and relationships with more ethical structures that address harms instead of ignoring them.

Series Conveners: Kimberly Bain, English Language and Literatures; James Connolly, Community and Regional Planning; Igor Drljaca, Theatre and Film; Ayasha Guerin, English Language and Literatures; Chris Patterson, Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice; Bronwen Tate, Creative Writing; and Hannah Turner, Information.

Event Dates: Jan 18, Feb 8, Mar 1

Moving On: New Research on Migration, Borders and Health

Presented by Green College Leading Scholars

Humanity has never been more mobile than it is today. Migration comes in many different shapes and forms, and it impacts those who move and those who stay put in multiple ways. Across roundtable and panel discussions, keynote talks and an edited book presentation, this Green College Leading Scholars Event Series adopts diverse multidisciplinary perspectives from cultural studies, medicine, history, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, political science and bioengineering to dissect and explore the meaning of fast-moving people in a fast-moving world and its implications for our personal and societal physical and mental well-being.

Series Conveners: Anna Blakney, Biomedical Engineering; Benjamin Bryce, History; Annie Ciernia, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; Megan Daniels, Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies; Friedrich Götz, Psychology; Manu Madhav, Biomedical Engineering; Matias Margulis, Public Policy and Global Affairs; Elise Stickles, English Language and Literatures; Daniel Vigo, Psychiatry, and Population and Public Health; Lydia Wytenbroek, Nursing; and Ayaka Yoshimizu, Asian Studies.

Event Dates: Oct 5, Oct 26, Nov 16, Jan 12, Feb 9, Mar 7

Resident Members' Series

The Green College Members’ Series each week features a different presenter (or presenters) from among the Resident Members of Green College. Graduate students and Postdoctoral and Visiting Scholars are encouraged to offer talks on their areas of research or study and, as appropriate, to bring in their research colleagues from outside the College too. 

Series Conveners: Yoonseok Choi, Psychology; and Pedro Villalba González, Physics and Astronomy

Event Dates: Sept 26, Oct 3, Oct 17, Oct 24, Oct 31, Nov 7, Nov 14, Nov 21, Nov 28, Dec 5, Dec 12, Jan 16, Jan 23, Feb 6, Feb 13, Feb 27, Mar 6, Mar 13, Mar 20, Mar 27, Apr 3, Apr 17, Apr 24, May 1, May 8, May 15

Special Lectures and Events

Talks and performances by visitors invited to Green College and UBC for the Cecil H. and Ida Green Visiting Professorships Program, the Richard V. Ericson Lectures and other endowed appointments, and by distinguished Visiting Scholars, Writers, Artists, Journalists, etc. in Residence at the College, among others.

Event Dates: Sept 15, Sept 20, Sept 28, Sept 29, Oct 4, Oct 6, Oct 18, Oct 25, Nov 22, Jan 25, Jan 31, Feb 1, Feb 7, Mar 7, Mar 7, Mar 15, Mar 22, Mar 22, Mar 23, Mar 27, Mar 29, Apr 11, Apr 12, Apr 18, Apr 26, May 25

Ways of Seeing Byzantine Art and Material Culture

Co-hosted with the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies, SFU

What can we learn from the study of a distant premodern culture today? Where does the Roman polity that we call Byzantium stand within the wider medieval world, and how does its place in our imagination shape the way we study Byzantine monuments, objects and sites? This thematic lecture series provides a venue for presenting cutting-edge and innovative research by scholars of Byzantine art, archaeology and material culture.  

Series Conveners: Dimitris Krallis, Humanities, and Centre for Hellenic Studies, SFU; and Georgios Makris, Art History, Visual Art and Theory, UBC.

Event Dates: Sept 26, Oct 24, Nov 15, Jan 26, Feb 28, Apr 27

Unstandardizing Standards: Baselines, Memories and Connections in the Human and Other Natural Sciences

Presented by Green College Leading Scholars

This series considers baselines, how they may be shaped by or inform memories and how they relate to disciplinary standards. Discussion will focus on how these baselines restore or revitalize our environment and ways of knowing, enhancing our understanding of diversity (ecological, linguistic, etc.), and providing a means to confront and heal memory interruptions through research and education. Each session presents a story that spans different perspectives in order to engage with concepts across disciplines.

Series Conveners: Nina Hewitt, Geography; AnaÏs Orsi, Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science; and Meike Wernicke, Language and Literacy Education.

Event Dates: Mar 8, Apr 19