Green College hosts around 80 public lectures on a wide range of interdisciplinary topics each year. We warmly welcome you to attend lectures in person at the College, which frequently also offers the opportunity to continue the conversation with the speakers and audience members afterwards in a reception or at dinner (reservations required). Many of our lectures are also recorded and published on our YouTube channel.
Enjoy the Journey, by Rea Beaumont, composer-pianist
Dr Rea Beaumont composed Green Pieces, which she named in tribute to Green College and the ‘green-ness’ of its setting in Vancouver and the Pacific Northwest. The three movements in the set of Green Pieces are Vancouver Vibe, Mountain Morning, and Western Waters, with each capturing a different mood and aspect of the region. The set of Green Pieces is available on Rea’s sixth album Enjoy the Journey, along with a set of French-Canadian folksongs for violin and piano, plus other solo piano works. This album takes listeners on a journey from Vancouver, through Quebec, and beyond. Dr Beaumont also wrote a special commissioned arrangement of Green Pieces as a gift for the Green College community, including “past, current, and future residents.” This album celebrates the 30th anniversary of the College.
“A number of podcasts have been produced in association with Green College. Some of these podcasts are lecture series that were recorded and converted into this form, to preserve the content and make it available to a wider audience. Other series have been produced by college members as podcasts. These podcasts include the following series:
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 | Beginning in 2021, Patchworks is organized and recorded by Resident Members of Green College. The goal of the podcast is to amplify stories of IBPoC resistance, organizing and dreaming by emerging and established Vancouver-based and international scholars, activists and community organizers. |
 | TRANSFORMING SOUNDS / ALTERED SELVES: HOW MUSIC CHANGES IN TIME, CHANGES US AND CHANGES OUR WORLDS All cultures have stories of miraculous transformations—of individuals, groups, event landscapes—produced by instrumental music and song. In recent decades, our understanding of the transformative effects of music has itself been doubly transformed by new kinds of historical and cognitive research. This podcast has been created and recorded by Resident Members of Green College, and is partly inspired by a series of public lectures and discussions hosted at the College in 2017-18. |
Green College’s visitors and lecture series have produced numerous published works. Here is a selection of works with strong ties to Green College, with links to the publisher where possible:
 | Green College Thematic Lecture Series Environment, Power, and Justice: Southern African Histories Edited by Graeme Wynn, Jane Carruthers and Nancy J. Jacobs Ohio University Press © 2022 This book highlights the ways poor and vulnerable people in South Africa, Lesotho and Zimbabwe have mobilized against the structural and political forces that deny them a healthy and sustainable environment. Spanning the colonial, postcolonial and postapartheid eras, these studies engage vernacular, activist and scholarly efforts to mitigate social-environmental inequity. Some chapters track the genealogies of contemporary activism, while others introduce positions, actors and thinkers not previously identified with environmental justice. Addressing health, economic opportunity, agricultural policy and food security, the chapters in this book explore a range of issues and ways of thinking about harm to people and their ecologies. |
 | Green College Thematic Lecture Series The Calling of the Nations: Exegesis, Ethnography, and Empire in a Biblical-Historic Present Edited by Mark Vessey, Sharon Betcher, Robert A. Daum and Harry O. Maier University of Toronto Press © 2011 Current notions of nationhood, communal identity, territorial entitlement, and collective destiny are deeply rooted in historic interpretations of the Bible. Interweaving elements of history, theology, literary criticism, and cultural theory, the essays in this volume discuss the ways in which biblical understandings have shaped Western - and particularly European and North American - assumptions about the nature and meaning of the nation. |
 | Green College Thematic Lecture Series Learning Civil Societies: Shifting Contexts for Democratic Planning and Governance Edited by Penny Gurstein and Leonora Angeles University of Toronto Press © 2007 As public issues stretch out to affect an ever expanding population, democratizing planning and governance becomes increasingly important. How localized communities embrace the progressive qualities of civil society is a critical topic in an era where diverse and divergent forces often counteract civil society formation and community initiatives. This collection explores the theoretical underpinnings of democratic planning and governance in relation to civil society formation and social learning. |
 | Green College Thematic Lecture Series The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility Edited by Kevin D. Haggerty and Richard V. Ericson University of Toronto Press © 2005 Editors Kevin D. Haggerty and Richard V. Ericson bring together leading experts to analyse how society is organized through surveillance systems, technologies, and practices. They demonstrate how the new political uses of surveillance make visible that which was previously unknown, blur the boundaries between public and private, rewrite the norms of privacy, create new forms of inclusion and exclusion, and alter processes of democratic accountability. This collection challenges conventional wisdom and advances new theoretical approaches through a series of studies of surveillance in policing, the military, commercial enterprises, mass media, and health sciences. |
 | Green College Thematic Lecture Series Love, Hate, and Fear in Canada's Cold War Edited by Richard Cavell University of Toronto Press © 2004 The essays in Love, Hate, and Fear in Canada's Cold War present a Cold War different in many respects from the familiar one of anti-communist hysteria. In Canada, the Cold War raised issues of national self-representation that went beyond international political tensions related to capitalistic versus communistic regimes. If the discourse of the Cold War in Canada was anti-communist, it was also anti-American in many ways. Drawing on a number of disciplinary approaches and examining what Michel Foucault called the “discursive” practices of the period, the contributors examine how, in the Cold War, the personal became the political through the state's attempt to regulate sexuality in pulp fiction, in film, and in public spaces. |
 | Green College Thematic Lecture Series The Shifting Foundations of Modern Nation-States: Realignments of Belonging Edited by Sima Godfrey and Frank Unger University of Toronto Press © 2004 When the prospect of prosperity and the good life requires an adjustment of national identities and alliances, old myths and new tales alike are mobilized in the effort. People's choices of belonging are flexible and often blatantly pragmatic. In The Shifting Foundations of Modern Nation-States, Sima Godfrey and Frank Unger have gathered together a distinguished, multidisciplinary group of authors to discuss national myths from Europe, North America, and Asia. Just as the plurality of nations implies diverse voices and distinct narratives, the authors, coming from different disciplines and backgrounds, represent multiple discourses on the theme of nationhood. |
 | Green College Thematic Lecture Series Multiple Lenses, Multiple Images: Perspectives on the Child Across Time, Space, and Disciplines Edited by Hillel Goelman, Sheila K. Marshall and Sally Ross University of Toronto Press © 2004 Drawing from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives, the essays in Multiple Lenses, Multiple Images are oriented around the idea that images of childhood can be understood within three dimensions: time, space, and discipline. Multiple Lenses, Multiple Images is intended to deepen and expand the collaborative, interdisciplinary discourse on children and childhood through reflections not just on what is known about children, but on how it has been learned. |
 | Green College Lecture Series Risk and Morality Edited by Richard V. Ericson and Aaron Doyle University of Toronto Press © 2003 Risk and Morality examines how decisions about risk and uncertainty relate to moral principles and ethical conduct. Editors Richard Ericson and Aaron Doyle have brought together in this volume a selection of original essays on the topic by renowned scholars in the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, law, political science, geography, criminology, and accounting from Canada, the United States, England, France, and Australia. Presenting cutting-edge theory and research, the essays analyse the broader social, political, economic and cultural dimensions of risk and morality. |
 | Green College Lecture Series Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide Mieke Bal University of Toronto Press © 2002 Bal's focus for this book is the idea that interdisciplinarity in the humanities - necessary, exciting, serious - must seek its heuristic and methodological basis in concepts rather than its methods. Concepts are not grids to put over an object. The counterpart of any given concept is the cultural text or work or 'thing' that constitutes the object of analysis. No concept is meaningful for cultural analysis unless it helps us to understand the object better on its own terms. Bal offers the reader a sustained theoretical reflection on how to 'do' cultural analysis through a tentative practice of doing just that. This offers a concrete practice to theoretical constructs, and allows the proposed method more accessibility. |
 | Green College Lecture Series Governing Modern Societies Edited by Richard V. Ericson and Nico Stehr University of Toronto Press © 2000 The focus of this collection is on the extent to which the nature and practice of governance has dramatically changed. The realities of cutbacks in social security expenditures, changes in technology, shifts in labour markets, politics of identity and group rights, loss of political autonomy by nation-states, and management by surveillance and audit all underscore the evolution of governing. The fact that such shifts are also connected to new forms of governance beyond the state (at the community level, for example, within corporate institutions and through the influence of social movements and economic markets) makes the task of governing modern societies all the more challenging. |
 | Green College Lecture Series History and Reading: Tocqueville, Foucault, French Studies Dominick LaCapra University of Toronto Press © 2000 In this study Dominick LaCapra addresses the ongoing concern with the application of theory - namely that of literary studies and linguistics - to contemporary historical research and analysis. History and Reading is an attempt to address the concerns of those scholars who either resist theoretical discussions or disavow the use of interdisciplinary study. LaCapra offers sensitive readings of Tocqueville and Foucault, authors who present vastly different narrative strategies and modes of analysis. Looking at these and other theorists whose work addresses the writing and understanding of history, he considers how their distinctive textual practices have transformed standard modes of interpretation and analysis. |
 | Green College Lecture Series Intelligent Machines: Myths and Realities Edited by Clarence W. de Silva CRC Press © 2000 What is intelligence? Are truly intelligent machines a practical reality? If so, can they work in harmony with human beings and improve the quality of our lives? Intelligent Machines: Myths and Realities explores the technological, industrial, economic, social, and research issues related to intelligent machines. Written for both technical and nontechnical readers, Intelligent Machines presents complex issues in simple, qualitative terms, yet discusses important theoretical aspects, industrial applications, and design issues where they are appropriate. The result is an intriguing exploration of this revolutionary technology, its design, uses, limitations, and future prospects. |