November 2023

Now & Then highlights UBC History news and events for students, faculty, staff & alumni

Support for Students, Faculty, and Staff

A Message from the UBC President: On Respect and Compassion

Support for UBC-Vancouver students:

Office of the Ombudsperson for Students

Counselling Support

24-Hour Student Assistance Program

Student Health Services

Support for UBC faculty and staff:

Employee and Family Assistance Program

Faculty News

In a ‘Land of Hope’: Documents on the Canadian Jewish Experience, 1627-1923

Edited by Pierre Anctil and Richard Menkis

In a ‘Land of Hope’: Documents on the Canadian Jewish Experience, 1627-1923 offers a complete overview of Canadian Jewish history up to 1923, for the first time from the point of references to its most salient and significant historical sources. This collection includes documentation from diverse archives and in many languages. A book launch featuring both editors will take place on November 21, 7:30 pm PT at Temple Sholom, 7910 Oak St.

Hicham Safieddine | Op-Ed: Decolonize Palestine at UBC

"In the context of Palestine, zero tolerance for antisemitism must be coupled with zero tolerance for its instrumentalization to suppress Palestinian rights," writes Prof. Hicham Safieddine (UBC History; Canada Research Chair in the History of the Modern Middle East). "The history of colonization in Palestine did not begin on October 7. Understanding that history, which is part of the global history of colonization, as well as the rich precolonial history of co-existence, is a necessary step to making sense of the future." Image via Ubyssey.

Student Opportunities

2024 Summer Global Seminars

Apply by December 5, 2023

Global Seminars are small-cohort, faculty-led UBC undergraduate courses giving students the opportunity to explore and engage in a more meaningful way. Professors hand-pick locations to ensure the environment enriches the learning. Students can expect a transformative and unforgettable session while earning UBC course credits and tackling issues of global relevance.

2024 Summer Global Seminars

Public Humanities Research Seed Grants

Apply by December 18, 2023. Open to UBC-V Arts PhD students and tenured/tenure-track faculty

The Public Humanities Research Seed Grant program aims to provide support for new creative, collaborative, and experimental public humanities projects, imagined broadly. The Seed Grants provide small funds to support early stage research activities that will maintain or strengthen research capacity and research excellence and, importantly, advance knowledge in the humanities.

Grant Details

Events

UBC History Colloquium | “From North End to Pañatown” with Dr. Sharika D. Crawford

November 23 | 12:30 pm PT | Buchanan Tower 1112

For generations, the Anglophone Afro-Caribbean islanders from the Archipelago of San Andrés and Providencia had regularly migrated to and from Central America and other islands in the Caribbean Sea. In this UBC History Colloquium event, Dr. Sharika D. Crawford (Speedwell Professor of International Studies and Professor of History, United States Naval Academy) traces how the free port strengthened administrative ties and contact between mainland Colombians and islanders, failed to integrate the majority of islanders, and facilitated the development of a Black autonomous identity formation.

Seven Cautionary Tales for Publicly Engaged Humanities in 2023

November 16 | 12:30 pm PT | St. John's College UBC

Join the UBC Public Humanities Hub for a talk by Dr. Antoinette Burton and Dr. Jenny L. Davis (U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), which features lessons they have learned from the Humanities Without Walls project, funded by the Mellon foundation and housed at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The speakers argue that the broad political and even affective appeal of “humanities without walls” must be tempered by the significant limits on possibility thrown up by a variety of institutional impediments embedded in the infrastructures of the predominantly white bureaucratic cultures of the research university in North America.

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