January 2023

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

Faculty News

Finding History: Dr. Tina Loo and Dr. Heidi Tworek on Interdisciplinarity, Pedagogy, and the Future of the Discipline

As an ever-changing backdrop to the passage of time, the discipline of History gives us space for contingency, agency, and the possibility of doing things differently. In this editorial, beloved UBC History faculty Drs. Tina Loo and Heidi Tworek discuss the academic journeys that led them to History, the importance of student-centred creative pedagogy, and how an injection of historical knowledge into the practices of any discipline can help us to move towards the future in kinder and more nuanced ways.

Image via the Journal of the History of Ideas.

Bureaucratic Documents as Sources for the History of Ideas: An Interview with Shoufu Yin

Journal of Historical Ideas

Tang Dynasty court documents and edicts offer vast knowledge about the governance and transcultural and translingual practices of the era. In this interview, Dr. Shoufu Yin speaks with Alexander Collin from the Journal of the History of Ideas Blog about his article, “Redefining Reciprocity: Appointment Edicts and Political Thought in Medieval China.”

Call for Papers

Events

UBC History Global Premodern Research Cluster Presents | From the Circus to the Monastery: Changing Regimes of Punitive Blinding in Byzantium

February 9, 2023 | 12:30 pm | BuTo 1112 & online

The Global Premodern Research Cluster brings together a multidisciplinary community with shared and varied interests in global premodern studies, flexible in its geographic breadth and temporal scope, from ancient times up to 1800 CE. This first 2023 event features an eye-opening presentation by Dr. Jake Ransohoff (SNF Centre for Hellenistic Studies, SFU). This talk raises important questions about the relationship between corporal punishment and imperial power across the transition from Late Antiquity to medieval Byzantium.

Image via CTLT, UBC.

UBC History Global Premodern Research Cluster Presents | Figurations of the Nobility in South Asian Intellectual History

February 17, 2023 | 12:30 pm | BuTo 1112 & online

The Global Premodern Research Cluster brings together a multidisciplinary community with shared and varied interests in global premodern studies, flexible in its geographic breadth and temporal scope, from ancient times up to 1800 CE. The second talk of the 2023 series will be presented by Dr. Hasan Siddiqui (UBC Asian Studies), who will examine the uses of the nobility in early modern theories of oriental despotism and the idea of an integrated cross-confessional nobility in nationalist historical thought.

A Bridge Over the Chasm of Oblivion: Creating Spaces of Holocaust Remembrance in Modern Day Ukraine

January 25, 2023 | 5:00 pm | Green College Coach House & online

The city of Rivne has Ukraine's third largest number of recorded Holocaust victims. Using the symbolic space of Rivne as a case study, Dr. Nataliia Ivchyk illustrates the place of the Holocaust in Rivne’s symbolic space as a metaphor for how the Holocaust is seen in other symbolic spaces in Ukraine. This presentation will focus on the role of non-governmental organizations, including the NGO Mnemonics, founded by the presenter and her colleagues, in creating public spaces that change the dominant Ukrainocentrist narrative to work towards achieving a more inclusive local memory that includes the Holocaust.

Image via English Language & Literatures, UBC.

Critical Conversations: Ecologies

February 1, 2023 | 3:00 pm | BuTo 323 & online

Critical Conversations is a faculty research series supported by the UBC Department of English Language & Literatures and the UBC English Graduate Student Caucus to foster conversations across fields and periodization between students, faculty, and the UBC community. The prompt for the second event is “Ecologies” to be freely interpreted by the speakers. Register to attend in-person at BuTo 323 or online via Zoom. Light refreshments will be available in-person.

Image via Asian Studies, UBC.

2022/23 John Howes Lecture in Japanese Studies | Two Unforgivens: The Western as Method for Reimagining Transpacific History

February 6, 2023 | 5:30 pm | Liu Institute for Global Issues

The John Howes Lecture in Japanese Studies is an annual public lecture launched in 2012 in Professor Emeritus John Howes's honour. Each year, UBC Asian Studies invites prominent scholars from around the world to speak to the university community and alumni on topics in Japanese Studies with a focus on humanities. This year's lecture features guest speaker Professor Takashi Fujitani from University of Toronto.