At a Glance

 

Bala Ashtakala (BCEE) attended the unveiling of the Monument to American Civil Engineering at the World Headquarters of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in Reston, Virginia, on April 14. The monument commemorates ASCE's 150th anniversary, and includes a roll call" of the profession, to which Ashtakala has belonged for more than 40 years. His name is inscribed on the monument with those of other Life Members, as recognition of their dedication and contributions to civil engineering.

Karin Doerr (CMLL & Simone de Beauvoir Institute) published "Words Beyond (the) Evil: Nazi German" in Truth, Reconciliation, and Evil, ed. Margaret Soenser Breen. It is published by Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2004.

Maurice Charland (Communication Studies) delivered the 23rd annual J. Jeffrey Auer Lecture in Political Communication to the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University (Bloomington). Delivered March 3, the lecture was titled "The Rhetoric of Impiety."

Gail Guthrie Valaskakis, a former Communication Studies professor and Dean of Arts and Science (1992 to 1997), will be awarded an honorary degree by the University of Ottawa in June. An authority on aboriginal media and communications, her latest book is Indian Country: Essays on Contemporary Native Culture, published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. She won a National Aboriginal Achievement Award in 2002, and is currently director of research at the Aboriginal Healing Foundation in Ottawa.

Two Concordia alumni are on local television screens these days. Aphrodite Salas and Todd van der Heyden. Salas is Global’s new suppertime anchor in Montreal. She is also a part-time lecturer in Political Science. She was a Global correspondent on Parliament Hill, worked for Reuters’ East Africa bureau in Nairobi, and has travelled widely. Van der Heyden is weekend co-anchor at CFCF News.

David Ketterer (English, retired), Honorary Research Fellow, University of Liverpool, has published his May 2001 symposium keynote paper, "Another Dimension of Space": Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy and Atwood's Blind Assassin," as the lead essay in Worlds of Wonder: Readings in Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature (University of Ottawa Press). He has also published "Questions and Answers: The Life and Work of John Wyndham" and "The Genesis of The Triffids" in The New York Review of Science Fiction (March 2004). Ketterer is working on a critical biography entitled John Wyndham: The Winshire Cuckoo.

William Curran, Director of Libraries, is a contributing author to Staff Planning in a Time of Demographic Change, published by Scarecrow Press. Curran’s essay, “Succession in Academic Libraries: The Task at Hand,” contributes to this discussion about the current employment crisis facing libraries.

Guylaine Dionne, a full-time professor in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, received an award for her full-length documentary on the writer of Frankenstein. Her film, Mary Shelley, was awarded the prestigious Magic Lantern award at the De l’Encre à l’Ecran, a festival for literature and cinema held in Tours, France.

Daniel Salée (School of Community and Public Affairs) was part of a panel discussion organized by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council at Montreal’s McCord Museum on March 30. The panel was titled Premières Nations et Peuple Inuit: Espaces politiques et dynamiques socials. He was also among at least half a dozen senior researchers from Concordia, notably William Reimer (Sociology/Anthropology) and Norman Segalowitz (Psychology) who attended a SSHRC event in Ottawa on Feb 17 under the title The Knowledge Project: Building Canadian Research Leadership.

Corinne Mount Pleasant-Jetté (General Studies Unit - ENCS) has been appointed to the Canada Science and Technology Museum Corporation Board of Trustees by the Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Hon. Liza Frulla. The Corporation and its three museums — the Canada Agriculture Museum, the Canada Aviation Museum and the Canada Science and Technology Museum — reach some two million people annually through onsite and virtual visits. Through their research, exhibitions, programs, Web sites and publications, the Corporation's museums tell the stories of Canadian ingenuity and achievement in science and technology, and demonstrate how these accomplishments have contributed to the building of our country.