Conferences held here over the summer on aviation, family business, women, ecology

 

Members of Women in Aviation International and the Aviation MBA program at Concordia ’s John Molson School of Business held their first Montreal chapter orientation session on June 10. WAI has more than 7,000 members. It provides support to women already in the field, and encouragement to young women to take it up.

Management Professor Bakr Ibrahim was the organizer of a forum on family businesses held June 17 called promoting Entrepreneurship and Renewal in Family Firms. He was particularly glad to have the participation of one of the leading scholars in the field.

Terri Lituchy, assistant professor in the Department of Management, was the host of the Successful Women Symposium in the JMSB in June. It examined similarities and differences among successful women in the West Indies, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, the United States and Canada. The symposium caught the interest of Donna Nebenzahl, who wrote about it in The Gazette.

More than 600 scholars met in a Montreal hotel July 11 to 14 for a conference called Challenging Boundaries: Economics, Ecology and Governance. The organizers were Concordia economics professor Frank Müller and Jean-Pierre Revéret, of UQAM. This was the 8th Biennial Scientific Conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics.

Art historians
As the home of four universities with an interest in the field, Montreal was the ideal site for the 31st International Art History Congress. It took place Aug. 23 to 27, and members of the Faculty of Fine Arts were well represented.

François-Marc Gagnon, who spent many years at the Université de Montréal and as a broadcaster, now heads Concordia’s Institute of Studies in Canadian Art.

He spoke to an audience of about 100 at the opening session about the impact of the wilderness on the work of Canadian artists, from the landscapes of the Group of Seven and Emily Carr to the abstracts of Jean-Paul Riopelle.

Professor Kristina Huneault gave a paper called “Limned: The Gendered Space of Miniature Painting in Canada.” “To hold a portrait miiature in one’s hand,” she said, “is to be drawn into an intimate aesthetic space.”

New professor Martha Langford gave a paper called “Tournage: turning (Returning) to Michael Snow’s La Région Centrale.” Snow, the Toronto artist, made this film in 1971, and Langford found it “the single most extraordinary expression” of the North as “a place of precarious purchase.”

Adjunct professor Indra Kagis McEwen gave a paper called “Places fortes and U-topia: The Birth of the Modern State.” In addition, professors Brian Foss and Catherine MacKenzie were on the planning committee for the Congress.

Historic site for Canadian Irish

An excursion to Grosse Île, where thousands of Irish immigrants were quarantined in the mid-19th century, was part of a summer symposium organized by the Centre for Canadian Irish Studies at Concordia.

On June 4, a bus took 55 participants to Berthier-sur-mer, Quebec, where they took a ferry to the island in the St. Lawrence River. Marianna O'Gallagher, who has written several books on Grosse Île, acted as tour guide.