Speaker Series

Dr. Jamie Seabrook, Associate Professor, Food and Nutritional Sciences and Recipient of the Brescia Award for Excellence in Research, presents:

Social Determinants of Birth Outcomes: Are We Victims of Circumstance?

Many health disparities in adulthood (e.g., coronary heart disease, hypertension) are linked to early life exposures. According to theory of fundamental social causes, socioeconomic status shapes exposure to individually-based risk factors. During pregnancy, for example, women of lower socioeconomic status tend to experience more kinds and greater exposures to stress, and usually engage in more risky health behaviors (e.g., substance use) than women of higher socioeconomic status, which increases the likelihood of adverse birth outcomes. Unfortunately, Canadian public discourse continues to focus its attention on lifestyle behaviour modification during pregnancy, which puts the blame on mothers by treating them as causal agents in the reproduction of adult disease. Rather than focusing primarily on lifestyle approaches as solutions to improving health, my research examines the broader social structure operating in women’s lives during pregnancy.

Dr. Heather Kirk, Assistant Professor, French and Faculty Scholar, presents:

"Scholaris": Building a Journal from the Ground Up

So, you want to create and launch a scholarly journal? How does that work? What does it take to start a journal from scratch?
 
In this talk, we will explore the step-by-step process of creating a scholarly journal using the Open Source Journal platform hosted by Western Libraries. While the technical creation of a journal is relatively straightforward, many researchers are unaware of the “behind the scenes” work that goes into launching a journal, using Scholaris as a case study. 
 
Scholaris is a double-blind peer reviewed, open access, transdisciplinary journal that addresses Teaching and Learning in higher education in the process of being founded.
 
Currently, the Canadian field of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is limited, with a small number of active journals. None of these journals address small-class/small-campus teaching and learning. Ultimately, the aim of Scholaris is to fill a lacuna in the field of SoTL, which drawing international attention to Brescia, its faculty, staff, and students.

Dr. Dominick Grace, Professor, English, School of Humanities, presented:

Contingent Storyworlds in Seth’s Graphic Novel "Clyde Fans"

Seth’s Clyde Fans explores how its protagonists, Abe and Simon Matchcard, construct their own storyworlds. Seth depicts Simon’s world, especially, as one in which reality, dream, and hallucination blur together, creating a contingent, subjective, and uncanny world. The subjective nature of Simon’s experiences mean much of what happens to him creates a contingent reality: readers are suspended between possibilities as to whether Simon’s experiences are objectively real or hallucinatory. Consequently, Clyde Fans becomes a work of the fantastic uncanny, in which the nature of the storyworld is contingent on the perception not only of the characters, but also of readers.