| VOLUME 28, NUMBER 28 | TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 1998 | ISSN 1199-5246 |
WOMEN WRITING MEN: (left to right), Carole Corbeil, Susan Swan, moderator Norma Rowen, Jane Urquhart and Erika Ritter discussed what's it's like for women to write from a male perspective.
"TV is to domestic animals as the invention of the printing press was to humans," novelist, playwright and satirist Erika Ritter announced during Women Writing Men: A Panel Discussion, held at Vanier College, Wednesday, March 25.
Ritter's novel, The Hidden Life of Humans, has as one of its narrators a dog (male), who gleans much of his knowledge of the world from television, Ritter explained. Ritter joined authors Carole Corbeil, Susan Swan and Jane Urquhart on the panel. Their topic was how and why contemporary women writers are inhabiting the male consciousness in their fiction.
Corbeil is the author of two novels, Voice-Over, winner of the Toronto Book Award, and most recently, In the Wings. Swan, a professor of humanities at York, is the author of three novels, including The Wives of Bath, and two works of short fiction, including her most recent book, Stupid Boys are Good to Relax With. Urquhart is the author of three collections of poetry and five works of fiction. Her most recent novel, The Underpainter, won the Governor General's Award for fiction.
All four writers "have taken on male personas in their work," said Professor Norma Rowen, chair of the panel, in introducing the discussion.
In the past, "some of the great, classic woman characters have been written by men," Rowen reminded the audience, citing Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary. "They have been doing it for a very long time."
Women writers, for their part, might write about men, but, in doing so, sometimes chose to adopt male pseudonyms. Nineteenth century novelist Marian Evans, as George Eliot, invented male characters who were "mere hatter's block," in the scornful opinion of her contemporary, Leslie Stevens.
"In the last decade," Rowen said, "it is almost the fashion for women to see things through male eyes. Why now? Why do [women] feel so much freer to inhabit male psychology? How well are they doing [in representing the male point of view]?" Turning to the panelists, Rowen asked: "What was it like? Did you have to plot and plan more?"
"In this political era, there is more freedom to write about men," Ritter responded. "Unlike Jane Austen, I love writing about how guys talk about women." A narrative voice is something that typically is not available to a playwright she noted, describing it as "the luxury of seeing from inside. ... There is such a lot of pleasure in writing from a situation where, technically, you could not be."
Her canine narrator is "based on a kind of male puzzling through a woman, a 40-year-old woman who is still in a state of arrested adolescence," Ritter said. "I didn't have any trouble imagining myself as this dog. I looked forward to going home for him."
When Corbeil began her latest novel, the story was told from a woman's point of view, but quickly the writer became bored. After switching to a male narrator, she "became quite fixated on being male for three or four years," she said. "I fully imagined a penis and testicles."
At one and the same time, it was liberating and "very, very scary sometimes, being inside that character," said Corbeil.
Currently at work on a novel about Casanova, Swan has opted to employ a female narrator. "I'm back to using men in a figurative way," she said. "Men as metaphor, used to illuminate aspects of female identity."
In the current political climate, said Swan, she has "a lot more freedom than men do" to write as she pleases. "If a male student wrote a graphic, powerful, sexual passage, it would be questioned."
Technically speaking, in writing The Underpainter, "the big thing that happened to me was in language," Urquhart said. "The kinds of long, lyrical reveries I'd employed in [her previous novel] Away, just really weren't possible with a male narrator. Instead, there's a more active, less reflective telling."
With The Underpainter, the most intriguing reactions come from people who "seem to be more offended by the [male narrator] than if I'd been a man," she said. "People say, 'You seem like a really nice person.' There's a tendency to think I had been generalizing [about all men]."
"When you dare to write about the other, you're assumed to be generalizing about the whole group," agreed Ritter. "As a playwright, I've been asked, 'What kind of role model are you providing for girls growing up?' But I reflect the world as it is, rather than as it should be."
The science and technology curriculum for grades 1-8 released on Monday, March 30 by Ontario's minister of education and training, Dave Johnson, will increase the skills of Ontario students and lay the basis for greater scientific literacy and technological capability in the general population, says Professor Graham Orpwood of York's Faculty of Education.
Orpwood directed the project that produced the first draft curriculum last September and says York's education faculty was an important resource in the process. The project required intense research into science and technology curricula around the world and entailed more than 40 workshops, involving 300 teachers from 17 school boards in Ontario.
It also involved reviewing, critiquing and revising the draft curriculum during the course of a full school-year, and a special conference, the York Forum on School Science, held in May 1997.
The first draft of the curriculum was developed as part of the Assessment of Science and Technology Achievement Project (ASAP), begun in 1995 to support improvements in science and technology education through clearer curricula and more effective assessment.
"The project has depended throughout on the work of classroom teachers from the schools in our partner boards of education," says Orpwood. "By drawing on the experience of teachers, not only have we been able to help develop a quality document, but we have many teachers eager to move on to its implementation."
Project coordinator Marietta Bloch was seconded to the University from the City of York Board of Education (now integrated into the Toronto District School Board). She used recent educational research to ensure that the science and technology topics were appropriate to specific stages of students' development. She also ensured that the curriculum closely matched the Common Framework of Science Learning Outcomes, released last year by the national Council of Ministers of Education.
Stan Shapson, dean of York's Faculty of Education, applauded both the curriculum and the process that produced it. "It demonstrates the value of collaboration among our faculty members, 17 Ontario school boards and the Ministry of Education and Training," he said. "We are especially proud of the close and productive relationships developed between our faculty and the various boards and teachers that were involved in the project."
The Academic Policy and Planning Committee is pleased to submit the following report to the Senate of York University, and in doing so recommends approval of the following ten-part planning framework for Glendon. The Committee believes that without concrete action now Glendon and the University will face the distinct possibility of irrevocable academic and financial decline.
Recommendation
1. Senate reaffirms its commitment to bilingualism. Subject to the successful implementation of this framework, the bilingual mission is best fulfilled by Glendon on its current site.
2. Glendon will continue to be a small arts Faculty. Like any arts Faculty it will provide a disciplinary focus and life skills. It will continue to have the added advantage of bilingualism. The curriculum will be redesigned and the existing array of liberal arts disciplinary offerings will be streamlined; and the curriculum will be augmented by new and strengthened programmes in emerging, interdisciplinary and applied fields that should be offered in innovative ways.
3. Over time the faculty complement will be adjusted to reflect changes in the curriculum. At the end of a three- to five-year span approximately one-third of Glendon's offerings will be in the emerging, interdisciplinary and applied programmes. Full-time appointments in the emerging, interdisciplinary and applied programmes will be approximately 25 per cent of the Glendon complement.
4. The proportion of courses taught in French and English will be adjusted in order to realize the bilingual mandate and in fulfillment of commitments associated with dedicated funding for Bilingualism and French as a Minority Language.
5. Glendon's enrolment target will remain at 1800 FFTEs. The target of 1800 FFTEs translates into a full-time faculty complement of ninety-five, a number capable of sustaining the curriculum and justifying the continuation of Glendon's current base budget allocation.
6. Changes in the curriculum will be complemented by enhanced recruitment and communications strategies based on sophisticated analysis of Glendon's image, student constituencies (both actual and potential) and student demand. Serious consideration must be given to changing Glendon's name to reflect its nature as a University Faculty.
7. The transition period for the implementation of changes will be fixed, and the transitional costs charged against the University's overall academic budget must be modest.
8. Linkages between the two campuses will reflect a new spirit of cooperation and collaboration between two campuses with distinctive but complementary strengths. The implementation of these changes should include the harmonization of lecture schedules, the introduction of more single-day, consecutive-hour block classes on both campuses, improvements in transportation services and, whenever feasible, closer integration of programmes and faculty resources.
9. An implementation committee will be struck to oversee, facilitate, support and coordinate the implementation process through the appropriate academic committees of the University. Terms of reference for the committee will be presented for Senate approval. The committee will be composed of the following individuals or their designates: the Chair of the Glendon Faculty Council; the Chair of the Glendon Policy and Planning Committee; the President of the Glendon College Student Union; the Principal of Glendon; the Chair of Senate's Academic Policy and Planning Committee; the Chair of Senate's Committee on Curriculum and Academic Standards; the Vice-President (Academic Affairs); and the Dean of Graduate Studies.
10. Progress toward implementation of this plan will be reported to Senate every six months through APPC. In September 2001 the success of this plan will be reviewed by APPC.
Copies of the full draft report are available from the University Secretariat, and from the Dean's Office of each Faculty.
Copies of the full draft report are available from the University Secretariat, and from the Dean's Office of each Faculty.
The Senate Academic Policy and Planning Committee (APPC) will be holding two public meetings on the future of Glendon College, on Wednesday, April 8, 1998. The first will be held in the Senate Chamber, Keele Campus, at 10 a.m., and the second in the Glendon Dining Hall, Glendon College, at 4 p.m. The purpose of these meetings is to present the recommendation that APPC will be making to Senate and to answer questions arising out of the report.
APPC plans to report its final recommendation to Senate on April 23, 1998.
by Sana Mulji
International Development Week (IDW) at York, Feb. 3-5, highlighted the key aspects of development worldwide.
Starting with regional exhibitions in Vari Link on Feb. 3, the International and Exchange Student Organization (INTERESTS) endeavoured to bring together people from a number of countries. The link lit up with kimonos, African music, posters, ebony elephant figures, statues of gods and goddesses and trinkets from all around the world. With information on several development issues and research opportunities, as well as general information, the two-day exhibition proved an inspirational element of the week.
While the regional exhibitions celebrated cultural diversity, the Global Change Game played by over 30 students and faculty raised awareness of the world's problems. With the globe no bigger than a basketball court, this "virtual world" was wrought with the hunger, poverty, unemployment and disease that together kill millions in the world's developing countries. The game was immensely motivating and provided participants with a sense of social responsibility towards the rest of the world.
Classes on international and environmental studies were opened to all interested students at the University as part of the awareness program. Several colleges hosted talks and films while international studies students extended class sessions for debates on crucial development issues.
Student groups, such as the Latin American and Caribbean Students Association and the Pakistan Student Federation, held a series of lectures, films and art exhibits on the progress and impact of development projects in different countries.
The York Lanes concourse was filled with display tables set up by non-governmental organizations from all over Canada and beyond, dedicated to providing information to York students about international internships, scholarships and volunteer opportunities.
Like the opening, the closing of International Development Week featured dances, skits and wonderful music from around the world.
IDW was organized by York International and co-sponsored by the Canadian International Development Agency and several other organizations. The York partners for IDW were: the African Studies Program; Calumet College; the Centre for Race and Ethnic Relations; CERLAC (the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean); the Development Studies Resource Centre; Founders College; the Institute for Leadership Development; International Studies, Glendon College; and SIETRAR (the Society of Intercultural Education, Training and Research).
Sana Mulji is the programs promotion and campus outreach assistant at York International. A first year student in Creative Writing at York, she has a bachelor's degree from Pakistan.
MEGA-MERGER: Modern technology and modern faith are merged and always have been, book argues.
In his recent, controversial book, The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1997, distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada), York history professor David F. Noble argues that the apparent dichotomy between science and religion, between the physical and the spiritual, is an artifact of recent history. He examines nearly 2,000 years of Western history to support his thesis. Following is the author's introduction. (Reprinted by permission.)
We in the West confront the close of the second Christian millennium much as we began it, in devout anticipation of doom and deliverance, only now our medieval expectations assume a more modern, technological expression. It is the aim of this book to demonstrate that the present enchantment with things technological the very measure of modern enlightenment is rooted in religious myths and ancient imaginings. Although today's technologists, in their sober pursuit of utility, power, and profit, seem to set society's standard for rationality, they are driven also by distant dreams, spiritual yearnings for supernatural redemption. However dazzling and daunting their display of worldly wisdom, their true inspiration lies elsewhere, in an enduring, other-worldly quest for transcendence and salvation.
With the approach of the new millennium, we are witness to two seemingly incompatible enthusiasms, on the one hand a widespread infatuation with technological advance and a confidence in the ultimate triumph of reason, on the other a resurgence of fundamentalist faith akin to a religious revival. The coincidence of these two developments appears strange, however, merely because we mistakenly suppose them to be opposite and opposing historical tendencies.
Ever since the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, which proclaimed the inevitable "secularization" of society, it has generally been assumed that the first of these tendencies would historically supersede the second, that the advance of scientific technology, with its rational rigors grounded in practical experience and material knowledge, signaled the demise of religious authority and enthusiasm based upon blind faith and superstition. Religion, presumably, belonged to the primitive past, secular science and technology to the mature future. Yet today we are seeing the simultaneous flourishing of both, not only side by side, but hand in hand. While religious leaders promote their revival of spirit through an avid and accomplished use of the latest technological advances, scientists and technologists increasingly attest publicly to the value of their work in the pursuit of divine knowledge.
Viewed from a larger historical perspective, there is nothing so peculiar about this contemporary coincidence, for the two tendencies have actually never been far apart. What we experience today is neither new nor odd but, rather, a continuation of a thousand-year-old Western tradition in which the advance of the useful arts was inspired by and grounded upon religious expectation. Only during the last century and a half or so has this tradition been temporarily interrupted or, rather, obscured by secularist polemic and ideology, which greatly exaggerated the allegedly fundamental conflict between science and religion. What we find today, therefore, is but a renewal and a reassertion of a much older historical tradition.
Some contemporary observers have argued, echoing generations of religious apologists, that the resurgence of religious expression testifies to the spiritual sterility of technological rationality, that religious belief is now being renewed as a necessary complement to instrumental reason because it provides the spiritual sustenance that technology lacks. There is perhaps some truth to this proposition, but it still presupposes the mistaken assumption of a basic opposition between these two phenomena and ignores what they have in common. For modern technology and modern faith are neither complements nor opposites, nor do they represent succeeding stages of human development. They are merged, and always have been, the technological enterprise being, at the same time, an essentially religious endeavor.
This is not meant in a merely metaphorical sense, to suggest that technology is similar to religion in that it evokes religious emotions of omnipotence, devotion, and awe, or that it has become a new (secular) religion in and of itself, with its own clerical caste, arcane rituals, and articles of faith. Rather, it is meant literally and historically, to indicate that modern technology and religion have evolved together and that, as a result, the technological enterprise has been and remains suffused with religious belief.
Perhaps nowhere is the intimate connection between religion and technology more manifest than in the United States, where an unrivaled popular enchantment with technological advance is matched by an equally earnest popular expectation of Jesus Christ's return. What has typically been ignored by most observers of these phenomena is that the two obsessions are often held by the same people, many among these being technologists themselves. If we look closely at some of the hallmark technological enterprises of our day, we see the devout not only in the ranks but at the helm. Religious preoccupations pervade the space program at every level, and constitute a major motivation behind extraterrestrial travel and exploration. Artificial Intelligence advocates wax eloquent about the possibilities of machine-based immortality and resurrection, and their disciples, the architects of virtual reality and cyberspace, exult in their expectation of God-like omnipotence and disembodied perfection. Genetic engineers imagine themselves divinely inspired participants in a new creation. All of these technological pioneers harbor deep-seated beliefs which are variations upon familiar religious themes.
Beyond the professed believers and those who employ explicitly religious language are countless others for whom the religious compulsion is largely unconscious, obscured by a secularized vocabulary but operative nevertheless. For they too are the inheritors and bearers of an enduring ideological tradition that has defined the dynamic Western technological enterprise since its inception. In the United States, for example, it must be remembered, industrialization and its corollary enthusiasm for technological advance emerged in the context of the religious revival of the Second Great Awakening. As historian Perry Miller once explained, "It was not only in the Revival that a doctrine of 'perfectionism' emerged. The revivalist mentality was sibling to the technological."
But the link between religion and technology was not forged in the workshops and worship of the New World. Rather, the religious roots of modern technological enchantment extend a thousand years further back in the formation of Western consciousness, to the time when the useful arts first became implicated in the Christian project of redemption. The worldly means of survival were henceforth turned toward the other-worldly end of salvation, and over the next millennium, the heretofore most material and humble of human activities became increasingly invested with spiritual significance and a transcendant meaning the recovery of mankind's lost divinity.
The legacy of the religion of technology is still with us, all of us. Like the technologists themselves, we routinely expect far more from our artificial contrivances than mere convenience, comfort, or even survival. We demand deliverance. This is apparent in our virtual obsession with technological development, in our extravagant anticipations of every new technical advance however much each fails to deliver on its promise and, most important, in our utter inability to think and act rationally about this presumably most rational of human endeavors.
Human beings have always constructed collective myths, in order to give coherence, a sense of meaning and control, to their shared experience. Myths guide and inspire us, and enable us to live in an ultimately uncontrollable and mysterious universe. But if our myths help us, they can also over time harm us, by blinding us to our real and urgent needs. This book describes the history of one such myth: the religion of technology. It is offered in the hope that we might learn to disabuse ourselves of the other-worldly dreams that lie at the heart of our technological enterprise, in order to begin to redirect our astonishing capabilities toward more worldly and humane ends.
Toronto's Paul Robeson Centennial Celebration, marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of the legendary African-American musician, actor and activist, kicked off April 6 with Paul Robeson Week at York.
Films from the 1920s to 1940s starring Robeson are being shown in a noon-hour series, running Monday, April 6 to Thursday, April 9.
On the program earlier this week: One of Robeson's earliest screen appearances, the 1924 silent film, Body and Soul, a melodrama about gamblers, bootleggers and unscrupulous preachers, produced and directed by African-American film producer Oscar Micheaux (April 6); and Sanders of the River (1935), directed by Alexander Korda: a pro-colonialist adventure story set in West Africa, and the film that Robeson most regretted having made (April 7).
The Wednesday, April 8 noon-time program features Native Land (1942), a docu-drama directed by Leo Hurwitz and Paul Strand, exploring the United States and its ideologies and the forces threatening to undermine it from within: capitalists, strikebreakers and the Ku Klux Klan.
On Thursday, April 9, the program will feature The Emperor Jones (1933), based on the Eugene O'Neill play and directed by Dudley Murphy. The Emperor Jones is a drama in which a black man deposes the local ruler of a Caribbean island and declares himself emperor.
Paul Robeson Week will culminate at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, April 9 Robeson's birthday with a screening of Showboat (1936), the earliest film version of the now controversial play about life and love among a theatrical troupe on a Mississippi riverboat. The film will be followed by a panel discussion.
Born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1898, Paul Robeson graduated from Rutgers University and Columbia University Law School, distinguishing himself both as a scholar and an athlete. He left a promising career in law in protest against racial prejudice and entered the world of theatre and music where he was rapidly recognized as a major international talent. He premiered several Eugene O'Neill plays, starred in the 1944 London stage production of Othello, made 11 films and gave countless concerts of African-American spirituals and the folk songs of many cultures.
Robeson sang for peace and justice in 25 languages throughout the world, including many performances in Toronto and other Canadian cities. He lent his distinctive voice to the struggles of the developing labour movement, in the war against fascism in Europe and, above all, to the fight against racism in the United States. Because of his outspokenness, he was vilified during the McCarthy era and his passport was revoked until 1958. Robeson retired from public life in 1963 and died in 1976.
In tribute to his legacy, Paul Robeson Week has been organized by York theatre professor and Robeson scholar Anatol Schlosser as part of the Paul Robeson Centennial Celebration.
The Paul Robeson Week films and discussions take place in Burton Auditorium. Admission is free. For further information, call Prof. Schlosser at 736-5172 #3, or Selwyn McLean, chair of the Paul Robeson Centennial Committee, at 293-4982.
York University's Music Department celebrates end of term in time-honoured fashion with three evenings of jazz, showcasing faculty and student artists, April 7 to 9.
On Tuesday, April 7 the Jazz Orchestra, directed by David Mott, shares the spotlight with the Jazz Choir under the direction of Bob Hamper.
Jazz faculty take centre stage on Wednesday, April 8. John Gittins (piano), Don Thompson (bass) and Barry Elmes (drums) are featured in the first set. Thompson and Elmes return for the second set, joined by Mark Eisenman (piano), Mike Murley (sax) and Mike Malone (trumpet).
The grand finale, on Thursday, April 9, is the Jazz Bash, when all the jazz combos come together for a dynamic jam session. Ensemble directors are Phil Dwyer, Mark Eisenman, Barry Elmes, Frank Falco, Bobby Fenton, Al Henderson, Lorne Lofsky, Terry Promane, Mike Malone, Mike Murley and Don Thompson.
The concerts on April 7 and 8 run from 8 to 10:30 p.m. The Jazz Bash on April 9 kicks off at 5 p.m. and goes till midnight. The shows take place in the relaxed club atmosphere of the Junior Common Room, 014 McLaughlin College. Admission is free. Refreshments and cash bar available. For more information call 736-5186.
