During each academic year, Green College hosts a number of lecture series that are open without charge to College members, the UBC community, and the general public. These series are presented by the College in collaboration with faculty members from UBC departments and programs who act as convenors and coordinate themes and speakers.
Interdisciplinary events typically take place at the College either before dinner or after dinner. These timings "outside typical classroom and business hours” are in keeping with the extracurricular nature of the College’s academic programming and are intended to make it easy for those who attend the talks to join the speakers and College residents for dinner.
See the current listing below of interdisciplinary series at Green College for series names, dates, convenors, and descriptions, and consult our Calendar of Events for further details of talks.
Visit our Past Series page to view a historical archive of interdisciplinary series from past years.
Green College Interdisciplinary Series List 2012/13:
Green College Resident Members’ Series
Convenors: and Melissa Ellamil, Green College Resident Members
Dates: Mondays at 8 pm in the Coach House
The Green College Members' Series each week features a different presenter (or presenters) from among the resident members of Green College. Graduate students and postdoctoral and visiting scholars are encouraged to offer talks on their areas of research or study and, as appropriate, to bring in their research colleagues from outside the College too. Like all academic programming at the College, these talks are open not just to Green College members, but to the community at large both within and beyond UBC.
Principal’s Series: Thinking at the Edge of Reason:
Interdisciplinarity in Action
Convenor: , Green College Principal
Dates: Sept 11, 18, Oct 2, 16, 30, Nov 13, 20
Talks in this series, which is hosted by the Principal of Green College and members of the College, are designed to be accessible to a non-specialist audience and to showcase work by UBC and visiting researchers, including the Cecil H. and Ida Green Visiting Professors. There is always an opportunity for public discussion after the talk, and for informal conversation, continued over dinner at the College for those who choose to stay for that. This year the talks in the Principal’s Series share the Tuesday evening spot with two other series, both likewise designed to be of broad appeal, namely the Senior Scholars’ Series on “The Passions that Drive Academic Life” and the "Environment and Society Series".
Writer-in-residence series
Convenor: , Canada Council Writer-in-Residence at Green College
Dates: Sept 27, Oct 18, Nov 7
Novelist Shyam Selvadurai’s series consists of three panels discussions, “Diaspora and Trauma,” “Pardon: Is Accountability for Past Wrongs Necessary for a Person or Nation to Forward?” and “Buddhist Narrative and Art” that echo his writing and life experiences and interests as a Sri Lankan moving to Canada. “Diaspora and Trauma” looks at the question of how artists portray trauma in literature and performance, particularly in relation to the issue of trauma as experienced by diasporic people, first in the mother land and then the trauma brought on by migration. The second panel, “Pardon: Is Accountability for Past Wrongs Necessary for a Person or Nation to Forward” looks at forgiveness, reconciliation and accountability in a global and local context. What is ‘Art’s’ response to this topical subject, which grips many nations in both the East and West? What is its response to the challenges inherent in reconciliation? What does Art contribute to achieving these ends? The third panel, “Buddhist Narrative and Art” looks at the role Buddhist literature and art plays in illustrating Buddhist ethics. This panel explores how artists and writers, both contemporary and in the past, interpret Buddhist philosophical concepts in their work. How have writers and visual artists grappled with the contradictions and grey areas and complications in Buddhist ethics?
Thematic Series: PUBLIC HEALTH LAW AND POLICY IN ASIA
Convenor: Pitman Potter, Faculty of Law
Dates: Sept 19, Oct 15, Nov 19, Jan 21, Feb 11, March 18, April 15
Public health policy in Asia has become a issue of increasing public attention. From the SARS pandemic of 2003 to more recent concerns with avian flu and questions about food and pharmaceutical product safety, people are increasingly aware that national boundaries and geographic distances no longer offer protection against the global spread of disease and injury. As well, many people who have personal and professional links with Asia are increasingly interested in health policy matters. This lecture series will provide an opportunity for internationally recognized specialists to speak to issues of current concern on public health policy in Asia.
Thematic Series: LOVE: INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES ON THE ETHICS AND EMOTION OF LOVE
Convenors: and Christine Evans, Department of Theatre and Film
Dates: Sept 24, Oct 24, Nov 28, Jan 28, Feb 27, March 27
This lecture series will interrogate the discourses, emotions and ethics of love. A word and feeling with which we are all familiar, love nonetheless eludes definition. Considering its ever-shifting position in cultural and scientific spheres, its status in contemporary discourses of peace and justice, and its many guises of charity, eroticism, and kinship, love allows us to approach a global politics through an intimate but universal feeling. Embracing the ambiguity of love as a conceptual springboard for discussion and debate, this series addresses a topic that is ever-present in the public consciousness. In order to facilitate this dynamic understanding of love and its vicissitudes, an interdisciplinary array of speakers who have all written extensively on love in various scholarly and popular contexts was brought together.
Thematic Series: Philippine-Canadian Crosscurrents: Thinking of the World through Global Migration
Convenors: , Mark L. Santiago, Teilhard Paradela, Liu Institute for Global Issues (Phillipines Studies Series)
Dates: Jan 30, Feb 13, March 13, April 17
The talks in this series will explore global migration, particularly on the people moving between Canada and the Philippines. Geography, anthropology, and sociology experts will discuss several themes including: the role of the state in regulating, managing and monitoring migration; the dependence of migrants on recruiters in their job placement; the evolution of ideas about feminism and masculinities through gendered migration; the reconfiguration of the notion of the ‘family’, the intense dynamics between sending (i.e. the Philippines) and receiving (i.e. Canada) countries; and how such dynamics manifest in particular professions (i.e. domestic care giving and formal health care work).
Senior Scholars’ Series: The Passions that Drive Scholarly Life
Convenor: , Department of Medical Genetics
Dates: Sept 25, Oct 23, Nov 27, Jan 27, Feb 26, March 26
This series is convened on behalf of Green College and the UBC Association of Professors Emeriti. It provides opportunities for senior academics to describe their personal experiences and journeys through their own academic careers. Presenters will distil a lifetime of scholarly work. Some will examine the new projects that have grown out of that work; others may reflect upon their changing attitudes to university life. The series is multidisciplinary and gives expression to the speakers’ mature and personal insights. The speakers hope to engage Green College residents and other graduate students with senior faculty, to expose the academic community to UBC’s most experienced academics, and to welcome the greater UTown/Point Grey neighbourhood to the richness of academic life at UBC.
environment and Society Series
Convenor: Graeme Wynn, Department of Geography
Dates: Oct 9, Nov 6, Dec 4, TBA
The Environment and Society group welcomes anthropologists, geographers, historians, legal scholars, political scientists, sociologists and others interested in the relations between humans and nature, people and place, land and society to its varied slate of talks and activities.
Law and Society Series
Convenors: , Department of Sociology; Margot Young, Faculty of Law
Dates: Sept 20, Oct 11, 25, Nov 8, Jan 10, Feb 14, March 21
Law and Society has a long and interdisciplinary tradition at the University of British Columbia. Building upon this, the speaker series at Green College will facilitate cross-disciplinary dialogue that spans the Social Sciences and Humanities and that addresses questions related to law in the broadest sense. This year, the series will showcase the work of junior and senior scholars doing cutting-edge research in law and society on topics including Aboriginal rights, free expression, migration, critical legal and social theory, and legal history.
Play Chthonics: New Canadian Readings
Convenor: , Department of English
Dates: Sept 19, Oct 3, 4, 17, Nov 21, Jan 16, Feb 27, March 20
Play Chthonics has been presenting readings by innovative and exciting poets since 2007 at Green College. Organized and curated by graduate students in the Department of English, this cutting-edge reading series offers some of the best and most challenging new work by both young and established writers from across the country. This year, featured writers will include Peter Culley, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Barbara Langhorst, Gillian Jerome, Garry Thomas Morse, Jamie Reid, W. H. New, Jen Currin, Ken Babstock, Jan Zwicky and Robert Bringhurst. In addition, Play Chthonics will be sponsoring the first in a set of talks on avant garde poetics, a lecture by the American poet Rachel Blau Duplessis. These provocative and unmissable events are all free and open to the public, so be sure to come and hear some of the best poetry happening today.
Science and Society Series
Convenor: John Beatty, Department of Philosophy
Dates: Sept 6, Oct 4, Nov 1, Jan 3, Feb 7, March 7
Science and Society features speakers from the constituent areas of Science and Technology Studies: history, philosophy, sociology, rhetoric, cultural and critical studies of science and technology. The talks discuss issues in science and technology as human practices and are aimed at issues of wide appeal and relevance.
HUMAN EVOLUTION, COGNITION AND CULTURE: The Evolution of Religion, Morality and Cooperation
Convenors: , Department of Asian Studies; Matthew Bedke, Department of Philosophy, , Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SFU; Kiley Hamlin, Department of Psychology, , Department of Psychology; Joe Henrich, Department of Psychology;, Department of Psychology; Ted Slingerland, Department of Asian Studies
Dates: Sept 10, Oct 1, Nov 5, Jan 7, Feb 4, March 4
The evolutionary and cognitive sciences have recently experienced an explosion of work on religion, cooperation, and morality, and in particular on their interrelationships. The emerging framework promises to re-energize these long-languishing topics by bringing a fully interdisciplinary approach to these topics that synthesizes the integrative rigor and precision of the evolutionary sciences with the depth of history and ethnography. This series will feature both leading researchers on these topics from Vancouver and experts from across the globe.
Population Health Series
Convenor: , Department of Sociology
Dates: Oct 10, Nov 14, Jan 9, Feb 6, March 13
UBC is internationally recognized for its contributions to the creation of “Population Health” as an interdisciplinary field concerned with the powerful role of a host of non-medical determinants of health, development, and well-being across the life course, particularly social and economic factors. The Population Health Speakers Series aims to bring together faculty, students, practitioners and policymakers interested in these issues. The series will have a particular focus on the social sciences and their intersections with other disciplines within population health. Each monthly meeting will feature an invited scholar who is conducting cutting-edge research integrating innovative theoretical perspectives and/or developing novel methods for use in advancing population health science and improving practice and policy. The speaker's presentation and subsequent "brainstorming" dialogue with the audience will be aimed to appeal to a broad range of interests and have great potential for informing the ideas, research, and practices of faculty, students, and local agency representatives.
Eurasia States and Societies: Past and PResent
Convenors: Alexia Bloch, Department of Anthropology, and , Department of Political Science
Dates: Sept 27, Oct 29, Nov 15, Jan 24, Feb 28, March 28
This brand new series developed from an earlier lively but informal interdisciplinary discussion group of local faculty members and graduate students from the humanities and social sciences. Featuring talks by political scientists, anthropologists, historians, and an independent documentary filmmaker, this series will explore themes of how the past influences the present and future of the post-Communist Eurasian region, the role of memory in shaping contemporary identities, and the evolving nature of states in the region.
early music Series
Convenors: Jose Verstappen, , Alicia Hansen, Early Music Vancouver
Dates: Oct 18, Jan 17, Jan 31, Feb 13
Early Music Vancouver is pleased to return this season for the fourth successive year with a series of Thursday evening chamber music concerts at the Coach House, featuring artists who will be appearing also in its Main Winter Series. These concerts will offer Green College residents and friends an opportunity to hear early music in the intimate and informal setting which is eminently suitable for the baroque and early classical repertoires performed in this series.
Composers' Collective Series
Convenor: , School of Music
Dates: TBA
The Composers’ Collective is a Vancouver-based organization for composers to promote and perform contemporary music. Their major goals are to nurture a community of creative musicians, to create opportunities where people interested in the arts can converge and learn from each other, to raise the profile of members’ artistic voices through public concerts and media exposure, to build connections to the wider artistic community by collaborating with other arts organizations in Vancouver, and to foster mentorship between established and emerging artists. The Composer's Collective Series at Green College will present modern music covering the entire contemporary stylistic spectrum, through performances by Canadian musicians and lectures by local composers. The performers and speakers will place contemporary music in the context of historical musical aesthetic movements, and will attempt to involve the public in the triumphs and challenges of a traditional art form in an ever-evolving cultural scene.
