Faculty Publications (Humanities)
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Item The great naval battle of Ottawa: How admirals, scientists, and politicians impeded the development of high technology in Canada's wartime navy(University of Toronto Press, 1989) Zimmerman, DavidDuring the Second World War, the Royal Canadian Navy played a vital role in the Battle of the Atlantic, second only to that of the Royal Navy. But in its sea war against the German submarines, the RCN was hampered by battles of another kind. Mackenzie King's nationalistic policies blocked it from cooperating with other forces, and the Royal Navy failed to give it the high-technology equipment needed to detect and destroy U-boats. In the face of these obstacles the RCN was forced to develop from an almost non-existent pre-war infrastructure a system of supplying its escort vessels with the necessary electronic detection systems and anti-submarine weaponry. The Great Naval Rattle of Ottawa tells the story of how Canadian naval officers, scientists, and politicians tried to come to grips with the harsh realities of this war of high technology in the Atlantic. It was a battle fought not on the high seas but in the offices of the nation's capital. David Zimmerman offers an account of national failure. The reasons were diverse - the limited pre-war infrastructure, poor leadership, naval conservatism, inadequate international technical liaison, and the Admiralty's refusal to give reasonable assistance to Canadian efforts. One key factor was the failure to integrate effectively the scientist with the sailor, caused by the different institutional goals of the navy and the National Research Council of Canada. Zimmerman suggests that C.J. Mackenzie, the NRC president, was an empire builder rather man an effective manager, and lacked the inspired genius to link science with the navy. By focusing on the relations and achievements of the various institutions involved and on the personalities who influenced them, David Zimmerman debunks the myth of Canadian scientific success in the war. What remains in its place is an account of mismanagement, self-interest, and political expediency.Item L2 reading assessment from a sociocultural theory perspective: The contributions of dynamic assessment(Education Sciences, 2024) Kushki, Ali; Nassaji, HosseinOur understanding of assessing L2 reading has significantly expanded in recent years, including both theoretical and practical aspects. There is a growing consensus that reading comprehension involves multiple skills and subskills. Classroom-based assessment practices reflecting such conceptualizations have also become widely utilized. This article explores the Vygotskyan sociocultural theory (SCT) and its implications for L2 reading assessment, with a specific focus on dynamic assessment as an effective classroom-based approach for L2 reading and literacy instruction. We will review the research that has applied DA principles to the assessment and teaching of L2 reading. We conclude by outlining potential avenues for future DA research and L2 reading instruction.Item Book reviews: Tomorrow sex will be good again(Sexualities, 2021) Cacchioni, TheaItem The history of History(Department of History, University of Victoria, 2012) Roy, PatItem What physicalism could be(Analytic Philosophy, 2024) Raven, MichaelThe physicalist credo is that the world is physical. But some phenomena, such as minds, morals, and mathematics, appear to be nonphysical. While an uncompromising physicalism would reject these, a conciliatory physicalism need not if it can account for them in terms of an underlying physical basis. Any such account must refer to the nonphysical. But will not this unavoidable reference to the nonphysical conflict with the physicalist credo? This essay aims to clarify this problem and introduce a novel solution that relies on a distinction between “circumstantial” facts that are based in the circumstances and “acircumstantial” facts that are not. This is used in two ways. First, physicalism is restricted to circumstantial facts: Only they must have a physical basis that does not refer to the nonphysical. Second, facts accounting for the nonphysical are not restricted to the circumstantial: They may refer to the nonphysical if they are acircumstantial. Facts about how the physical accounts for the nonphysical therefore do not conflict with the physicalist's credo. This provides a credible answer to what physicalism could be.Item Bionovelty and ecological restoration(Restoration Ecology, 2024) Volpe, John P.; Higgs, Eric; Jeschke, Jonathan M.; Barnhill, Katie; Brunk, Conrad; Dudney, Joan; Govers, Laura; Hobbs, Richard; Keenleyside, Karen; Murphy, Stephen D.; Seddon, Philip J.; Sudweeks, Jayce; Telhan, Orkan; Voicescu, SoniaAnthropogenic activity has irreparably altered the ecological fabric of Earth. The emergence of ecological novelty from diverse drivers of change is an increasingly challenging dimension of ecosystem restoration. At the same time, the restorationist's tool kit continues to grow, including a variety of powerful and increasingly prevalent technologies. Thus, ecosystem restoration finds itself at the center of intersecting challenges. How should we respond to increasingly common emergence of environmental system states with little or no historical precedent, whilst considering the appropriate deployment of potentially consequential and largely untested interventions that may give rise to organisms, system states, and/or processes that are likewise without historical precedent? We use the term bionovelty to encapsulate these intersecting themes and examine the implications of bionovelty for ecological restoration.Item Evangelical literary tradition and moral foundations theory(The Journal of American Culture, 2024) Douglas, ChristopherItem L2 reading assessment from a sociocultural theory perspective: The contributions of dynamic assessment(Educational Sciences, 2024) Kushki, Ali; Nassaji, HosseinOur understanding of assessing L2 reading has significantly expanded in recent years, including both theoretical and practical aspects. There is a growing consensus that reading comprehension involves multiple skills and subskills. Classroom-based assessment practices reflecting such conceptualizations have also become widely utilized. This article explores the Vygotskyan sociocultural theory (SCT) and its implications for L2 reading assessment, with a specific focus on dynamic assessment as an effective classroom-based approach for L2 reading and literacy instruction. We will review the research that has applied DA principles to the assessment and teaching of L2 reading. We conclude by outlining potential avenues for future DA research and L2 reading instruction.Item Cetaceans in the city: Orca captivity, animal rights, and environmental values in Vancouver(University of Calgary Press, 2017) Colby, JasonAnimal Metropolis brings a Canadian perspective to the growing field of animal history, ranging across species and cities, from the beavers who engineered Stanley Park to the carthorses who shaped the city of Montreal. Some essays consider animals as spectacle: orca captivity in Vancouver, polar bear tourism in Churchill, Manitoba, fish on display in the Dominion Fisheries Museum, and the racialized memory of Jumbo the elephant in St. Thomas, Ontario. Others examine the bodily intimacies of shared urban spaces: the regulation of rabid dogs in Banff, the maternal politics of pure milk in Hamilton and the circulation of tetanus bacilli from horse to human in Toronto. Another considers the marginalization of women in Canada’s animal welfare movement. The authors collectively push forward from a historiography that features nonhuman animals as objects within human-centered inquiries to a historiography that considers the eclectic contacts, exchanges, and cohabitation of human and nonhuman animals. With contributions by: Kristoffer Archibald, Jason Colby, George Colpitts, Joanna Dean, Carla Hustak, Darcy Ingram, Sean Kheraj, William Knight, Sherry Olson, Rachel Poliquin, and Christabelle SethnaItem Can the congenital Zika virus syndrome crisis contribute to challenging contemporary discourses against abortion legalization in Brazil?(ethic@, 2018) Amoroso Gonçalves, Tamara; Rosendo, DanielaIn this paper we will explore the widespread of congenital Zika virus syndrome in Brazil associated with abyssal social inequalities as a trigger to push for abortion legalization from a human rights perspective. Brazil has a very restrictive regulation on abortion, which allows the procedure only when the life of the mother is in danger, in cases of pregnancy resulting from sexual violence, and when the fetus suffers from anencephaly. Due to the growing influence of ultra-conservative forces in the Parliament, the legislative debate on abortion has been blocked for many years in Brazil, making social movements seek the courts for advancements in this area. In this paper, we will present general data on the Zika epidemic, social inequalities and unequal access to health services as a background for the discussion on advancing abortion legalization in the country through judicial procedures, from a human rights perspective.Item Life beyond the state: Regenerating Indigenous international relations and everyday challenges to settler colonialism(Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, 2021) Corntassel, JeffItem On the offences against the Person Act, 1828(BRANCH: Britain, Representations, and Nineteenth-Century History, 2013) Surridge, LisaThe early nineteenth century saw a new valuing of self-restraint and heightened social anxiety about interpersonal violence and unruly behaviour. The 1828 Offenses Against the Person Act streamlined penalties for assault, battery, rape, infanticide, attempted murder, manslaughter, and murder. It also granted to magistrates summary powers over common assaults, making prosecution of such offenses quicker and more accessible to the poor. Part of Sir Robert Peel’s larger program of legal reform, it heralded a new focus on social regulation, public order, and manliness as self-discipline.Item A conversation with Indonesian filmmaker Candra Aditya(Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, 2021) Aditya, Candra; Fox, RichardThis interview with the Indonesian filmmaker Candra Aditya reflects on several months of collaborative work with a small group of scholars specializing in film, language, religion, and culture. In addition to remarks on the short film Dewi pulang, the discussion also addresses a range of more general issues pertaining to filmmaking in post-authoritarian Indonesia.Item Universality of articulatory conflict resolution: Evidence from Salish languages(Northwest Journal of Linguistics, 2009) Bird, Sonya; Leonard, JanetPrevious research has shown that in cases where two adjacent target sounds create an articulatory conflict, speakers tend either to insert an epenthetic element between the two (fully achieved) sounds or to compromise the articulation of one of the sounds. In this paper we focus on the pronunciation of /qi/ and /iq/ sequences in SENĆOŦEN. We show that /qi/ sequences are pronounced with a retracted vowel ([qI]) whereas /iq/ sequences are pronounced with a transitional fricative [ixq]. These results are compared to the patterns described in other Salish languages, and discussed in terms of their implications for phonetic typology.Item AMALIA, A Matching Algorithm for Lead Isotope Analyses: Formulation and proof of concept at the Roman foundry of Fuente Spitz (Jaén, Spain)(Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2023) Rodríguez, Javier; Sinner, Alejandro G.; Martínez-Chico, David; Santos Zalduegui, José FranciscoThis article presents A Matching Algorithm for Lead Isotope Analyses (AMALIA) that yields analytical coincidences in lead isotope databases, allowing a fast selection of potential candidates for metal provenance. As a proof of concept, potential ore sources for 29 Roman lead artifacts from the archaeological site of Fuente Spitz (Jaén, Spain) are provided. Additionally, a reassessment of legacy, TIMS lead-isotope analyses is conducted by re-analysis of 26 galena samples from nearby mining districts by MC-ICP-MS. The study demonstrates the accuracy and reliability of AMALIA and stresses the need to assess the isotope ratio data obtained without lead isotopic tracers (spikes) by TIMS carefully on a case-to-case basis. At the archaeological level, our study shows that the foundries and smelting sites at Fuente Spitz and Cerro del Plomo processed galena ores from the mining districts of La Carolina and Linares to produce a variety of lead products and lead ingots that have been found at several places thorough Europe, thereby providing tangible evidence of the regional and long-distance commercial circuits that these foundries were supplying.Item Oral-laryngeal timing in glottalised resonants(Journal of Phonetics, 2008) Bird, Sonya; Caldecott, Marion; Campbell, Fiona; Gick, Bryan; Shaw, Patricia A.Although previous studies of intergestural timing in multi-gesture segments have identified some consistent patterns, fundamental questions remain about the underlying causes of these patterns. Hypotheses based on universal perceptual or biomechanical restrictions (Gick, Campbell, Oh & Tamburri-Watt, 2006) have proven difficult to test because of confounding factors, e.g. anatomical coupling (Sproat & Fujimura, 1993) and aerodynamic necessity (Kingston, 1990). The cross-linguistically rare class of glottalised resonants (GRs) involves oral and laryngeal gestures, which are neither anatomically nor aerodynamically interdependent, thereby providing a revealing test case for these hypotheses. If intergestural timing is determined by universal perceptual factors, GR timing patterns should be consistent across languages. This comparative study of GRs in three endangered British Columbian languages reveals distinct patterns: the timing of GRs is consistently pre-glottalised in Nuu-chah-nulth, post-glottalised in N¬e÷kepmxcin, and dependent upon syllable position in St’át’imcets. These findings indicate that a strong hypothesis based on perceptual recovery (e.g. Silverman, 1997) must be rejected, and suggest instead that intergestural timing must be specified on a language-specific basis.Item Seeing Speech: Using Praat to Visualize Hul’q’umi’num’ Sounds(Language Documentation & Conservation, 2023) Bird, Sonya; Claxton, Rae Anne; Percival, MaidaAs is typical across Turtle Island, the Hul’q’umi’num’ (Coast Salish) language revitalization movement is being carried by adult language learners (Haynes 2010; McIvor 2015) but becoming a proficient Hul’q’umi’num’ speaker is challenging given the complexity of its sound system. In this paper, we share our experiences using the speech analysis software Praat (Boersma & Weenink 2018) to help in our pronunciation work. We describe the types of pronunciation patterns that can benefit from Praat-based speech visualization, including whole sound adjustments, glottalization adjustments, and timing adjustments. We then discuss how this tool has helped us, by providing tangible feedback on our speech, by allowing us to learn by observing and modelling (a more gentle and culturally appropriate form of learning than explicit instruction), and by learning from Elders through their voices, even when they are not able to be present during pronunciation sessions. In our experience, these benefits combine to increase the confidence that learners feel in working on their pronunciation and therefore in becoming more proficient speakers.Item A Cross-Cultural Look at Child-Stealing Witches(Coyote Papers, 2000) Bird, SonyaOne of the important figures in Lummi mythology is Ch'eni, the Giant Woman (Ts'uXaelech) who comes during the night and steals children. When I first read the story of Ch'eni, I was struck by the similarity of this story to the well-known German tale by the Grimm brothers, 'Hansel and Gretel'. In fact, the story of Ch'eni is at first glance remarkably similar to several other children's tales in various cultures across the world. The goal of this paper is to explore the more subtle similarities and differences between the Lummi story and other stories in different cultures, in terms of the content of the discourse and the structure of the discourse used in the texts. We shall see that the Lummi story is in fact quite unique in its combination of elements of discourse content and structure. This makes the apparent similarity between it and other stories from around the world even more striking. Indeed, despite the numerous differences in terms of how the basic theme of the story is developed in Lummi and other cultures, the theme comes across clearly in all of the stories. This leads the reader (or listener) to mistakenly conclude that not only the main theme, but all aspects of the different stories are the same. The structure of the paper is as follows: in section 2, I outline the Lummi story of Ch'eni. In section 3, I discuss the content of this story, comparing it to that of /q'ɬəmáiəs/ in Sooke, Mosquito in Tlingit, Ho'ok in Tohono O'odham, Baba Yaga in Russian, Hansel and Gretel in German, and Yamamba in Japanese.' Finally, in section 4, I compare the discourse structure of the Lummi story to that in the other stories mentioned above.Item Pronunciation among Adult Indigenous Language Learners: the case of SENĆOŦEN /t’/(Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 2020) Bird, SonyaThis paper describes the features that set adult Indigenous language learning apart from other types second language learning, examining in particular the role that unique teaching and learning contexts might play in the acquisition of pronunciation. As a case study, the pronunciation of SENĆOŦEN (Coast Salish) /t’/ is compared across four groups of speakers, including two groups of adult learners. Acoustic analysis shows that /t’/, described as a weak ejective in previous work, is now consistently realized as a strong ejective, especially among learners and teachers. These findings are discussed with reference to factors relevant to language learning and teaching in general, as well as to ones relevant to Indigenous language learning and teaching in particular.Item Belarusian(Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 2021) Bird, Sonya; Litvin, NatalliaBelarusian (ISO 639-3 BEL) is an Eastern Slavic language spoken by roughly seven million people in the Republic of Belarus (Zaprudski 2007; Census of the Republic of Belarus 2009), a land-locked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Within the Belarusian language, the two main dialects are North Eastern and South Western (Avanesaǔ et al. 1963; Lapkoǔskaya 2008; Smol’skaya 2011). Two additional regional forms of Belarusian can be distinguished: the Middle Belarusian dialectal group, incorporating some features of North Eastern and South Western dialects together with certain characteristics of its own, and the West-Polesian (or Brest-Pinsk) dialectal group. The latter group is more distinct linguistically from the other Belarusian dialects and is in many respects close to the Ukrainian language (Lapkoǔskaya 2008; Smol’skaya 2011). The focus of this illustration is Standard Belarusian1, which is based on Middle Belarusian speech varieties. For details on the phonetic differences across dialects, the reader is referred to Avanesaǔ et al. (1963) and Lapkoǔskaya (2008).