Faculty Publications (Humanities)
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Item Forgotten whales, fading codfish: Perceptions of "natural" ecosystems inform visions of future recovery(People and Nature, 2023) McClenachan, Loren; Neal, Benjamin1. Perceptions of past ecological change affect views of current ecosystem state, but how do baselines help to shape stakeholders' visions of an idealized future? 2. Here, we investigate links between perceptions of natural baselines and visions for the nearshore Gulf of Maine among a key stakeholder group, active lobster fishers. We ask three related questions: (1) What do fishers perceive as a ‘natural’ Gulf of Maine? (2) How do perceptions of the past predict individual and collective visions of an ideal future? and (3) How is existing management perceived as supporting these visions? 3. We found that fishers perceived the ecosystem to be ‘natural’ an average of one decade before they started fishing. Three species dominated views of natural systems: cod Gadus morhua, lobster Homarus americanus, and herring Clupea harengus, but while long-time fishers associated abundant cod with a natural nearshore Gulf of Maine, memories of a historically cod-rich Gulf of Maine were fading among some younger fishers who began their careers after the cod crash in the 1990s. Perceptions of ‘natural’ ecosystems dictated future visions for the majority of taxa; on average, fishers remembered and desired abundant cod and herring, but perceived halibut Hippoglossus hippoglossus and endangered right whales Eubalaena glacialis to have always been rare. 4. Fishers described a vision for the future based on views of past ecological and social baselines, including fisheries deconsolidation and diversification, but expressed a lack of shared vision with and trust in federal management institutions to achieve these goals. In particular, memories of cod abundance in the 1970s and 1980s were coupled with memories of a diversified and accessible fishery, but fishers doubted that the recovery of cod would result in their restored access to cod fisheries. 5. Together our results demonstrate that past personal experiences limit perceptions of what is possible, highlighting both the value and limitations of local ecological knowledge in places that have experienced ecological change over centuries. They also demonstrate how stakeholder perceptions of both social and ecological baselines shape visions for future ecosystems but are mediated by contemporary issues like trust in institutions and fisheries access.Item 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 Everyday acts of resurgence: Indigenous approaches to everydayness in fatherhood(New Diversities, 2017) Corntassel, Jeff; Scow, MickIndigenous activism and resurgence are often analyzed at the state or macro-level because of the high visibility and large-scale nature of these actions. However, as Kwakwaka’wakw scholar Sarah Hunt and Cindy Holmes observe in their 2015 article, “…the daily actions undertaken by individual Indigenous people, families, and communities often go unacknowledged but are no less vital to decolonial processes.” These are challenges that we take up in examining the “everyday” – those often unseen, unacknowledged actions that renew our peoplehood and generate community resurgence. This holds important implications for decolonizing our notions of time and place and increasingly Indigenous scholars, such as Maori scholar Brendan Hokowhitu (2009), find that Indigenous discussions of the everyday tend to be framed either in terms of “Indigenous political struggles, especially in regard to jurisprudence, or in terms of ‘victimhood’ conceived of as the genealogical descendent of the trauma of colonization”. How then can we re-imagine and re-assert Indigenous everyday actions that emphasize the intimate, lived experiences of Indigenous peoples? This article examines how the everyday can be an important emancipatory site for Indigenous resurgence against colonial power. Focusing on fatherhood and the everyday shifts our analysis away from the state-centered, colonial manifestations of power to the relational, experiential, and dynamic nature of Indigenous resurgence, which offers important implications for re-thinking gendered relationships, family health and well-being, and governance. These daily acts of resurgence, at the community, family and personal levels, can be critical sites of resistance, education, and transformative change.Item 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).Item A phonetic case study of Tŝilhqot'in /z/ and /zʕ/(Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 2022) Bird, Sonya; Onosson, SkyThis paper provides an acoustic description of /z/ and /zʕ/ in Tŝilhqot’in (Northern Dene). These sounds are noted by Cook (1993, 2013) to show lenition and some degree of laterality in coda position. Based on recordings made in 2014 with a single, mother-tongue speaker of Tŝilhqot’in, we describe their acoustic properties and examine their distribution as a function of prosodic position and segmental environment. We find that they vary along three dimensions: manner (fricative–approximant), degree of retraction (non-retracted–retracted), and laterality (non-lateral–lateral). In addition, some tokens have a characteristic ‘buzziness’, which has been associated with the Chinese front apical vowel (Shao & Ridouane 2018, 2019) and the Swedish ‘Viby-i’ (Westberger 2019). We argue that ‘lenition’ (Kirchner 2004, Ennever, Meakins & Round 2017) can only account for some of the observed variation and suggest that both /z/ and /zʕ/ are specified for two tongue articulations: tongue tip/blade and tongue body (Laver 1994), encompassing laterality (and concomitant retraction) in addition to the primary coronal gesture.Item Reflexive clitics are verbal, not pronominal(Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 2022) McGinnis, MarthaI argue that reflexive clitics are not pronominal, but verbal. Cross-linguistically, reflexive clitics can realize either an unaccusative or an unergative Voice head, both of which allow anaphoric interpretations (as suggested by the work of Reinhart and Siloni 2004, 2005). I contrast the anaphoric Voice analysis with two well-known pronominal analyses of reflexive clitics: one, proposed for French, postulating an anaphoric external argument (McGinnis 1998, Sportiche 1998), and another, proposed for Icelandic figure reflexives, postulating an expletive argument in [Spec, pP] (Wood 2014, 2015; Wood and Marantz 2017). Evidence against the external-argument analysis for French includes: a language-internal contrast between unergative and unaccusative anaphoric clauses (Labelle 2008); the absence of a c-command requirement on the licensing of anaphoric Voice; the absence of a lethal ambiguity effect with anaphoric Voice (McGinnis 1998, 2004); and the interpretation of focus constructions with seul ‘only’ (Sportiche 2014, Haiden 2019). Evidence against the Icelandic expletive-argument analysis includes: the observation that not all figure reflexives have a pP, or allow an impersonal passive (Moser 2021); and the difficulty of extending the analysis to other languages with reflexive clitics – in particular, the difficulty of accounting for the widespread observation that anaphoric clitics are restricted to referential dependencies involving the external argument.Item Supporting adult Syrian learners with refugee experience in Canada: Research-based insights for practitioners(Journal of Education, 2022) Huang, Li-ShihFrom November 2015 to October 2020, Canada had welcomed 44,620 Syrian refugees to more than 350 communities across the country. In 2019, it further surpassed the United States and Australia in the number of refugees settled. Lacking the necessary language skills for living and working in a new country is one of the most critical barriers refugees face. This paper aims to inform language-teaching professionals about pertinent linguistic and nonlinguistic issues as well as pedagogical implications associated with supporting adult Syrian refugee learners, drawing both on the literature more broadly and on the author’s research in the Canadian context.Item Identifying offcut zone parchment in medieval manuscripts(ManuSciences, 2019) Lahey, Stephanie J.Medieval European book artisans sometimes recruited offcuts—flawed, irregular, lower-quality parchment scraps created as by-products of the parchment-making process—as writing support. Given the less desirable traits of these ‘seconds’, attention to how they were used might shed light on concealed aspects of medieval book production and readership, such as informal or downmarket copying. Yet investigating offcut use first requires a reasonably reliable strategy for identifying offcuts. This paper summarizes a novel, biochemically informed, corpus-based study which evaluated 21 features specified in the existing literature on offcuts, ultimately establishing a preliminary set of diagnostic traits via linear regression analysis.Item Revenge is a genre best served old: Apocalypse in Christian Right literature and politics(Religions, 2021) Douglas, ChristopherApocalypse is a phenomenology of disorder that entails a range of religious affects and experiences largely outside normative expectations of benevolent religion. Vindication, judgment, revenge, resentment, righteous hatred of one’s enemies, the wish for their imminent destruction, theological certainty, the triumphant display of right authority, right judgement, and just punishment—these are the primary affects. As a literary genre and a worldview, apocalypse characterizes both the most famous example of evangelical fiction—the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins—and the U.S. Christian Right’s politics. This article’s methodological contribution is to return us to the beginnings of apocalypse in Biblical and parabiblical literature to better understand the questions of theodicy that Left Behind renews in unexpected ways. Conservative white Christians use apocalypse to articulate their experience as God’s chosen but persecuted people in a diversely populated cosmos, wherein their political foes are the enemies of God. However strange the supersessionist appropriation, apocalypse shapes their understanding of why God lets them suffer so—and may also signal an underlying fear about the power and attention of their deity.Item Precursors and antecedents of the Anthropocene(Social Sciences, 2022) Heyd, ThomasThere seem to be two sorts of debates about precursors and antecedents to the Anthropocene. One concerns the question whether the concept of the Anthropocene was captured by earlier terms, such as “noösphere” or “the Anthropozoic Era”. The other concerns whether the full-scale transformation of Earth systems was already, at least partially, triggered sometime prior to the 19th century Industrial Revolution. This paper takes a wider perspective, which may be seen as orthogonal to these debates, by enquiring whether there are other biological agents in Earth history who may have generated a new Epoch, and also by seeking to identify historical and prehistoric antecedents in human–nature relations that may foreshadow the Anthropocene. One conclusion is that humans are certainly not the first biotic agents becoming drivers of planetary system changes. Another conclusion, ironically, is that some cultural innovations that were adaptive under earlier conditions presently have become collectively mal-adaptive and contributory to the hazards of our new Epoch. Finally, it is suggested that while it may be unclear whether we can manage the socio-political challenges of our times, our adaptive versatility in principle ought to suffice to successfully manage the climate challenges of the Anthropocene.Item Rock sanctuaries, sacred landscapes, and the making of the Iberian pantheon(Religions, 2022) Sinner, Alejandro G.; Ferrer i Jané, JoanSanctuaries are common spaces of interaction between humankind and the gods. In many religious systems, mountains and other elevated topographical features are known to have formed part of these privileged spaces of communication. It is not surprising that open-air and, in many cases, rock sanctuaries are the cultic spaces par excellence among the pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula. In this article, we offer a more nuanced picture of these architectonically humble but culturally rich sacred spaces by studying the Palaeohispanic inscriptions recorded in rock sanctuaries located in the territories of the Iberian peoples (fourth–first centuries BCE). Special attention will be paid to the corpus of inscriptions in Cerdanya (Pyrénées-Orientales and Catalonia), where more than 150 texts have so far been identified. After a brief introduction contextualizing the Rock Sanctuaries, the Iberian language, and the epigraphic habit of its speakers, the first section of our article analyses the characteristics that enable us to interpret most of these inscriptions as religious and votive formulations. The second half of the paper discusses what these inscriptions can reveal about the Iberian pantheon and how these rock sanctuaries formed a consolidated religious landscape that was to survive the Roman conquest. The reinterpretation of the Celtiberian sanctuary of Peñalba de Villastar will be fundamental to put forward the hypothesis that, while Iberian and Celtiberian places of worship and pantheons had points of contact, they were mostly dissociated from each other prior to the Roman arrival.