No. 524 - October 9, 2024

  • Coming Events:

    - FIMSWrites Fall Edition
    - Universities Art Association of Canada Conference
    - Supporting Safer Classrooms: Training for FIMS grad students
    - Communicating Solidarity in the Neoliberal University: Challenges and Solutions
    - Decolonial Practices in International Cultural Relations
    - Save the Date - Breaking Barriers: Womxn Imams in Conversation

  • Important Dates:

    - Friday, October 11, 2024 - Senate (1:30 PM, SH)
    - Monday, October 14, 2024 - Thanksgiving Holiday (no classes, FIMS offices closed)
    - Monday, October 14 - Friday, October 18, 2024 - Reading Week (undergrads), Research Week (MLIS + MMJC)
    - Wednesday, October 23 - Friday, October 25, 2024 - Autumn Convocation (FIMS ceremony, 10 AM, Friday)

  • Publications & Presentations:

    - Revna Altiok
    - Juan Bello
    - Sara Falahatpisheh
    - Amanda Grzyb
    - Santasil Mallik
    - Selma Purac
    - Anabel Quan-Haase
    - Effie Sapuridis
    - Sarah Smith
    - André Wolmer de Melo

  • In the Media:

    - Alissa Centivany
    - Joanna Redden
    - Starling Centre (Alissa Centivany, Alison Hearn, Joanna Redden, Luke Stark)

  • Additional Activities of Note:

    - Danica Facca
    - Sarah Smith

  • News from the FIMS Grad Library:

    - Fall 2024 Research Week Hours
    - Upcoming Events at the Libarary

  • News from Western Libraries:

    - Research Skills Workshops

  • Next Issue:


Coming Events


FIMSWrites Fall Edition
Every Wednesday
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
FNB 4130, or Zoom
Do you expect to have assignment, story, article, report, thesis, and/or book writing deadlines coming up this term? Does having other people writing around you help keep you on-task? Then join us for FIMSWrites, an informal initiative to provide some solidarity in the sometimes-solitary writing process. What it is: a group of people sitting silently together working on their individual writing projects for a morning, with a mid-morning coffee, snack, and socializing break (fika). What it's not: a writing tutorial or workshop. Join us in person or on Zoom (check your Western email for a message from Pam McKenzie to find the Meeting ID).

Universities Art Association of Canada Conference
October 24-26, 2024
Western University
John Labatt Visual Arts Centre (in-person)
Associate Professor Sarah Smith is on the organizing committee for this annual conference being hosted by the Visual Arts department in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities. There are FIMS community members participating and keynote lectures may be of interest to FIMS students and scholars. For more information see the conference programme.

Supporting Safer Classrooms: Training for FIMS Grad Students
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
FNB 4070
Supporting Safer Classrooms is interactive training developed by the Wellness and Equity Education Team here on campus and focuses on building up our skills around power use, boundary setting, intervention strategies, and managing difficult behaviour from a place of empathy, all in order to create safer classrooms, meetings and labs. Check your Western email for full details.

Communicating Solidarity in the Neoliberal University: Challenges and Solutions
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Attend in person: FNB Creative Commons (2nd floor)
Attend online: Zoom details TBA
Hosted by Professor James Compton, current FIMS Rogers Chair. Featuring panelists Peter McInnis, President of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), Patti Dalton, President of the London and District Labour Council, Evan Fox-Decent, President of the Association of McGill Professors of Law, and Karuna Dsouza, former President of PSAC. All are welcome.

Decolonial Practices in International Cultural Relations - Conference
November 4 - 7, 2024
All events online (via Zoom)
Associate Professor Sarah Smith is a convenor for this conference hosted by the International Cultural Relations Research Alliance. Professor Smith has organized and will chair a panel discussion titled "Unsettling International Cultural Relations" featuring artists and scholars. For full details see the conference website.

Save the Date - Breaking Barriers: Womxn Imams in Conversation
Thursday, November 7, 2024
4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Attend in-person: Register
Attend online: Register
Moderated by Sheima Benembarek and featuring Farheen Khan, Sherin Khankan, and Asma Bhol.
Join us for a groundbreaking public event bringing together three pioneering womxn imams from Canada, Denmark, and England. The imams will provide a global perspective on issues such as gender equality in religious spaces, the role of womxn in Islamic leadership, and the future of feminism and faith in a rapidly changing world. This distinctive occasion offers attendees the chance to engage with leaders who are reshaping the conversation in Islam (more information).


Important Dates


- Friday, October 11, 2024 - Senate (1:30 PM. SH)
- Monday, October 14, 2024 - Thanksgiving Holiday (no classes, FIMS offices closed)
- Monday, October 14 - Friday, October 18, 2024 - Reading Week (undergrads), Research Week (MLIS + MMJC)
- Wednesday, October 23 - Friday, October 25, 2024 - Autumn Convocation (FIMS ceremony, 10 AM, Friday)


Publications & Presentations


Revna Altiok, PhD in Media Studies student, gave a presentation titled "Embracing the Other: Monsters in Japanese Animation as Agents of Empathy and Understanding" as part of a panel called "Monsters and the Monstrous: Monstrous Transformation 1" at the NEPCA (Northeast Popular & American Culture Association) Annual Conference on October 3.

FIMS instructor Juan Bello was the archival researcher on 'Amache: An American Injustice', a documentary which premiered last week on PBS. The documentary tells the story of the 'unjust incarceration of 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans during WW2 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. During its three years of operation, over 10,000 people were housed behind its barbed wire fence. For years, archeologists and survivors have been digging into the past and discovering how the community built a life behind barbed wire and created beauty in the desolation of the desert.' View the trailer.

Bello will also be a speaker at the Ontario Screen Creators Conference (October 24-26) in a session titled "Rights & Clearances" focused on the use of stock footage, still images, and recorded music. Registration is open and there is a special rate for students.

Sara Falahatpisheh, PhD in Media Studies student, presented a talk titled "Social Media Adaptation: Analyzing the Challenges and Social Media Use Among International Students in Canada," at the Theorizing Digital Media Conference at Bishop's University, October 4-5, 2024.

Professor Amanda Grzyb and Media Studies PhD candidate André Wolmer de Melo co-authored an article titled "Activist environmental narratives: convergences between independent journalism and Indigenous ethnomedia," published in Mídia e Cotidiano, volume 18, no. 3.

Santasil Mallik, Media Studies PhD candidate, will present his paper "Fragments from South Asia: The Question of Historiography in A Photogenetic Line" at the conference In My End is My Beginning: Dialectical Images in Times of Crisis (October 9-11), organized by the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice.

Assistant Professor Selma Purac recently gave two presentations. She presented a paper titled "Muteness and Marginalization in Horror Cinema" at the annual SCMLA conference in New Orleans, September 18-21, and she presented another paper titled "The Return of the Retail Repressed: Peter Strickland's In Fabric (2018)" at the American Culture Association conference in Chicago, October 4-6. 

Professor Anabel Quan-Haase presented a keynote lecture at the Theorizing Digital Media Conference at Bishop's University, October 4-5. 

Effie Sapuridis, PhD candidate in Media Studies, published an article titled "Are you a Destiel stan? There's so much more to 'shipping' than wanting characters to kiss," in The Conversation Canada on September 26.

Associate Professor Sarah Smith shared her research in the panel discussion "Climate, Crisis, & Displacement: How Cultural Institutions Shape Global Climate Action" on September 18 at the University of Galway. This panel was a part of the Climate on Culture conference.

Professor Smith organized and will moderate a panel on Cultural Diplomacy on October 8, part of the Couchiching Annual Conference on Diplomacy, Diplomacy in Transition: Exploring Canada's Role in a Shifting Global Order, which is taking place in Toronto.

Smith will also present the paper "Transgressing Borders: The Diplomatic Potential of Diaspora Museums" on October 18 at the annual conference of the Asociación Mexicana de Estudios Internacionales in Chihuahua, Mexico and participate in a roundtable on "The Future of the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative."


In the Media


Assistant Professor Alissa Centivany and Associate Professor Joanna Redden joined CBC's London Morning radio program on October 7 to talk about the launch of the Starling Centre for Just Technologies and Just Societies. Video of the interview was recorded in a clip titled "There's a new research centre in London focusing on data justice, AI and ethics."

Professor Redden also appeared in a CBC video titled "Check out The Glass Room, a downtown exhibition about smartphones and monitoring technology," posted on October 4. The video clip highlights the opening of The Glass Room exhibition, appearing for the first time in Canada alongside the launch of the Starling Centre for Just Technologies and Just Societies.

The launch of Starling Centre for Just Technologies and Just Societies (co-directed by professors Alissa Centivany, Alison Hearn, Joanna Redden, Luke Stark) was covered in an article titled "Western's Faculty of Information and Media Studies launches its first research centre" published in Western News on October 1.

The Gazette also published an article covering the opening titled "FIMS launches 1st research centre" on October 9. Joanna Redden provided comments for the story.


Additional Activities of Note


Danica Facca, HIS PhD candidate, is co-producer for a new podcast titled Narrative Remedies: Re-Scripting Care in collaboration with Associate Professor Jessica Polzer (Western) and Assistant Professor Monica Molinaro (McGill). The podcast explores the role of narrative, or storytelling, as a way to unravel the complexities of the personal, social, political, historical and moral dimensions of health, medicine, and health care.

Find the podcast on: Podbean, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, iheartradio

Associate Professor Sarah Smith will exhibit her work in the exhibition Educating Our Desires at Optica: Centre d'art contemporain in Montreal. The exhibition opens November 2 and runs through to December 14, 2024. This project was supported in part by an FRDF research grant from FIMS and research assistance from FIMS graduate students Hillary Anderson (LIS PhD) and Anastazia Clara Csegeny (Media Studies PhD).


News from the FIMS Grad Library


Fall 2024 Research Week Hours (Saturday, October 12 – Sunday, October 20, 2024)

Saturday, October 12, CLOSED
Sunday, October 13, CLOSED
Monday, October 14 (Thanksgiving), CLOSED
Tuesday, October 15, 10am-1pm
Wednesday, October 16, 10am-1pm
Thursday, October 17, 10am-1pm
Friday, October 18, 10am-1pm
Saturday, October 19, CLOSED
Sunday, October 20, CLOSED

*Regular hours resume on Monday, October 21st, 2024.

Upcoming Events at the Library

The FGL hosts workshops, lectures, and community events each term to support graduate teaching, learning, and research. Events are posted to our website (https://lib.fims.uwo.ca/events/) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/fimsgradlib/)

Archives Association of Ontario – Information Drop in

Representative Rhiannon Allen-Roberts will be at the library to share information about what the Archives Association of Ontario offers to members and the benefits of professional associations. This is an opportunity to talk to an archivist and ask questions about the profession.

Wednesday, October 9, 2024
4:30pm – 5:30pm
FIMS Graduate Library Room 3020 D/E

WikiClub: Lunch & Learn

Have you ever thought about becoming a Wikipedia editor? The FIMS Graduate Library is hosting a monthly Wikipedia meetup focused on the overlapping connection between information professionals – librarians, journalist, media providers – and Wikipedia editorship. Wikipedia is one of the top visited websites in Canada, and it is the only non-profit website in that group. It is the largest, most widely used open encyclopedia. Through this club, you will learn how to contribute to Wikipedia so that you can improve the information in its articles. A light lunch will be provided.

Monday, October 21, 2024
12:00pm – 1:20pm
FIMS Graduate Library Room 3020 D/E

ELIP – New Issue Launch

The 6th issue of Emerging Library & Information Perspectives (ELIP) - Western’s student-run LIS academic journal - has been published and it’s time to celebrate. Come enjoy some light snacks and refreshments as you meet the authors, students, volunteers, and editors who made this issue possible. You can also learn about opportunities to get involved with the next issue!

Tuesday, October 22, 2024
12:00pm – 1:00pm
FIMS Graduate Library Room 3020 D/E

Electronic Licensing with Jax Cato

Join us for an insightful session, Electronic Resource Licensing, presented by Jax Cato, where you'll explore why licensing is crucial across all library sectors. In today's ever-evolving information landscape, license negotiation and management have become key skills that collections hiring committees prioritize. This session will cover essential topics, including what a license is, why we license, and where licenses are applied, with a live OMNI demo to bring it all into context. You'll also learn about the different types of licenses, such as model, vendor, Fair Dealing, and open access. Don’t miss this opportunity to enhance your understanding of licensing and strengthen your professional skill set!

Thursday, October 24, 2024
12:00pm – 1:00pm
FIMS Graduate Library Room 3020 D/E

Make of the Month – Halloween Crafts

Need a break from screens, or from your coursework, grading, or reading? Whether you have 5 min, 30 min or an hour, we’ve got a craft for you. For those limited on time, make a vinyl spider sticker to prank your loved ones. If you’ve got 30 minutes to spare, make this gorgeous pop-out skull card for that Halloween enthusiast in your life. If you really want to learn the Cricut and have an hour to spare, this skull luminary might be for you. Come get your craft on!


News from Western Libraries


Upcoming Research Workshops

October 23 - Locating and Analyzing Newspapers
1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. Virtual

October 24 - Accessing Statistics Canada Data
1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. - Virtual


Next Issue


The FIMS Bulletin is your source for news, announcements, and events pertaining to FIMS graduate programs. Submissions from the FIMS community are always welcome and may be sent via e-mail to fims-communications@uwo.ca.

The next issue of the FIMS Bulletin will be published on Wednesday, October 23, 2024. Submit any items you have by noon on Tuesday, October 22.