from left to right: Marie Loughlin, Grisel Garcia-Perez, Wisdom Tettey, Anderson Araujo, Francisco Pena, Allison Hargreaves

As part of our ongoing efforts to recognize contributions and excellence in a variety of areas, FCCS has established four awards for the members of the FCCS community. These awards present FCCS with yet another opportunity to express gratitude for the contributions that advance our mission and the objectives of our strategic plan, and to shine the spotlight on those contributions.

Teaching Excellence Award: David Jefferess

The 2014 Teaching Excellence Award recipient is David Jefferess. David received this award on the basis of his strong evaluations and support from students; activities undertaken outside of the classroom that furthered learning for students and the Okanagan community; mentorship and training opportunities for students; and public dissemination and discussion of interdisciplinary student research related to “internationalization.” David’s students acknowledged David’s work as an important contribution to student research training that extends beyond the classroom.

Teaching Innovation Award: Anderson Araujo, Hussein Keshani and Francisco Peña

The 2014 Teaching Innovation Award recipients are Anderson Araujo, Hussein Keshani, and Francisco Peña for their collaboration on a model for co-teaching. The project enacted, in its successful co-teaching model and in its unique curriculum development, a commitment to the Faculty’s strategic goals of interdisciplinarity and internationalization– benefiting students within and across Spanish, and Art History and Visual Culture.

FCCS Service Award

Service Award: Marie Loughlin

Marie Loughlin was the recipient of the 2014 Service Award for her contributions to the Faculty over the 2013 academic year. It was noted that her service contributions supported the values and principles of FCCS, and fostered a positive, respectful, collegial, and mutually supportive work environment, and a sense of community within FCCS.

Community Engagement Award: Grisel Garcia Perez, Allison Hargreaves and David Jefferess

The 2014 Community Engagement Award recipients are Grisel Garcia Perez, Allison Hargreaves and David Jefferess.

Allison Hargreaves and David Jefferess were nominated for this award for their programming and hosting of the AlterKnowledge Discussion Series. The series seeks to bring people together to discuss, share, and (un)learn, focusing on critical engagements with the way colonialism continues to shape relationships and identities in both local and global contexts.

Grisel Garcia Perez was nominated for the Community Engagement Award by former student, Himayani Sharma.

“I am nominating Dr. Garcia-Perez for her outstanding leadership and tireless efforts in addressing and encouraging awareness about Kelowna’s community and integrating it with the curriculum of the Spanish courses she teaches” says Sharma.

In Spanish 301, Dr. Garcia-Perez offers a program of integration of community service learning which linked Spanish language learning to community-based experiences at the Salvation Army, the Food Bank, and in the Spanish program at UBCO.

To learn more about the FCCS Awards and the nomination process, please visit www.ubc.ca/okanagan/fccs/awards.html

Launch of Digital Editions, April 2014

English 201 Children’s Literature and Publishing was team taught by Constance Crompton and Margaret Reeves, and wrapped up the term with a launch of the students’ Digital Editions on April 3rd.

The idea was born out of a casual conversation between Connie and Margaret.  They found they were both interested in Children’s Literature, and the digitization of historical materials and texts, and in examining the intersection between Children’s Literature and Digital Humanities,  and the impact of the internet and online publishing, on Children’s Literature, and children’s culture.

Constance and Margaret were looking for a collection of texts not yet published in a modern edition, and were of interest to the history of Children’s Literature and the history of ideas about childhood.  They selected Hannah More’s Tracts, which were very important for Children’s Literature in the 18th Century.  More’s Sunday School tracts to help children and adults (specifically the large population living in poverty; the ‘lower classes’) learn to read.

The course offered students the opportunity to add digital content to the texts.  This content could be information about history, social and political contexts, and publishing contexts.  This extra information was used to help explain 18th Century anachronistic terms.    The content is generated in different ways; hovering, links to another page, or bottom of the page footnotes.  Connie explained that students had to justify their design choices, which prompted them to think critically about content delivery in the context of a specific audience.
Millions of Hannah More’s tracts were sold.  The tracts used fiction to socialize children and the poor; they were meant to teach morals and confirm the legitimacy of the class system.

18th Century Connect is a website that aggregates and peer reviews 18th Century online scholarship.  The Board is composed of scholars significant either to 18th Century Literature or the technical aspects of scholarship. As part of a partnership with the Eighteenth Century Collections Online, which houses almost 200,000 computer-scanned 18th century texts from the British Library, 18th Century Connect has a special section where digital transcription can be submitted to ECCO in plain text, which will help improve ECCO’s searchability.

The texts in the original scanned form are not always materially, and contextually, legible.  They contain old fonts and forms that make it difficult to read.  Computers do not always recognize these old letter characters, but by submitting their plain text, the 201 students have made the Tracts machine-readable.  Through the transcription the students learned and applied provided explanation and exegesis of some of the more arcane aspects of these 18th Century texts.   The students in 201 clarified esoteric terms and made them legible to their target audience of a current 1st year students.

This course gave students the unique opportunity to learn about digital editions and 18th Century literary contexts.  Connie and Margaret are very proud of the work the students did.  It was their first encounter with coding for the students.  Margaret said the students came away with two important skill sets; an intellectual, critical thinking skill set; and a technological skill set.

The Digital Editions can be found online at:  people.ok.ubc.ca/ccrompt/2014/201More/

Alterknowledge Event, May 9, 2014

The Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies was busy this past year with many events and projects.

The 2013-14 season of the AlterKnowledge Discussion Series saw more than 300 people participating in the 9 discussions. We would like to recognize the partnership of the Alternator Centre, who provided such a wonderful space for the series. AlterKnowledge will return in September with another series of discussions focused on issues of decolonization.

Award-winning documentary filmmaker and teacher Helen Haig-Brown spent a week on campus as our Visiting Scholar. She spent her time on campus working with students and faculty and offering a public talk and a screening of her recent documentary Legacy (2013).

For the second year in a row, Theatre26 presented student performances as well as a variety of events by performance and theatre groups from the Okanagan and beyond in the University Theatre to enthusiastic audiences of students, staff, faculty and community members.

The Visiting Author Series brought four acclaimed Canadian writers and poets to the Okanagan to present their work to enthusiastic audiences at the Okanagan Regional Library.

The Creative Studies department hosted four Visiting Artists who gave public lectures about their art practice to visual arts students, staff, faculty, and community members.

Emerging Visions event, January 2014

The Emerging Visions Research Series hosted excellent presentations from artist-researchers and scholars from all over North America.  The talks were inspiring and relevant to a number of faculty member’s work in FCCS, and were a great opportunity to be introduced to faculty members’ research in FCCS as well.

The Hispanic Film Series, co-presented by the Spanish Program and the Latin American & Liberian Studies Program at UBC Okanagan and Okanagan College, included films from all over Latin America. The theme for the Winter 2014 line up was realism in Hispanic films.

We look forward to the continued showcase of these and new events for the upcoming year.