Foreword

Chronicles of a Spy in Acadia: The French Englishman

This episode is the first in a three-episode series of “Chronicles of A Spy in Acadia”: a student-produced podcast researched, written, recorded and edited by the students of Brock University’s History 4P11 State and Society in Colonial Canada class.

The podcast centers on Atlantic colonial Canada in the 18th century by looking at the events through the eyes of a real-life historical spy: Thomas Pichon. Thomas Pichon was a French man sent to take on a legislative position in the military Fort of Beausejour in 18th century Acadia (present-day Nova Scotia). Eager for money and prestige, however, in 1754 he was recruited to spy for the British and played a pivotal role in the French-Acadian defeat at the 1755 Siege of Beausejour.

This episode gives listeners a front row seat to history students interviewing “the ghost” of Thomas Pichon about the events of 1755 and Pichon’s life leading up to it. Pichon was known to exaggerate and be a man invested in his own self-interests, and his character beyond the grave is hardly estranged from that.

Filled with quotations from Pichon’s genuine letters and memoirs published after his death, listeners get a chance to not only see the true thoughts and motivations of Pichon as he betrayed France and the Acadians, but also to better understand the events that made Canada into the country it is today.

 

Links

Beaubassin: On the Edge of Empires

@CBCNovaScotia Centuries-old cannonballs detonated in Gagetown, N.B. (Tweet) Nov. 19, 2021.

Brock University Department of History

 

Sources

Crowley, T.A. “Biography: PICHON, THOMAS, Thomas Tyrell,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, University of Toronto, 1979.

Webster, John Clarence. Thomas Pichon “The Spy of Beausejour,” An Account of His Career in Europe and America with Many Original Documents. Translated by Alice Webster. Shediac, NB: 1937.

 

Credits

Interviewer 1- Yannick
Interviewer 2- Micayla
Narrator- Erin
Ghost of Thomas Pichon- Dexter

S2E09 Identity and Trauma with Dr. Cristina Santos

How are our personal and communal identities shaped by the stories we tell ourselves and the traumas we experience? Today's guest, Dr. Cristina Santos, shares how stories like Twilight, the Hunger Games, and Divergent, repackage old ideas of what it means to be a woman and how these fairytale archetypes translate into our social psyche. She will also share her latest project, which investigates the lived experiences of children of survivors of the forced disappearances in Argentina between 1976-1983 and the psychological impact trauma has on both individuals and society as a whole.

Dr. Santos’ research investigates monstrous depictions of women as aberrations of feminine nature in literature, art, and film. She has written about the folklore surrounding the notorious Bloody Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who reputedly murdered hundreds of young girls in late 16th and early 17th century Hungary, and the Latin American legend of La Llorona, a woman who drowns her children.  

Her 2016 book Unbecoming Female Monsters: Witches, Vampires and Virgins explores how female monsters from literature, art, film, television, and popular culture embody social and cultural fears of female sexuality and reproductive powers. She has also co-edited volumes on cultural ideas of virginity, monsters and monstrosity in literature, and the Twilight saga.  

Dr. Santos teaches in the Hispanic and Latin American Studies program in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures. She is also a faculty member with the Interdisciplinary Humanities PhD program, where she teaches and supervises PhD students. She also teaches courses in the Faculty of Social Science.

 

Links

Dr. Cristina Santos faculty bio

Unbecoming Female Monsters: Witches, Vampires and Virgins (Lexington Books, 2016)

Virgin Envy: The Cultural (In)significance of the Hymen (co-edited with Jonathan A. Allan and Adriana Spahr; University of Regina Press, 2016)

Progressive Connexions

Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures

Hispanic and Latin America Studies

Interdisciplinary Humanities PhD program

 

Credits

Thank you for listening to Foreword. 

Find our footnotes, links to more information, transcripts, and past episodes on our website brocku.ca/humanities. 

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities. 

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode. 

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University. 

Series two sound design and editing is by Nicole Arnt. Theme music is by Khalid Imam. 

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support. 

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

S2E08 Populism and (Mis)information with Ibrahim Berrada

Populism: What is it, where do we see it, and why does it work? Today's episode explores some of the nuances of this political approach and how the American shift to Trumpism impacts Canada and other countries. Guest Ibrahim Berrada also shares how misinformation arises, the risks it poses, and the need for people to work together to overcome COVID.

Ibrahim Berrada is a lecturer in Canadian Studies at Brock University and a PhD candidate at Laurentian University, where his research explores populist influence in a Canadian-American cross-border context. He is also an adjunct professor in Sociology at Niagara University in Niagara Falls, NY. In the past year Ibrahim has appeared in local and national media, including the CBC and St. Catharines Standard, many times to share his expertise and analysis of current events.

 

Links

Ibrahim Berrada, instructor profile

Centre for Canadian Studies, Brock University

Misinformation, prolonged pandemic pose security threat in Canada: Brock experts (Brock News, Jan. 11, 2021)

Removal of Trump may be best option forward: Brock experts (Brock News, Jan. 7, 2021)

 

Credits

Thank you for listening to Foreword. 

Find our footnotes, links to more information, transcripts, and past episodes on our website brocku.ca/humanities. 

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities. 

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode. 

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University. 

Series two sound design and editing is by Nicole Arnt. Theme music is by Khalid Imam. 

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support. 

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

S2E07 Societies in Hard Times with Dr. Colin Rose

It’s pretty fair to say that the last year has been a tumultuous one. We are still living through the pandemic, and we lived through the endless news cycles and uncertainties of the American election in 2020. Climate change is still threatening, with dramatic weather happening around the globe. But this certainly isn’t the first time that a society has lived through disruption and this episode takes a look back at history to help us understand today.

Our featured guest is Dr. Colin Rose, a professor with the Department of History and a social historian examining conflict in 16th and 17th century Italy. His 2019 book A Renaissance of Violence: Homicide in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge University Press), examines how economic decline, climate-induced drought and plague lead to the decline of social institutions and rise of interpersonal violence in 1660s Bologna.  

 

Links

Colin Rose faculty bio

Misinformation, prolonged pandemic pose security threat in Canada: Brock experts (Brock News, Jan. 11, 2021)

A Renaissance of Violence: Homicide in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2019)

History course provides context for current pandemic (Brock News, Sept. 17, 2020)

Violence in 17th century Italy has modern policy lessons (Brock News, Dec. 19, 2019)

Department of History

 

Credits

Thank you for listening to Foreword. 

Find our footnotes, links to more information, transcripts, and past episodes on our website brocku.ca/humanities. 

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities. 

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode. 

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University. 

Series two sound design and editing is by Nicole Arnt. Theme music is by Khalid Imam. 

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support. 

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

S2E06 Entangled Humans with Dr. Christine Daigle

What does it mean to be human in a post-COVID world? How are we connected to other humans? What is the role of privacy and social justice when responding to a global pandemic? What is our place in the natural world and our connection with non-human animals? What does it mean for us as humans when we see viruses jumping from the animal world to the human? These are some of the big questions philosophy researchers are asking and that we explore in today’s episode of Foreword. 

Dr. Christine Daigle is a philosophy professor with Brock’s Interdisciplinary Humanities PhD program and Director of the Posthumanism Research Institute. She is currently a Research Director (Core Fellow) at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in Finland. She is also a member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Chair on Community Sustainability research team at Brock, where she investigates the ways humans are entangled with the environment and how to frame notions of sustainability. Her research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

This conversation was originally recorded in March 2021. Some details about the pandemic may have changed. Consult your local health authority for the latest information for your area.

 

Links

Christine Daigle faculty bio

Interdisciplinary Humanities PhD

Posthumanism Research Institute at Brock

UNESCO Chair on Sustainability at Brock

"COVID-19 vaccination requires global thinking: Brock expert" (Brock News, March 15, 2021)

"Re-opening requires us to reconsider our vulnerability, says Brock prof" (Brock News, July 15, 2020)

"Humanities prof receives prestigious fellowship in Finland" (Brock News, July 14, 2020)

 

Credits

Thank you for listening to Foreword. 

Find our footnotes, links to more information, transcripts, and past episodes on our website brocku.ca/humanities. 

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities. 

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode. 

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University. 

Series two sound design and editing is by Nicole Arnt. Theme music is by Khalid Imam. 

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support. 

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

S2E05 April in Paris with alumna April Pett

This episode is a little bit different from our usual. Instead of interviewing a researcher, we're talking with one of our graduates. April Pett graduated from our French program in 2007 and has gone on to build up a successful tour company in Paris, France. Her company, April in Paris Tours, offers private walking and chauffeured tours of the city of lights. Listen in to learn more about April’s story as she shares her journey from studying French at Brock to running her own company in France.

 

Links

April in Paris Tours

Stepping Up Surgite (Spring 2020) page 22

Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Brock University

French Studies, Brock University

Italian Studies, Brock University

 

Credits

Thank you for listening to Foreword. 

Find our footnotes, links to more information, transcripts, and past episodes on our website brocku.ca/humanities. 

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities. 

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode. 

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University. 

Series two sound design and editing is by Nicole Arnt. Theme music is by Khalid Imam. 

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support. 

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

 

S2E04 History Beyond the Classroom with Dr. Elizabeth Vlossak

Today’s guest is the recipient of this year’s Faculty of Humanities Award for Teaching Excellence. Dr. Elizabeth Vlossak is an Associate Professor with the Department of History where her courses include 20th-century European and World History, Weimar and Nazi Germany, comparative urban history, and women’s and gender history. She has also taught a directed-reading course in historic gardening using Brock University’s community garden and directed students in research projects involving oral history. 

Dr. Vlossak has been bringing her students together with members of the local community to work on Niagara history projects. This includes work with the Niagara-on-the-Lake Tennis Club and the Canada Games, which will be held in Niagara in the summer of 2022. She is the co-director with Dr. Julie Stevens (Sport Management) of the Sport Oral History Archive (SOHA), a digital, interactive archive preserving local and national sporting legacies through the collection of oral history interviews and photographs. 

 

Links

Students grow history in campus garden (Brock News, Aug. 8, 2019)

Brock History student helps save community sport memories (Brock News, Jan. 14, 2021)

Canada Games Teaching Spotlight: How Elizabeth Vlossak’s students will capture history in Niagara (Brock News, May 7, 2020)

Brock researchers looking for Canada Games stories (Brock News, July 30, 2020)

Elizabeth Vlossak faculty bio

Department of History

 

Courses & Projects Mentioned

HIST 3F02 ‘Making History in Niagara’

HIST 4F00 'Voices from the Past: Oral History'

"Threads through Time" digital exhibit will launch spring 2022.

"Sport Oral History Archive" (SOHA) is scheduled to launch fall 2021.

 

Credits

Thank you for listening to Foreword. 

Find our footnotes, links to more information, transcripts, and past episodes on our website brocku.ca/humanities. 

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities. 

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode. 

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University. 

Series two sound design and editing is by Nicole Arnt. Theme music is by Khalid Imam. 

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support. 

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University. 

S2E03 Art and Engineering with Dr. Troy Ouellette

Today's interview is with Troy Ouellette, an Assistant Professor with the Department of Visual Arts, where he specializes in assemblage theory, technology and conceptual art. 

Our wide-ranging conversation explores the multi-disciplinary nature of assemblage and conceptual art, touching on the environment, politics, trade, gardening, and the Bauhaus art movement. Troy discusses some of his recent pieces exhibited at the Embassy Cultural House in London, Ont., as well as his current project looking at art and disability. We also learn about the course Troy will be teaching as part of Brock's new engineering program.

Note: Troy's podcast Media, Art, Other, is now available in Brock's Digital Repository. The podcast series explores media arts, race, class, Indigeneity, identity politics, and disability arts.

 

Links

Troy Ouellette website

Media, Art, Other

Embassy Cultural House-- Troy Ouellette

Brock University Department of Visual Arts

Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts

Brock University Engineering 

 

Artists Mentioned

Manuel DeLanda (assemblage artist)

Adrian Piper (conceptual artist)

Louise Lawler (conceptual artist)

Robert Barry (conceptual artist)

Jeff Wall (conceptual artist)

Conceptual art groups: Fluxus, Gutai, Dada, Neo Dada, Photoconceptualism, Land Art 

Experiments in Art and Technology 

Jack Burham Software Exhibition 

Lev Manovich Software Takes Command 

 

Credits

Thank you for listening to Foreword. 

Find our footnotes, links to more information, transcripts, and past episodes on our website brocku.ca/humanities. 

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities. 

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode. 

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University. 

Series two sound design and editing is by Nicole Arnt. Theme music is by Khalid Imam. 

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support. 

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University. 

S2E02 Literary Journalism with Dr. Rob Alexander

What is literary journalism and why is it important? How does literary journalism engage with social justice issues? How do we navigate the rise of "fake news" and the decline of local journalism? How does a professor teach immersive journalism during a pandemic lockdown? 

To answer these questions, our guest this episode is Rob Alexander, an Associate Professor with the Department of English Language and Literature. He specializes in the areas of rhetoric and composition and journalism studies. His research looks at how journalistic subjectivity expresses itself in literary journalism.  

Rob’s scholarly work has appeared in various journals and edited books. He has written about literary journalism and ecocriticism for The Routledge Companion to American Journalism (2019) and most recently published Fear and Loathing Worldwide: Gonzo Journalism Beyond Hunter S. Thompson, edited with Christine Isager of the University of Copenhagen. His fiction work has appeared in Wild Rose Country and Prairie Fire. 

Transcript available online at brocku.ca/humanities. 

 

Links

Dr. Robert Alexander, faculty bio

Department of English Language and Literature, Brock University

Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse Studies program, Department of English, Brock University

International Association for Literary Journalism Studies

International Association for Literary Journalism Studies Journal

Robert Alexander and Willa McDonald "Social Justice and Literary Journalism" (forthcoming)

John Richardson "Ballad of the Sad Climatologists" (Esquire, August 2015)

Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber "The Slow Professor" (University of Toronto Press, 2016)

Rob Nixon "Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor" (Harvard University Press, 2013)

 

Credits

Thank you to listening to Foreword. 

Find our footnotes, links to more information, transcripts, and past episodes on our website brocku.ca/humanities. 

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities. 

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode. 

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University. 

Our sound design and editing is by Nicole Arnt. Theme music is by Khalid Imam. 

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support. 

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University. 

S2E01 Decolonizing Music with Dr. Nina Penner

What does opera look like today? What stories are being told with opera, and who is telling them? How is opera, and classical music generally, responding to social justice movements like Black Lives Matter? 

Our first episode of series two features our conversation with Dr. Nina Penner, who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Music and specializes in opera, musical theatre, and film music. This past year, Dr. Penner has been teaching the "Music in Global Cultures" and "Music in Western Cultures" courses and she will share how the teaching of music history in North America is changing. She will also demystify the world of opera and share with us how modern opera is responding to social justice movements.

Dr. Penner is the author of the recently published book Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater (Indiana University Press). The book is an exploration of how sung forms of drama tell stories, how music can orient spectators to characters' points of view, and how performers' choices affect not only who is telling the story but what story is being told. 

Transcript available online at brocku.ca/humanities.

 

Links

Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater (Indiana University Press)

Dr. Nina Penner faculty bio

Brock University Department of Music

"Redesigned course explores global music and identities" (Brock News 31 July 2020)

"'Opera can make us see, feel and hear the world differently': the UK's opera chiefs tell us why their art form matters" (Guardian 9 May 2014)

Christopher Jenkins “Is Classical Music Racist: An Aesthetic Approach” 

The Industry’s Sweet Land (2020)

Nashville Opera, One Vote Won (2020)

Against the Grain Theatre, Messiah/Complex

Against the Grain Theatre, La bohème

Ian Cusson, new aria for Louis Riel

Ian Cusson, Fantasma (forthcoming)

Ian Cusson (and others), Namwayut, spearheaded by Marion Newman (Kwagiulth/Stó:lō) 

Tapestry Opera

Key Change a podcast from the Canadian Opera Company

 

Credits

Thank you to listening to Foreword. 

Find our footnotes, links to more information, transcripts, and past episodes on our website brocku.ca/humanities. 

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities. 

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode. 

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University. 

Our sound design and editing is by Nicole Arnt. Theme music is by Khalid Imam. 

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support. 

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.