![[University of Waterloo]](/goldbar.gif)
| Yesterday |
Thursday, September 2, 2004
|
Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Ignoring their meals, watching the show]](/images/2004/0902dons.gif)
All eyes
were on media chef Michael Clive, who made a guest appearance
on Tuesday during residence dons' training. Never can tell, after
all, when a don might need to throw together a tasty wrap. The
chef's appearance, sponsored by a brand of salad dressing, was a
light moment in a week of learning everything from emergency
procedures to what's offered at UW's athletic facilities. Dons
will be ready by Sunday to meet the first-year students who
will be their charges.
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The centre, best known as LT3, operates the Flex lab, which is also used by the library and occasionally other groups. It's the centre for seminars and demonstrations of new teaching technology, and for training sessions to help instructors use the Angel Course Environment (UW-ACE).
![[One guy has his head in the ceiling]](/images/2004/0902flex.gif)
"We have been very busy over the past 6-9 months planning out some major
improvements," Goldsworthy writes.
"They are being incorporated right now, so
that students and instructors during the fall term may benefit from them."
He sent along a photo (right) of staff from the audio-visual centre
making some of the wiring changes that the lab required.
So what's new in Library room 329? "We have bought 21 exciting new wireless, battery operated TabletPCs. These allow for many new and innovative learning and teaching methods, including note taking on top of teachers' PowerPoints, lecture notes, etc. These attach to the internet over a wireless access point.
"We are replacing the large fixed podium with a small moveable podium so that teaching may occur from any point in the room (the podium is equipped with a wireless mouse, wireless keyboard, and wireless computer). The Flex even has a new wireless digital projector.
"We are turning the classroom around. The front is now at the back, offering noticeably less distraction as latecomers enter in from a door at the back of the room instead of beside the speaker (the way it was).
"We are adding whiteboard lighting to improve illumination of the whiteboards at the new front of the room."
Goldsworthy notes that anyone interested in requesting the Flex lab for an event, workshop, seminar, or course, can fill out an online form.
An orientation session for use of the new TabletPCs was held yesterday and will be repeated on Tuesday, September 7, at 3 p.m. Registration for that session is also online.
![[Poirier]](/images/2004/0902poirier.gif)
He's Guy Poirier (left), who came to Waterloo last year from Simon Fraser University and specializes in Renaissance literature and culture.
"I deal not only with literary texts, but with different kinds of texts," he says in a profile featured on the web site this fall. Those different texts, include, for example, pamphlets -- which were most often political writing, such as emotional outpourings against Henri III, but also medical discourse, French religious works, poetry, short stories, and so on.
Poirier also works with travel literature: early accounts of trips to America, Rome, Japan, China, and India. Many of these were Jesuit missions and developed into news bulletins that were sent to Rome and translated into different languages for the European courts. Read at first by the kings and royal houses, these accounts began to be published more widely and may have been read to common people in religious communities. They formed part of the curriculum in Jesuit colleges. They dealt with issues such as housing, coping with foreign governments and cultures, persecutions, miracles, conversions and much of daily life.
Close by this interest is his research into Queer Studies, both modern and from the Renaissance. "It's a queer name for it too," he laughs. "In a few words, what it is, is the study of different texts and their representations of homosexuality and trans-gender people, from religious, legal, travel, cultural and medical texts. They are accounts of impression and imagination; how they saw it and how they represented it in literature.
"In the Renaissance, it is the construction of the image of homosexuality, the perception of sodomites, people with anatomical irregularities. In the Americas, in what is now the southern states, the Shaman, or medicine men, were considered to be a third, distinct gender. The Europeans didn't know what to make of them." Québec gay literature is a somewhat easier study, at least from the source; it concentrates on how homosexuality is described in literary work.
Next on Poirier's list of research interests is contemporary French, Québec and British Columbia French literature and culture. "Yes," he says, "even British Columbia has its own French literature!" He is presently co-editing a collection of texts and articles that will be published this fall as Littérature et culture francophones de Colombie-Britannique.
The conference he and colleagues are organizing for May 2005 celebrates ten years of the research group titled Moyen Age et Renaissance: Groupe de recherche -- Ordinateurs et Textes, or MARGOT, begun by current and former faculty members Delbert Russell, Hannah Fournier and Jean-Philippe Beaulieu. "In the Renaissance," says Poirier, "the French tried to imitate the Italian courts where poets and philosophers gathered and there was music and cultural life all around them." Women played a major role in these courts. "Queen Margot, daughter of Catherine of Medici and Henri II, was well read in ancient Greek, Latin, Italian and Spanish as far as we know. She had her own court and maintained a cultural environment, first at Nérac and then, at the end of her life, in Paris." This period saw the rise of "crypto-feminism", a term for feminism before modernity.
As for his other work at UW, Poirier says one of the things he particularly likes is "smaller classes. You can have personal contact with students and they can contact the professor, rather than going through a hierarchy of TAs. You can't get that at larger universities. . . .
"It's interesting to open minds. When we talk about old literature they find that it's not as disconnected from our world as they think. . . . You learn more about yourself when you teach."
Now about that unseasonable weather: better late than never.
"It was the coldest August in the six-year history of the
Waterloo Weather
Station," coordinator Frank Seglenieks
![[Wiggly line mostly below the top smooth line]](/images/2004/0902graph.gif)
reports. The graph at right, part of the weather station's
monthly summary, shows usual temperatures in blue and
actual 2004 temperatures in red. "You can spot the 5 days it was warmer than
average, leaving 26 below average," Seglenieks writes.
"A value this far below the average is something that
would be expected only once every 20 years (i.e. 19 years out of
20 the temperature would be higher than it was this August).
We have now gone an entire year without the temperature reaching
30°C -- the last time it happened was August 21, 2003."
Precipitation was low for the month, with a total of
56.4 mm compared to the average of 86.2 mm. "Almost half
of the month's precipitation fell on the last weekend of the
month, responsible for the soggy end to the Waterloo Busker
festival."
And about students arriving from other lands: The international student office still needs "Shadows" and English language tutors to assist new international students this fall. "Acting as resource persons and cultural interpreters, Shadows help international students locate services and facilities on campus and in the K-W community. . . . English tutors meet students on campus for one term, usually once a week for 2-3 hours." There's more information on the office's web site (click on "volunteer programs").
Finally, a couple of corrections. I wrote yesterday that Gordon Nelson, former dean and professor emeritus of geography, was director of UW's Heritage Resources Centre. In fact he's given up that position, although he's still associated with the centre, and planning professor Robert Shipley is now listed as chair of the HRC. In the same article I wrote that George Francis was retired from the geography department; in fact he was in the department of environment and resource studies.
CAR