Program (2010-2011)
Identity and Urban Politics in the Pacific Northwest
- September 16: The Legacies of Colonization: Apartheid in Small Town BC
A film screening and discussion
Leonie Sandercock
University of British Columbia
Dr. Leonie Sandercock
School of Community and Regional Planning
University of British Columbia
Legacies of Colonization: Apartheid in Small Town British Columbia
Leonie Sandercock is a professor in the School of Community & Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia and the recipient of the Dale Prize for Excellence in Urban and Regional Planning, the Paul Davidoff Award for best book in planning, the Harmony Gold Screenwriting Award, and the BMW Award for Intercultural Learning. Her research interests focus on planning in multicultural cities, indigenous planning, and the importance of storytelling and multimedia in planning. She is the author of a dozen books, including Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities (1998), Cosmopolis II: Mongrel Cities in the 21st Century (2003), and Multimedia Explorations in Urban Policy and Planning (2010). She has also directed two documentaries (with Giovanni Attili), one on the immigrant experience in Vancouver, Where Strangers Become Neighbours: The Story of the Collingwood Neighbourhood House and the Integration of Immigrants in Vancouver (National Film Board, 2007), and the other on conflicts between First Nations and settlers in Burns Lake, BC, entitled Finding Our Way (Moving Images, 2010).
Abstract
Can small town British Columbians overcome a history of bitter division and racial segregation? Can the community of Burns Lake find a way towards reconciliation, reparation, and co-existence? Join scholar and filmmaker Leonie Sandercock for a screening and discussion of Finding Our Way, a new documentary film that explores the legacies of colonialism in small town British Columbia and the prospects of a healthier future.
Thursday September 16, 7:30 PM
Legacy Art Gallery ~ 630 Yates Street, Victoria
Free Public Event - October 21: Getting the Indians Out of Town: Race and Space in Victoria’s History
John Lutz
University of Victoria
John Lutz
University of Victoria
Getting the Indians Out of Town: Race and Space in Victoria’s History
John Lutz is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Victoria and the recipient of the prestigious Harold Adams Innis Award from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. His research interests focus on the history of the Pacific Northwest, indigenous/non-indigenous relations, European colonialism in the Pacific, digital history, and community-based research methods. He is the author of the award-winning book, Makúk: A New History of Aboriginal White Relations (2008) and co-director of the digital history project, Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History, which won the Pierre Berton Award and MERLOT Award in 2008.
Abstract
A visitor to downtown Victoria today will find only a few markers to inform them that historically Victoria was very much an “Indian” space. But a visitor in the Victorian era would have had no doubt. The fort which founded the city was built to trade with aboriginal people, the early town was surrounded by their encampments so that native people outnumbered settlers several-fold during the summer months, the Songhees reserve was within the city limits, and parts of the downtown were known as the Indian district. Aboriginal people worked throughout the city and many white men married aboriginal women. This talk describes that earlier Victoria where natives outnumbered newcomers, and unveils the processes that “got the Indians out of town” and led to the near invisibility of Aboriginal People in Victoria, today.
Thursday October 21, 7:30 PM
Legacy Art Gallery ~ 630 Yates Street, Victoria
Free Public Event -
November 24: The Queen City Comes Out: An Historical Geography of Gay Seattle
Please note: This talk was cancelled due to travel problems resulting from bad weather.
Michael Brown
University of Washington
Michael Brown
University of Washington
The Queen City Comes Out: An Historical Geography of Gay Seattle
Michael Brown is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research interests focus on political geographies of sexuality and the body, queer studies, AIDS activism, radical democracy, and cultural geographies. He is the author of various publications on the geographies of sexuality, including RePlacing Citizenship: AIDS Activism and Radical Democracy (1997) and Closet Space: Geographies of Metaphor from the Body to the Globe (2000). He has also published widely in journals such as Urban Geography, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Society and Space, Political Geography, Cultural Geographies, and the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. His recent work explores the historical geographies of queer politics and culture in 20th century Seattle. He is currently the editor of the journal Social & Cultural Geography.
Abstract
Queer Geography is often quite a theoretically intense area of study. Informed by quite academic Queer Theory from the humanities, and part of the theoretical turn in critical human geography, it can sometimes seem far away from “the real world” to students and lay folk. In an attempt to counter this disconnect, I show how queer geography can be quite down to earth and applied through my volunteer work with the Northwest Lesbian and Gay History Museum Project. This group is dedicated to researching, interpreting, and communicating the histories of lgbtq people in the region for the purposes of study, education and enjoyment. In this talk, I’ll show how Seattle queer history can be enriched by queer theory, and vice versa.
Wednesday November 24, 7:30 PM
Legacy Art Gallery ~ 630 Yates Street, Victoria
Free Public Event
An interview with Michael Brown:
- Could you briefly talk about how a historical geography is
constructed?
Historical geography looks not just at the way things unfolded in time, but also at where those events occurred. It stresses how space and time (or place and era) are always inseparable. So rather than just saying "a bunch of things happened way back when here", historical geographers emphasize where those things occurred (or didn't occur). It makes for a less linear tale, full of simultaneity, spatial interaction. Geography is more than the stage on which history unfolds! - How would you characterize the work which you'll be lecturing on at
City Talks?
My intellectual roots are in Queer Theory, which can be very abstract and ivory tower. My volunteer work is very down-to-earth: trying to preserve the historical geographies of lgbtq Seattle. I do both and this talk is my attempt at integrating these often quite distinct spheres of my life. - Could you share a few tidbits about your lecture plan? 1-2 is
fine.
Well, if you've ever been on the Seattle Underground tour, I'm going to give you a very different reading of that neighborhood!
I hope the talk will be as interactive as possible. It's not just a lecture; it's a data-gathering exercise too. If we don't share our memories they get lost and go unrecorded. So if you ever spent any time in Gay Seattle, I want to hear about it!
- Could you briefly talk about how a historical geography is
constructed?
Urban Activism and the Right to the City
- January 20: Rights of Passage: Sidewalks and the Regulation of Public Flow
Nicholas Blomley
Simon Fraser University
Nicholas Blomley
Simon Fraser University
Rights of Passage: Sidewalks and the Regulation of Public Flow
Nicholas Blomley is a legal geographer at Simon Fraser University, with a particular interest in property and its relationship to the politics of urban space. He has written on topics such as gentrification, homelessness, First Nations dispossession, public gardening, and the regulation of public space. He is the author of several works on legal geographies and the politics of urban space, including Law, Space, and the Geographies of Power (1994) and Unsettling the City: Urban Land and the Politics of Property (2004). He is also the co-editor of The Legal Geographies Reader: Law, Power, and Space (2001) and has recently completed a study on the politics of the sidewalk as a public space entitled, Rights of Passage: Sidewalks and the Regulation of Public Flow (2010).
Abstract
In his presentation, Blomley will draw from his recently published book, Rights of Passage, to illustrate and explore the nature of a powerful and under-researched form of urban governance that shapes the production and regulation of public space, particularly the sidewalk. This logic, which Blomley terms ‘pedestrianism’, values public space not in terms of its aesthetic merits, or its success in promoting public citizenship and democracy. Rather, the function of the sidewalk is understood to be the promotion and facilitation of pedestrian flow and circulation, predicated on the appropriate arrangement of people and objects. This remarkably pervasive yet overlooked logic shapes the ways in which public space is regulated, conceived of, and argued about. Complicating the prevailing tendency to focus on the socially directive nature of public space regulation, Blomley reveals the particular ways in which pedestrianism deactivates rights-based claims to public space.
Thursday January 20, 7:30 PM
Legacy Art Gallery ~ 630 Yates Street, Victoria
Free Public EventAn interview with Nicholas Blomley:
- In lay terms, could you define "pedestrianism"?
Pedestrianism is a term I coined to describe a view of public space, particularly the sidewalk. This view regards sidewalks not as political or social spaces, but as circulation spaces. Objects and people (and the distinction between the two is often blurred) are to be arranged so as to facilitate flow. Pedestrianism can be seen in municipal practice, law and regulation, and political discourse. It is deeply entrenched and pervasive, yet has received little academic attention given the dominance of an alternative view of public space, which I term civic humanism, that views such spaces as, ideally, serving political or civic ends, based on encounters between people. - Could you talk briefly about how pedestrianism, so defined, interacts with rights-based claims on public space?
Pedestrianism is, in some senses, incommensurable with rights claims, as it operates in a different register. Rights logics are humanist, centred on persons. Pedestrianism, on the other hand, treats persons and things as interchangeable. The interior life of the individual, so central to rights, is of less significance than the potential collisions between mobile and static elements in public space. Its interactions with rights-based claims to public space, therefore, are not always predictable. - Finally, could you share a few tidbits about your lecture plan?
I'd like to introduce listeners to pedestrianism, and explain its character and its significance, particularly with reference to urban rights claims. I'd also like to demonstrate that pedestrianism cannot be simply characterized according to a social logic (as obviously a form of social purification, for example) but must be treated on its own terms. Pedestrianism may compromise the rights of certain marginal groups, but it also may act to curtail the rights of more established interests.
I have lots of examples that I will throw in from various cities, such as Seattle, Vancouver, Toronto etc. Examples of specific collisions with rights that I can refer to might include the Charter challenge to Vancouver's panhandling by-law (the 'Federated' case) or the injunction against the 'Woodsquat' protestors at the Woodward's anti-homelessness protests in 2002. City constraints on the placement of Globe and Mail newspaper boxes in Victoria provides a local example.
- In lay terms, could you define "pedestrianism"?
- February 17: City, Nation, and Empire: The Urban Texture of Montreal's 1960s
Sean Mills
University of Toronto
Sean Mills
University of Toronto
City, Nation, and Empire: The Urban Texture of Montreal's 1960s
Sean Mills is a postdoctoral fellow at New York University. His research interests include postcolonial thought, migration, race, gender, and the history of empire and oppositional movements. He has published numerous works on Quebec and Canadian history, including The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal. He is also co-editor of New World Coming: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness, a major collection of essays reassessing the meaning, impact, and global reach of the period’s social movements. In January 2011, he will begin a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of History, University of Toronto.
Abstract
With the breakup of European empires following the Second World War, new bodies of anti-colonial and anti-imperial theory emerged, and Western intellectuals were forced to recognize what Kristin Ross has called
one of the great gauchiste particularities of the time.
Theory itself, she argues,was being generated not from Europe but from the third world.
No North American city was as dramatically affected by Third World liberation theory as Montreal. Activists in Montreal drew on anti-imperialist analyses emanating from Africa, Asia, and Latin America in attempts to reinterpret their local conditions, and ‘Quebec decolonization’ became the rallying cry for a whole generation of oppositional intellectuals. While political actors framed their movement in national terms, however, they also operated in a highly charged local milieu, one in which competing claims of colonization and decolonization collided. The city became home to not one, but many, overlapping movements of resistance.
This paper will explore the political movements of 1960s Montreal from the angle of the city, arguing that the period’s history acquires new meaning if we take seriously the urban environment in which oppositional movements were forged. It will highlight the importance of geographical representations of the city in cultural and intellectual works, and will discuss the complex interactions between groups of different linguistic and ethnic origin in forging an alternative culture.
Thursday February 17, 7:30 PM
Legacy Art Gallery ~ 630 Yates Street, Victoria
Free Public EventAn interview with Sean Mills:
- Could you explain, in lay terms, why "geographical representations of the city" are central to an understanding of political movements in 1960s Montreal?
To understand the nature of political activity during Quebec's Quiet Revolution, it's crucial to grasp the ways in which people experienced and made sense of the urban environment in which they lived. During the Sixties, because of the alienation felt by many in the city, intellectuals and activists began imagining Montreal as a colonial city, and these representations helped fuel much of the political activity of the period. - What do you personally find to be the most interesting aspect of the lecture you'll be giving?
I find it extremely interesting that so many aspects of the urban activism in Sixties Montreal have been largely forgotten. - Can you offer some concrete examples that you'll be drawing on?
Some of the lesser known aspects of the period, that I'll be discussing in the lecture, are the citizens' committees that emerged in various working-class neighbourhoods, as well as the emergence of a new municipal political party, the FRAP.
- Could you explain, in lay terms, why "geographical representations of the city" are central to an understanding of political movements in 1960s Montreal?
- March 24: How Political Are Streets?
Please note: This talk is in a different location from the others. See details below.
Judith Garber
University of Alberta
Judith Garber
University of Alberta
How Political Are Streets?
Judith Garber is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Alberta, where she teaches, writes, and does public speaking about cities, law, and U.S. politics. She has also been Executive Director of the Centre for Constitutional Studies at the University of Alberta. In particular, Dr. Garber is interested in public space in cities in Canada and the U.S. – its political qualities, how it is defined, and how it is shaped by gender and sex. She is currently writing, too, on the constitutional influences on the use and regulation of private property and on the ways in which US cities have been implicated in the “war on terrorism.” She has co-edited the book, Gender and Urban Politics, and has published articles and chapters on a variety of topics in scholarly journals and edited books. Dr. Garber has been involved for many years with non-profit housing organizations in Edmonton.
Abstract
There is a common assumption about space and politics in the city. It is that the street has a uniquely valuable relationship to democracy and that the right to occupy and use the street is, in many ways, tantamount to the right to act politically. This relationship has always been taken for granted in communitarian and radical political frameworks; now the street has turned up as an object of desire from postmodern, queer, and other critical perspectives. My talk looks at how the street serves as a touchstone for a wide range of political hopes and expectations. I focus on the political characteristics that are attributed to the street, asking what the contribution of the street is to the public life of cities and whether streets are really as political as people assume. I argue that because of the unclear boundary between public and private space in the early twenty-first century city, democratic politics in the urban public sphere can be wedded to the street and at the same time distanced from it.
Thursday March 24, 7:30 PM
This presentation will take place at:
Free Public Event
Victoria Event Centre
1415 Broad Street
Victoria, BC V8W 2B2
View on Google Maps.
