Crossing Boundaries Symposium
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Thank you for joining us at this year's Crossing Boundaries Graduate Symposium! We look forward to seeing you again next year.
Crossing Boundaries Graduate Symposium
Friday, March 14, 2025
Markin Hall
Crossing Boundaries Graduate Symposium is a celebration of graduate student research in the fine arts, humanities and social sciences at the University of Lethbridge.
Featuring a full-day of presentations and a keynote lecture, Crossing Boundaries showcases the innovative research and creative work of MA, MFA, MMus and PhD students at ULethbridge. A community-building event, the symposium fosters collegial conversations across multiple disciplines and areas of inquiry.
The event will have two formats for student presentations: short 5-minute lightning round talks geared toward new graduate students and longer 15-minute academic presentations of graduate research and creative work.
We are excited to announce the keynote speaker for the upcoming symposium is Dr. Yoke-Sum Wong, Associate Professor, School of Critical and Creative Studies, Alberta University of the Arts (AUArts).
2025 Keynote Speaker
Yoke-Sum Wong
Associate Professor, School of Critical and Creative Studies
Alberta University of the Arts
Imagining Research/Research Imaginings
This talk takes as its starting point Sociologist C Wright Mills ‘s writing on the sociological imagination. “The Sociological Imagination”, Mills writes in 1959, “enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society”. He further adds, “That is its task and its promise.” What does this “promise” mean today – as we take on research in a world so overwhelmed by turbulent events and the tangled crises of communication? How can we broaden our methodological practices to enfold multitudes of imaginings? How can we approach imagination or the act of imagining in our research that seeks to find possibilities and potentials towards a generous and just society?
About the keynote
Yoke-Sum Wong is Associate Professor in the School of Critical and Creative Studies at the Alberta University of the Arts (formerly ACAD). She was previously in Lancaster University, UK, where she taught in the departments of History and Sociology, and returned to Canada in 2016. She considers herself an interdisciplinary academic, and has written/presented on various subject matter including post-colonial architecture, material culture, Japanese popular culture, modernism and its racism. She has also been the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Historical Sociology/Sociology Lens and has steered the journal through digitalization and Open Access changes. Her latest research focuses on the cultural productions in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. She also organized and co-organized international research creation multidisciplinary workshops that brought together academics, artists, creative practitioners in order to build new methodologies and provoke different ways of knowing. She likes cooking.
Don't forget to check-in at the registration table before heading into M1060. Table is located in the Markin Hall atrium.
Session Chair: Janet Youngdahl
- Bakhora Merzaeva, “Uzbek Music in Western Style”
- Angela Brooks, “Indigenous Music Instruction with Youth”
- Oluwaseun Soneye, “Music as a Tool for Social Integration: Examining the Impact of Nigerian Music on Community Building in Lethbridge”
Networking and light refreshments.
Session Chair: Kristine Alexander
- Daniela McGonigal-Plankey, “Mapudungun: Basics of Grammar and the Maintenance of Language”
- Star Hungry Wolf Cardinal, “Beekseekseenaiks ki Namskeeks: Blackfoot Perspectives on Snakes and Lizards”
- Brendan Cummins, “A place of gathering against the storms of the world: Space, Place and Latter-day Saint Identity in Southern Alberta”
Session Chair: Susan Dieleman
- Nathan Fuehrer, “A Purpose-Driven Argument: Tracking the “Good” of a Virtue Theory for Argumentation”
- Elizabeth Thompson, “Manipulating the Variables: What Are Facts, but Power?”
- A K M Iftekhar Khalid, “The Narratives of "Free and Fair" Parliamentary Election in Bangladesh”
Free catered lunch provided for attendees and participants. Remember to register for the symposium before the March 10 deadline so we have accurate numbers for catering. Not registered yet? REGISTER HERE
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION | Imagining Research/Research Imaginings
Dr. Yoke-Sum Wong, Associate Professor, School of Critical and Creative Studies, Alberta University of the Arts
This talk takes as its starting point Sociologist C Wright Mills ‘s writing on the sociological imagination. “The Sociological Imagination”, Mills writes in 1959, “enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society”. He further adds, “That is its task and its promise.” What does this “promise” mean today – as we take on research in a world so overwhelmed by turbulent events and the tangled crises of communication? How can we broaden our methodological practices to enfold multitudes of imaginings? How can we approach imagination or the act of imagining in our research that seeks to find possibilities and potentials towards a generous and just society?
by Serene Weasel Traveller, Blair Many Fingers/ Issomaakaa, Michelle Sylvestre
Session Chair: Devon Smither
- Perseus Potiuk, ”Sexuality, Gender, and Queer History in Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness”
- Noelle Kuntz, “Absolute Pitch in Singers: Learning to Navigate Interior Musical Processes”
- Nahid Pouzesh, Title TBD
- Chelsea White, “I [Not] Me”
Short Break
Session Chair: Suzanne Lenon
- Hanna Fantin, “Cowboy Culture in the Rocking P Gazette (1923-1925)”
- Matthew Braisher, "Letters and Morale in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1918"
- Matthew Chechotko, “By the Providence of God and My Dear Mother’s Skill: Illness and Treatment in the 17th Century”
Session Chair: Christine Clark
- Lucy Du, Title TBD
- Frank Onuh, “Afrocentric Epistemologies: A Bias Detection Framework for AI Fairness”
- Derek Novosad, “Hyper-Spectators and Serial Adaptation Logics in The Walking Dead(s)”