Search Results

This essay engages descriptive, experiential methods of phenomenology, prompts from butoh, and insights of Zen Buddhism. Butoh is the dance and theatre form that arose from the ashes of Japan in the shadow of ecological and social crisis after the Second Word War. It is interpreted widely in current forms that extend well beyond the borders of Japan. The everyday is articulated in the phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, particularly through concepts of “worlding,” how our works ripple out to create a world, as phenomenology and Zen both hold, each in their own way. I write about butoh through a prism of Zen and phenomenology because they share similar philosophical outlooks on performance, and they explain everyday things. In articulating performance of the everyday, this essay takes an ecosomatic turn inward toward matters of consciousness and perception. The writing stems from my participation in butoh as a student, performer, and scholar since 1985, my university teaching of dance and somatics, and my philosophical and lived investigations of phenomenology and Buddhism. Through phenomenology, the essay is descriptive, performative, and concerned with “lived experience,” including how features of experience appear and transform in consciousness. 

Scholarship has been divided on whether there is any reference to the exodus in the books of Ezra-Nehemiah and Esther. In this article, it is argued that although both books do refer to the exodus, they do not necessarily refer to the book of Exodus. Rather than approaching this problem from the perspective of intertextuality, the article studies the use of exodus motifs as a narratological phenomenon. It compares the way that two texts, one from the diaspora and one from Yehud, use exodus motifs to support their own agendas. In each text, the exodus acts as a model for a type of salvation.

Keywords: Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah, Narrative, Diaspora

Drawing primarily from critical pedagogy, decoloniality, and relevant research on “home,” we offer critical perspectives on how these areas of inquiry work in dialectical ways to inform our researcher/scholarly positionalities. Largely situated within autoethnographic methods, we link this work to basketball, and as players of the game, we bring in notions of desire, politics, and emancipatory visions of play as we make connections to research from a critical orientation. We conclude with the idea of Torn Nets as a poetic metaphor for imaging through the opportunities to engage in critical research that engages the incomplete and contradictory visuals, games, and courts within academia.

Keywords: Critical Pedagogy, Decoloniality, Sports

In 1963, Glendon College, York University, located in Toronto Canada, admitted mainly Christian students of European origin to a small liberal arts program. Fifty years later the College remained small with a continuing, but less embracive, commitment to the liberal arts; however, the student body included large numbers of young adults who professed religions other than Christianity and came from backgrounds other than European. Within this context, this article focuses on the impact of the Glendon College experience on students’ religious identification and participation in religious services. Overall, I find that in the mid-sixties the College experience contributed to changes in the religious identification of students. By contrast, a half-century later, students’ post-secondary experiences were of little consequence for religiosity. One possible explanation for differences in the College effect is that because of the current racial and religious diversity of Toronto, students are more likely than in the past to confront their religious identities in high school.

Benito Pérez Galdós’s Misericordia (1897) represents two opposing models of providing care for diseased, disabled, or degenerate subjects: custodial care aimed at controlling social deviance and caregiving that takes into account the needs of the care recipient. I propose that, through the caregiving model, the protagonist, Benina, establishes a powerful stance against medical and economic discourses that devalued the lives of marginal subjects. This analysis examines the relationship between the categories of disease, disability, and degeneration; the role of custodial care and caregiving in the nineteenth-century Spanish economy; and how both models respond to the possibility of contagion, as well as the political implications of these responses.

Keywords: disability, discapacidad, degeneration, degeneración, asistencia, contagion, care, contagio, caridad, charity

This article describes the uses of literature in The Labor Advocate: A Weekly Labor Reform Newspaper (Toronto, 1890-91). As editor of the Advocate, Thomas Phillips Thompson aimed to increase awareness of the means and consequences of industrial capitalism, and thus enhance the possibility of social justice for the working class. He did so in a mixed format periodical that included poetry, short fiction, and serialized novels as well as editorials, biographies, obituaries, reports, letters, and columns. Over forty-four issues, Thompson experimented with literary expression to attract readers and foster the democratic reform of social organization. Analysis of the Advocate points to the importance of communication strategies in both the early history of the Canadian labour press and the longer history of labour in transnational contexts. 

Gender-based and sexual violence (GBSV) remains a pervasive problem in higher education, disproportionately affecting marginalized students and undermining their safety, well-being, and academic success. Post-secondary institutions (PSIs) increasingly rely on peer educators (PeerEds) to deliver prevention and response programs, leveraging their shared student experience to foster trust and engagement. This study explores the motivations and experiences of GBSV PeerEds in Canada and the United States, revealing how personal trauma, institutional critique, and allyship drive their involvement. Findings highlight the emotional labour, secondary trauma, and systemic constraints PeerEds face, alongside their contributions to campus culture and advocacy. The study critiques institutional reliance on marginalized students’ compassion and calls for trauma-informed practices, sustainable funding, and structural reform. Future research should examine PeerEds’ influence on campus subcultures, administrators’ complicity, and the broader legitimacy of peer-led GBSV initiatives. Meaningful change requires confronting institutional complicity and reimagining ethics of care.

Keywords: gender-based sexual violence, Violence sexuelle fondée sur le genre, pairs éducateurs, peer educators, higher education, enseignement supérieur, sécurité sur les campus, campus safety, pratiques tenant compte des traumatismes, trauma-informed practices, responsabilité institutionnelle, institutional accountability

Officially, the Jewish presence in New France was prohibited under the French regime. Nevertheless, Esther Brandeau arrived there in 1738 and refused to convert. As peripheral figures in a predominantly Christian world, Jews like Brandeau used several strategies to survive and become chameleonic figures. This study aims to highlight Brandeau as she is portrayed in the archives as well as by the author Pierre Lasry, who wrote the very first novel about this historical character. Through this comparison, we can observe the relationship between reality and fiction, history and literature, the historian and the writer. Brandeau’s story serves as a reminder that Sephardic Jews settled not only in the Mediterranean basin following their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula, but well beyond Europe, including in Canada.

Keywords: Canadian Jewish fiction, Esther Brandeau, Les Juifs en Nouvell-France, Jews of New France, l'identité juive dans la littérature québécoise, le roman historique