Concordia Journal Home > Archives > April 29, 2010 issue >

Accolades 

Concordia creative writing alumni Kate Hall (MA 06) and English professor Sina Queyras (MA 95) have been nominated for Canadian League of Poetry awards. Hall’s The Certainty Dream has been nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry, recognizing the best first Canadian poetry book published in the preceding year. Queyras’ Expressway is up for the Pat Lowther Award for best book of poetry by a Canadian woman published in the preceding year.

Hall was also among other Concordians involved with the Blue Metropolis Festival, April 21 to 25. She read her work at the Soirée de Poésie International, an evening of multilingual readings by festival poets.

Others included former adjunct professor of English (and Blue Met founder) Linda Leith, Hexagram digital imaging coordinator Thomas Kneubühler, Études françaises instructor David Homel, former creative writing professor Michael Harris, Department of Religion research associate Anthony Gabriel, Gillian Sze (MA 08), Julie Lapalme (MA 08), Connie Guzzo McParland (BFA 07) and Carolyn Marie Souaid (MFA 95).

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Also part of the Blue Metropolis festival was history professor and MIGS Director Frank Chalk, who sat on the April 23 CBC Radio One panel, The Human Face of Genocide. He is the co-author of the Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership and Action to Prevent Mass Atrocities report (MIGS, 2009), which will be published by McGill-Queen’s University Press as a book in September.

The following day, April 24, Chalk was quoted at length in a feature Montreal Gazette article about Concordia’s Life Stories project. Journalist Peggy Curran presented the life of 86-year-old Czech Holocaust survivor Georges Novak, who was interviewed for the project.

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Congratulations to Stingers’ offensive lineman Kristian Matte, who has signed a free agent contract with the NFL’s Houston Texans.

In 2009, the native of St. Hubert, Que. was a Quebec University Football League all-star and a Canadian Interuniversity Sport second team all-Canadian.

Linebacker Cory Greenwood and slotback Cory Watson are expected to be top picks at the CFL draft on May 2 (see Journal, Oct. 1, 2009).

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Undergraduate students Yesica Macias, Alex Wilson, Vaimoana Heyman and PhD Humanities student Joanne Hui presented their paper “Reflections on the Life of a Story: Engaging, Creating, and Dialoguing with Holocaust Testimony” at the Bearing Witness: Memory, Representation, and Pedagogy in the Post-Holocaust Age conference, sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC and held at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia from April 11 to 13. The paper grew out of a graphic novel the team produced for a history department seminar, (see Journal, April 23, 2009).

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Former fine arts professor Marion Wagschal (retired) recently launched an exhibition of her art at the Battat Contemporary Gallery. Wagschal, who spent 37 years at Concordia, was a significant influence on development of the Faculty of Fine Arts, and helped establish the seminar/studio course Women and Painting. She has displayed her work at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and the Musée de Québec, among many others. The exhibition continues at 7245 Alexandra St. #100 until June 5.