Accolades
Brock University’s Board of Trustees has announced the appointment of Jack Lightstone as the new President and Vice-Chancellor of Brock University. Lightstone has been a professor of Religion and chair of the department at Concordia, as well as Concordia’s Provost and Vice Rector (Vice-President), Research.
Robert Tittler (History) was interviewed extensively for a four-hour celebration of the life and works of the Elizabethan composer Thomas Tallis on CBC Radio 2 last Sunday, Nov. 20.
David Ketterer (English, retired), an honorary research fellow at the University of Liverpool, was the consultant and an interviewee for a BBC 4 documentary called John Wyndham: The Invisible Man of Science Fiction. It was broadcast Oct. 15. Ketterer’s essay, “John Wyndham: The Facts of Life Sextet,” appears in A Companion to Science Fiction, ed. David Seed (Blackwell) and his “John Wyndham and the Sins of his Father: Damaging Disclosures in Court,” appears in Extrapolation 46 (Summer 2005).
Barry Wainwright (Studio Arts, retired) has a solo exhibition of recent work, A Dress . . . Has Many Meanings, at the Nanaimo Art Gallery in British Columbia from Nov. 19 to Dec. 17.
The Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP) presented Robert Boushel (Exercise Science, right) with its Young Investigator Award at its annual conference earlier this month. The award is given each year to a CSEP member who has garnered international recognition. Dr. Boushel is currently conducting research on the regulation of blood flow and mitochondrial oxygen consumption in the skeletal muscle of patients with chronic lung diseases and Type II diabetics.
Congratulations to composer and artist in residence R. Murray Schafer, who has been given the $30,000 Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts by the Canada Council for the Arts. A concert of his recent work will be presented this Saturday at 8:30 p.m. in the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall.
Manners of Dying, the first full-length feature by Jeremy Allen, a 1991 graduate of the Film Production program, has just won two prizes — a special mention from the international jury and the youth prize — at the Festival Cinéma tout écran, held in Geneva, Switzerland, in early November. The film stars Quebec actor Roy Dupuis.
Richard J. Renaud, businessman, benefactor and longtime member of Concordia’s Board of Governors, was one of only three Canadians honoured by the Dalai Lama recently as an “Unsung Hero of Compassion.” With 47 others, he was recognized on Nov. 6 for his sensitive brand of philanthropy at a luncheon in San Francisco attended by the Dalai Lama. The event was organized by Dick Grace, a Napa Valley vintner, to honour those who try to close the gap between the haves and have-nots.
Michel Despland (Religion) gave a series of lectures in late August in Brazil. He spoke at the University of Sao Paulo, the Pontifical Catholic University and the Methodist University, also in Sao Paulo. The first lecture was on the work of French anthropologist Marcel Mauss and coincided with the publication in Portuguese of his classic book on sacrifice. The lecture was reviewed in the Oct. 2 issue of the Folha de Sao Paulo, along with an interview on current trends in the study of religion.