Arts & Humanities - Global Connections

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The Faculty of Arts & Humanities is heavily engaged in international teaching and research. Our faculty and students are immersed in experiences and research initiatives around the globe, and we regularly connect with other scholars and welcome them to campus at Western. Listed below are some recent highlights that showcase our international reach.

Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (SICI) Visiting Scholar

anmol_dutta.jpgAnmol Dutta was a visiting scholar from the University of Mumbai at Western University for the Fall 2019 semester. She received a fellowship from the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (SICI) to visit Western University for a three-month research period from September 2019 – December 2019 under the Shastri Student Internship Program (SSIP). At Western, she conducted her research under the supervision of Dr. Nandi Bhatia on Deepa Mehta’s Netflix mini-series, Leila. Drawing observations from Elements Trilogy, her research project is a critical study of the representation of female corporeality in Leila, specifically through the “diasporic eye”, and the politics that engulf the female body in a dystopian society, entrenched with misogyny and radical religious virtuoso. After the completion of her project, she intends to publish it as an essay with TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. While at Western, she submitted a paper titled, “‘I Don’t Want to Die Without Any Scars’: Fashioning Corporeal Experience through Masculine Violence in David Fincher’s Fight Club” for publication to the official graduate student journal of Comparative Literature, The Scattered Pelican. Additionally, she attended the talk titled “Trajectories of Research: Anticolonial Criticism in the 21st century” delivered by Dr. Salah D. Hassan of Michigan State University. She also audited the 2nd year undergraduate course on Postcolonial Literatures by Dr. Nigel Joseph. She visited Stratford Festival for the play, ‘Birds of a Kind’ and Festival Theatre, Toronto for ‘Between Breaths’ as a part of Dr. Kim Solga’s 3rd year undergraduate Theatre course. While at Western, she attended almost all events/ talks conducted by the International and Exchange Student Centre (IESC). Owing to her passion for cinema, as an extracurricular engagement, she volunteered at the Forest City Film Festival 2019.


Rwanda Film Screening at Forest City Film Festival

The Faculty of Arts & Humanities recently supported the Forest City Film Festival. This year, The Faces We Lost was the International Screening on October 27th, 2019. Faculty and partners of our Rwanda program were on hand to support filmmakers and bring attention to the film. View coverage from Rwandan news.


Bhatia's research featured in India Today

The research of Nandi Bhatia, English and Writing Studies, and Teresa Hubel (Huron College) has been featured in India Today. Both are working on a project focused on the representation of tawaifs and devadasis in literature, film and historical records. Read more  


Tracy Isaacs, Julia Emberley and Nandi Bhatia participated in The Sahitya Conference in India

Tracy Isaacs, Julia Emberley and Nandi Bhatia recently participated in the Sahitya Conference in India. The idea for this conference emerged from discussions with Dr. Kalpana Rao when she came to Western as a Visiting Fellow under the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute's Faculty Mobility Grant Read More


India @70: Revisiting Memories and Histories of 1947

The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur organized an International Interdisciplinary Seminar sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the Indian Council of Historical Research on 3-4 January 2018 to mark the 70th year of India’s independence. The Seminar was jointly convened by Professor Anjali Gera Roy, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and Professor Nandi Bhatia, Western University. Read More


Exploring how yoga healed a broken country

Mayme Audra Lefurgey, a graduate student in Western’s collaborative program between Women’s Studies and Feminist Research and the Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction, recently spent three months in Colombia, interviewing a Colombian non-profit organization on how it is using yoga to help victims of the country’s civil war. Read More


Crossing ‘Borders’ for global understanding

Andrew Botterell, the Chair of Western’s Department of Philosophy, who holds a joint appointment with the Faculty of Law, recently returned from Ethiopia, having taught jurisprudence at Bahir Dar University through a volunteer program with Academics Without Borders. Read More