2014

June 2015 | Faculty
Toswell wins best book prize 
The Anglo-Saxon Psalter by Jane Toswell, English & Writing Studies, was recently awarded Best Book on an Anglo Saxon Topic by International Society of Anglo-Saxonists.

June 2015 | Undergraduate Studies
Small Cinemas at a Crossroads
Size matters – this is how one could capture in a slogan the ongoing research undertaken by several Film Studies faculty members, who focus on the opportunities and challenges faced by cinemas in small nations across the globe. But when is a nation or a cinema “small”? The cinema of small nations, says Professor Tobias Nagl, is usually understood as the film production of independent states with a population so small that their domestic market hardly supports the development of a homegrown film industry, making filmmakers either dependent on state funding, transnational co-production strategies or creative guerilla tactics.

After an international conference at Western in 2010 that explored these issues, Janina Falkowska, Tobias Nagl and Janelle Blankenship have now published two anthologies on the topic. Small Cinemas in Global Markets: Genres, Identities, Narratives, edited by Lenuta Giukin Janina Falkowska, David Desser, addresses aspects such as identity, revisiting the past, internationalized genres, new forms of experimental cinema, markets and production, as well as technological developments of alternative small screens. This anthology addresses the need to analyze the impact of small industries at local, regional, and global levels.

European Visions. Small Cinemas in Transition, edited by Janelle Blankenship and Tobias Nagl, examines the challenges cinemas in small European countries have faced since 1989. The volume explores how notions of scale and small cinemas relate to questions of territory, transnational media flows and globalization. Employing a variety of approaches from industry analysis to Deleuze & Guattari’s concept of the "minor," contributions address the relationship of small cinemas to Hollywood, the role of history and memory, and the politics of place in post-Socialist cinemas. A prominent film critic in Germany has written that the “global reach of the editors and contributors” of European Visions is “impressive.

March 16, 2015 | The Gazette
Big Screen Dreams: Western Undergraduate Film Festival
Film lovers and filmgoers can look forward to Western Undergraduate Film Society’s annual Film Festival on Friday, March 27. The festival will be playing student made short films and awarding them for their efforts.

November 20, 2014 | Western News
Theatre revival takes students beyond the stage
Theatre thrived on campus when poet and playwright James Reaney taught at Western from 1960 until 1992. It was the ‘heyday of performance’ in what was then known as the Department of English.

October 30, 2014 | Western News
The World Cup, post-Wall cinema and the re-rebranding of Berlin
As our plane from Copenhagen was approaching the flat Berlin skyline on a sunny afternoon in July, we did not yet know the flight of the victorious German soccer team was scheduled to arrive from Brazil only a few minutes later. Once we had picked up our suitcases with clothes, baby toys and books for our sabbatical and entered the arrival hall of Tegel airport, the signs of athletic – and national – pride could hardly be missed: flags everywhere, children with painted faces, cheering girls in soccer tricots and a few men who already had one too many beers, waiting behind the barriers in eager anticipation of their heroes.

October 23, 2014 | Western News
'Beautiful' work turns the pages of the past
At first glance, it looks more like something you might rest your feet on rather than read. But at more than 3-inches thick, and a good 20-inches high and 12-inches wide, the Decretalium libri V. Gregorii Papae cum ordinaria glossa Berhardt is one of the gems of Western Libraries’ collection.

October 21, 2014 | Western News
Western music historian makes near 1,000 year-old discovery
After years of study, many deep in the manuscript room at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, an award-winning musicologist from Western University discovered the earliest surviving handwritten manuscripts featuring notation above musical text or lyrics – a technique fundamentally still used today.

September 9, 2014 | Western News
Two of our own named to the prestigious Royal Society of Canada
Professor Julia Emberley and Emeritus Professor Frank Davey are among six Western University scholars recently named to the prestigious Royal Society of Canada, in recognition of their scholarly and artistic achievements.

September 3, 2014 | Huffpost Living
English 2092F/G - The Many Faces of Harry Potter named one of Canada's coolest classes
This course examines the Harry Potter series in relation to the gothic novel, detective fiction, fantasy, adventure, and even the dystopian novel.

September 2014 | Writer-in-Residence
2014-15 Writer-in-Residence
Gary Barwin 2014-15 Writer-in-Residence, is a writer, composer, multimedia artist, and educator and the author of seventeen books of poetry and fiction as well as books for both teens and children. His work has been widely performed, broadcast, anthologized and published nationally and internationally. His latest book is Moon Baboon Canoe (poetry, Mansfield Press, 2014.) and he has just completed a novel, Yiddish for Pirates.