Robert Barsky's Vanderbilt Website

DYNM 670: Intercultural Communication

Section on: Multiculturalism and Montreal
Professors Peter Steiner (Penn) and Robert Barsky (Vanderbilt)

Goals: This tour will allow students to become immersed in the vibrant life of one of America's oldest cities, a veritable turnstile of peoples from around the world, whose cultural relations are to some degree regulated by Canadian multicultural policies.

Introduction: We will begin with an introduction to key issues in Canadian legal policies relating to migration and multiculturalism. We will focus upon relations with the predominantly Catholic francophone population, relations which in the early part of this century led to considerable strife with communities deemed “other”, notably Blacks and Jews, particularly in working class areas and in the area of the city described so vividly in Mordechei Richler's Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. This tension took on new meaning on account of massive new immigration in the 1970s, with communities from around the Third and Developing Worlds in particular arriving at the height of nationalist fervor in the province.  Students will also have a unique opportunity through cooperation with faculty with the McGill University Law School, the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, University of Quebe, Jardins couverts, and Université de Montréal to visit the sites of admission to this other America, which for immigrants have included the ports and influx offices of the city, as well as a number of key institutions in the downtown area. We will also visit the refugee determination board and Federal Court in order to talk about Quebec and Canadian migration and refugee institutions in action. They will also meet with people in the government, and in NGOs, who are involved in the process of admitting and integrating new immigrants and refugees, as well as authors who have written about their experiences of migration to this, the second largest francophone city in the world.

Texts:
Robert F. Barsky, “The Interpreter as Intercultural Agent in Convention Refugee Hearings”, The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication 2.1 (1996): 45-63.

Denise Helly, “Cultural Pluralism”, http://www.vanderbilt.edu/french_ital/barsky/helly

Marc Angenot, “Resentment” and the "doxa" http://www.vanderbilt.edu/french_ital/barsky/angenotdoxa

Sherry Simon, Translating Montreal (McGill UP, 2006), pp. 3-27; 119-86 (xerox will be provided).

Meetings arranged for Montreal with:

Michel Pierssens and Josette Féral on questions of multiculturalism through Quebec literature and film.

Michel Pierssens teaches French literature at the University of Montreal. His many publications deal with nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. He is a co-founder of the journal SubStance. He co-founded and now edits Histoires Littéraires, a quarterly journal dedicated to modern French literary history.

Josette Féral, Critique, théoricienne et professeur a l'école supérieure de théatre de l'Université du Québec a Montréal, author of numerous books on theatre and culture.

Tania Ghanem, Director, Jardin Courvert and Refugee Actions meeting at 4039 Tupper (1-3). YMCA Jardin Couvert presentation. Tania and other current staff of the Jardin Couvert will show the place and explain the work they are doing (integration and welcoming of asylum seekers, intercultural workshops...) as well as inevitably tackling the faith of asylum seekers arriving in Canada in general. They will then speak about Action Refugies and the work they are doing with asylum seekers in detention, followed by a presentation by an actual refugee on his own experience as an asylum seeker just arriving in Montreal.

Paul John, PhD candidate in Linguistics, University of Quebec, and former professor at the COFI, a Center for Integraton of immigrants, funded by the Government of Quebec

Marc Angenot holds the James McGill Chair in the French Department at McGill University and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Prix Biguet (Academie francaise) and the FRSC (Royal Society of Canada). The author of 24 books and hundreds of articles and chapters, Angenot is a specialist in argumentation, rhetoric, discourse analysis, the history of ideas, the history of radical movements, semiotics, social discourse theory, and sociocriticism. He has been involved in tempestuous discussions with nationalists on issues of multiculturalism through the idea of resentment.

Julius H. Grey is a Canadian lawyer and professor, and one of Canada's leading civil libertarians and human rights advocates. Julius Grey has been a member of the Quebec Bar and the Canadian Bar Association since 1974. Since 1976 he has been involved in numerous associations such as the Canadian Foundation for Individual Rights, serving as its president from 1985 to 1988. He has been a professor of law at McGill University since 1979. Grey defended La servante écarlate by Margaret Atwood, the French version of The Handmaid's Tale, in the French version of Canada Reads, broadcast on Radio-Canada in 2004.

Sherry Simon is a Professor of transation studies at Concordia University, and one of Canada's foremost experts on French/English in Montreal, and intercultural communication.

Esther Trépanier has been a professor in the Department of Art History of the Université du Québec à Montréal since 1981, and from 2000 she has been Director of its École supérieure de mode de Montréal. Her research and numerous publications focus on early 20th century Quebec and Canadian art, with particular emphasis on questions of modernity. She has also curated and collaborated on several exhibitions of Quebec art, most notably for the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, the Saidye Bronfman Centre, and recently, the Concordia gallery. In 2005, she contributed a lengthy study on modern Quebec art in Lasting Impressions (Art Gallery of Hamilton) and is currently working on a revised and expanded study of Montreal’s Jewish painters.

François Crépeau
Professor of International Law , Canada Research Chair in International Migration Law, and the Research Director for the Centre for International Studies (CÉRIUM), Faculty of Law, University of Montreal
URL: http://www.cdim.cerium.ca

Friday 2 Nov

11:25am
Departing USAir Flt 3874 from PHL

12:56pm
Arriving Montreal
Transfer to Hotel via cab, Check in

2 – 3:00pm
Tania Ghanem, Jardin Couvert, Westmount YMCA

3:30 – 4:30pm
Paul John, COFI and UQAM, Commensal, 3715 Queen Mary

5 – 7:00pm
Book launch chez Olivieri, 5219 Cote de Neige, hosted by Michel Pierssens: will be attended by members of various university and community organizations

7 – 8:30pm
Francois Crepeau (supper?)

Saturday 3 Nov
Breakfast at hotel

9:00
Visits to the Ministere des communautes culturelles et immigration building and the appeals court and refugee board

TBD
Michel Pierssens & Josette Feral

10:00AM
2100 Saint-Catherine Ouest (building Astral) (entre les métro Guy et Atwater).

11:00
Sherry Simon, 5149 Jeanne-Mance

1:00-2:00
Julius Grey

2-5:00pm
Free time to discover Montreal

5:00 pm Marc Angenot

Sunday 4 Nov
Breakfast at hotel, check out

11:00am
Esther Trepannier

2:00pm
Cabs to airport

3:55pm
USAir Flt 3167 to PHL