Graduate Student Research Symposium 2012

2012 GSRS SCHEDULE
*Please note: presentations are 12-15 minutes each and there will be time for questions once all presenters have spoken. Presenters are welcome to use PowerPoint and a computer and projector will be provided.

THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2012
Escalus Room, MacEwan Student Centre

8:00 a.m. – 8:45 a.m. Breakfast and registration

8:45 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Opening Remarks

9:00 a.m. – 10:05 a.m. Policy and Social Justice
Chair: Dr. Tom Langford

An Examination into Indian Residential Schools—IRS Compensation; Truth & Reconciliation; and the Apology: Perspectives of Blackfoot Confederacy People.
- Terri-Lynn Fox
This proposal discusses the perspectives of Blackfoot Confederacy people relating to Indian Residential Schools, specifically the IRS compensation, the Truth and Reconciliation, and the Apology, using an analysis of participant interviews and an extensive literature review. It addresses issues concerning these three events which [may] have affected the lives of Blackfoot Confederacy people in various ways. This research examines a chapter in Canadian history which is deep-rooted in non-Aboriginal policy and law. It is anticipated that we will gain a greater understanding of those survivors of IRS, and how these events have impacted their individual lives, their families, and communities in recent years. Furthermore, it is hopeful that each community within the Blackfoot Confederacy benefits in various capacities due to the outcomes and recommendations from this research project. Both mainstream society and academia will benefit—the lives of Aboriginal People’s have been altered due to these aforementioned events; their stories need to be documented and shared to continue to build positive relations and partnerships, to aid in decreasing the astounding statistics that a marginalized People are affected by, and to enhance community ties in all societal realms, thus equality, fairness and respect can be realized.

Undocumented Foreign Workers and Japan's Closed Door Immigration Policy
- Ali Kamal
My presentation will look at some of the issues related to undocumented foreign workers in Japan and Japanese government’s policy towards them. Japan is one of the highly developed nations in the world with second largest economy after the United States. However, unlike other developed nations Japan pursues one of the most repressive and racist polices towards immigration in general and in particular, towards illegal immigration. During the bubble economy of 1980s Japan faced acute labour shortage. The demand for labour shortage coupled with no immigration policy opened up the market for hiring of illegal immigrants by small Japanese companies and factories. Most of these undocumented foreign workers come from underdeveloped countries and are hired for dangerous and dirty jobs, and are paid lower wages compared to Japanese nationals, with no medical benefits. I will examine issues related to social justice towards undocumented workers in Japan.

Integrating Refugees in Ghana: Reactions from Host Communities and Policy Challenges
- Sam Agbloti
One of the legacies of forced displacement today is the protracted refugee situations that have pervaded the world, especially the Global South. Some scholars have proposed local integration as the most feasible among the three durable solutions citing similarity between countries of origin and destination as the basis for their assertion. Often forgotton or ignored are the dynamics within refugee hosting communities and policy challenges in host countries that have implications for local integration. This paper explores the factors that are likely to hinder integration of refugees in Ghana using Buduburam Refugee Camp as the study site. Socio-cultural and economic factors were found to hinder local integration of refugees moderately while political factors emerged powerfully. Use of resources by refugees within the host community as well as camp administration’s relations with host population were key issues for the acceptability of local integration by hosts. Finally, I argue that any debate on local integration that sidelines host populations would be unacceptable as they play a key role in the lives of refugees. Strengthening national instutions responsible for refugee activities is necessary in pushing the agenda for finding durable solutions to the refugee problem.

10:05 a.m. – 11:20 a.m. Spaces and Places
Chair: Dr. Harry Hiller

Contextualising Herder-Local Conflicts in Ghana: A Socio-Geographical Approach
- Rita Yembilah
Conflicts between nomadic Fulani herders and local communities in West Africa are rampant and steeped in the political ecology of herder survival strategies which include the herder influx into areas non-native to them. Across West Africa, there is widespread community resistance to the herder influx accompanied by simmering conflict which sporadically degenerates into violent conflict. This study, from northern Ghana, employed a socio-spatial lens to contextualise the causes of herder-local conflict as the basis of developing targeted interventions that have a chance at success. In this presentation, I discuss my philosophy of the causes of herder-local conflicts, a philosophy underpinned by the view that fundamental differences between local and nomadic conceptions of space, place and territory, set herder-local relations off to a rocky start, paving the way for mountains to emerge from anthills.

What's So Special about Everyday Life?: Perspectives on Home Design and Decoration
- Kenneth Blades
Scholars have spent much energy studying human living spaces, their design and decoration, through a variety of means. Homes provide shelter, both physical and social; they are economic and cultural creations, sites for human practice. They are also spaces of lived life: cherished memories, intimate moments, reverie and intense emotion; sites of death and life and the experience of being. This last perspective poses special problems for anyone who may wish to comment upon it, for here the way we think about home determines how effectively we can treat images, sensations, meaning, and the phenomenological experience of being in space. How should we think about home? How should we receive our data? And what does it matter? I will address these ped-ANTIC issues as a sociological researcher who has confronted them in the course of an ethnographic interview study of home design and decoration practices.

Expressing Hybrid Ethnicity in the Urban Built Environment
- Insia Hassonjee
In this era of hybrid ethnicity, multiculturalism may be redefined as interculturalism or hybridization envisioning the urban built form as a cohesive social environment for hybrid-ethnic groups. The urban built environment is rooted in two instinctive human imperatives: safety and association. Therefore, designing a socially comfortable built environment is indispensable for multi ethnic societies in cities. This research explores how ethnic groups construct meanings to their built environment, and how a hybridization of built spaces transforms the urban cosmopolitan city. Since the neighbourhood is our most immediate public space, its built form is reflective of the connection between this hybrid identity and place. Based on the above theoretical framework, the researcher investigates this hybrid identity through an ethnic neighbourhood in Calgary. The neighbourhood selection is based on the census data determining the demographic changes and variation in ethnic composition. Detailed site observations and key informant interviews with city planners, ethnic organization leaders and other stakeholders are done to study the selected neighbourhood. Based on the inferences found, this study proposes an intercultural or hybridized model for urban development in Calgary.

Pressures of Hybridity: Investigating the Meanings and Conflicts of Space in the Urban-Rural Periphery
- Jyoti Gondek
As cities around the world increase their densities and expand their boundaries, the urban setting has become more than the city core with its surrounding residential rings. In the past, research on cities has focused on the space contained within city limits, designating spaces within the boundary as urban and those on the outside as rural. This black and white distinction blurred into grey as the burgeoning growth of cities pushed into what were formerly rural spaces. Urbanization has created metropolitan regions that envelope spaces outside the traditional borders of cities, incorporating distinctly different lands, people and functions. Thus, the urban-rural hybrid zone has become a contested space that is primarily analyzed as an extension of urban pressures. Departing from the literature on urban pressures, my research project examines the pressures of hybridity in the urban-rural periphery where land use conflicts reveal the opposing expectations and meanings attached to space.

11:20 a.m. – 12:10 p.m. Power and Institutions
Chair: Dr. Ariel Ducey

Consumption, Safety, and the Truth of the Market: An Inquiry into the Governance of Cycling
- Jason Ponto
Cycling is a practice of urban transportation that is subject to many different forms of governance. To explore practices of cycling, this paper asks how power relations produce techniques of governance that emphasize the automobile. Using a governmentality perspective, this paper examines three different topics. It looks at the ways that populations are known and governed as consumers, how safety is encouraged though an emphasis on prudent riding strategies, and how the market came to be known as a source of truth. To better understand the social forces that affect an individual's decision to ride a bike, these three seemingly unrelated topics are brought together in a model that emphasizes a tension between pressures to consume and pressures to be safe.

A Postcolonial Approach: Clerical Celibacy and Christians of India, Some Early Encounters
- Sunny Thekke-vallyara
This paper will examine primary sources such as the fourteenth century travel writing of the friar, Catalani Jordanus, titled “Mirabilia Descripta: The Wonders of the East” (I will be examining the edition published by the Hakluyt Society in 1863), “The Narratives of Joseph the Indian”, which presents the experiences of a pre-colonial St. Thomas Christian priest of India who visited Europe between 1503 and 1506 (I will look at an edition by Vallavanthara [1984]), and some other sources reproduced in Domenico Ferroli’s “The Jesuits in Malabar” (vol I). My purpose in examining all these is to trace the creation of the Other within discourses on chastity and Christian duty, which during Portuguese colonization – I argue – played an unfortunate role in the imposition of compulsory clerical celibacy on Indian Christians. Edward Said’s theories on orientalism and responses to those theories (Scott, Docker, Huggan, Payne, Mohapatra, Hart, etc.) will provide the methodological framework of this paper.

Literature and Politically Engaged Imagined Communities.
- Kate O’Neill
This paper examines the role of political literature in critically engaging with the recent genocide in Rwanda and the continuing genocide in Darfur. More specifically, it considers how Gil Courtemanche’s A Sunday at the pool in Kigali and Halima Bashir & Damien Lewis’s Tears of the Desert serve the essential function of forging new “imagined communities” (Anderson) and “imagined geographies” (Said) in the aftermath of violent events.
Literary texts such as these can serve as the basis of local, exiled, and global communities by enabling readers to identify with the embedded narrators of each text. Such an act of identification encourages empathy, social and cultural awareness, and political understanding. Particularly in a media-saturated world where information is available but misrepresentation is rampant, greater awareness of the causes behind specific conflicts is the first step towards provoking effective international responses. These texts use literature as a political teaching tool, challenging the way that news is disseminated and further evolving the function of the novel as a form of writing.

12:10 p.m. – 1:10 p.m. LUNCH

1:15 p.m. – 2:35 p.m. Learning
Chair: Dr. Steve Dumas

Doing Ethnography with the Canadian Forces: Methodological Processes and Considerations on an Army Base
- Matthew Esau
Conducting ethnographic research with the armed forces can provide a rich source of data but it can also pose many challenges. By examining and reflecting on my fieldwork experience at CFB Wainwright I will provide a source of direction for individuals carrying out research with the Canadian Forces. My project involved eleven months of planning, gaining access, and seeking ethics approval from two separate boards. After gaining access, I spent two months conducting fieldwork at CFB Wainwright. For this presentation, my discussion of ethnographic methods consists of three parts: Access/Negotiation, Research/Renegotiation, and Exiting the Field. The intention is to provide guidelines for each stage based on the successes and failures I experienced with my research and to demystify the process. Conducting ethnographic research with the military can be taxing but it is also rewarding and can yield data with a level of detail unmatched by other qualitative methods.

How Much of an Accent? Toward a Model of Contrastive Rhetoric for Writing Centre Tutors
- Asif Siddiqui
Research within Contrastive Rhetoric (CR) and other areas is used to delineate the main attributes and broad features of a model to help writing center tutors decide the kind of role they should play with the second language acquisition of their clients. The main attributes of such a model would be as follows. The clients’ discourse-level CR patterns as manifested through the first language and original culture are the dependent variable. There are three intervening variables: 1) the role of the tutor; 2) client agency; and, 3) contextual factors (client’s language skills, audience and requirements of the discipline). The independent variable is the level of accent in second language output. This is just the preliminary research outlining the main characteristics of the model based on the literature. The full development and testing of the model will have to come at a later point.

Proposed Abstract: The Contemporary Theatre Teacher’s Role in Orchestrating Rebellion Against Itself
- Tom Blazejewicz
The theatre teacher is presented as intending to bring out the student’s talent, rather than shape the student into a new adherent of established approaches to theatrical techniques. However, by taking the pedagogical approach of imparting their knowledge of the past, teachers resultantly preserve the past systems and place the student in a safe environment where they become whatever they are taught. There is the alternative that the teacher provides an opposing force in order to rebel. He provides an established approach to artistic practice, intended to motivate the student to break away from its confines and find success despite the learning. The role of the teacher ironically becomes one of motivating future talent against the institutionalization of the profession. Through this rebellion against itself, it is up to the student to determine how much conformity or retaliation they wish to adopt in order to develop their own theatrical approach.

The Powder and the Glory: An Analysis of Professional and Amateur Serious Leisure Participation and Perceptions of Risk in Backcountry Snowboarding
- Marcus Plottel
The study of serious leisure activities and risk has been a growing area of interest for sociological researchers (Stebbins, 1992, 2005, etc.). This current undertaking represents a proposal for an analysis of the differences in perceptions of risk between amateur and professional backcountry snowboarders. To date, there has not been any sociological study of professional-level snowboarders, the effects of commodification of this serious leisure activity, and no sociological research conducted on backcountry snowboarders specifically. The proposed research will answer the question: what are the different ways that professional and amateur backcountry snowboarders perceive risk? Also, it will answer the question: to what extent do amateurs’ perceptions of professionals’ risk management effect how amateurs manage risks in the backcountry, and how do these perceptions influence overall participation and lifestyle orientation? This research will contribute to a greater understanding of involvement in “risky” serious leisure pursuits and their place in contemporary society.

2:35 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Families and Relationships
Chair: Dr. Gillian Ranson

Investigating Parenting Advice Literature: A ‘Doing Gender’ Approach
- Laurie Vermeylen
This paper examines parenting advice literature in print and electronic sources and the explicit and/or implicit messages regarding appropriate roles for mothers and fathers that are expressed through them. Most commonly found have been the ‘mother-as-the-main-parent’ and ‘father-as-the-part-time-parent’ ideologies that continue to position mothers as the central caregivers with fathers there primarily to assist the mothers. While these messages are observed in the literature, there is evidence that these ideologies are not necessarily acted upon, as there have been large-scale changes in terms of family forms and involvement of fathers in the domestic sphere. Parenting websites are explored to see if they present a more egalitarian approach to advice and are found to have great potential but can also continue to carry more traditional messages as well. Gender expectations are developed through interaction and change is gradual. This will be considered when exploring the mismatch between culture and conduct in parenting today.

Attachment Style and Relationship Satisfaction in Intimate Relationships of Adult Children of Alcoholics
- Marley Resch
Alcoholism can have a large impact not only on the affected individual but also on surrounding family members and friends. An important population in which little research exists is with adult children of alcoholics, specifically in regards to attachment styles and relationship satisfaction in current intimate relationships. This study examines differences in attachment styles and levels of relationship satisfaction that may exist between adult children of alcoholics and adult children of non-alcoholics in their current intimate relationships, and to analyze differences that may exist when comparing the effects of maternal versus paternal alcoholism. Participants were recruited though posters and business cards on campus at the University of Calgary, as well as through online list serve advertisements. In the fall of 2011, participants completed a demographic questionnaire along with three quantitative measures: the Children of Alcoholics Screening Test (Jones, 1991), the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale-Revised (Fraley, Waller, & Brennan, 2000), and the Couples Satisfaction Index (Funk & Rogge, 2007). The questionnaires were completed online over www.surveymonkey.com. Results are discussed, and implications for this research and its importance in counselling are examined.

The Pressure to Marry: Exploring Strategies of Resistance
- Julie Broderick
Women who are past the average age for marriage in Canada, which is 28 years, often receive messages in their social interactions that pressure them to conform to the ideology of marriage and the family. The social interactions that single women find problematic have been examined, however there is a lack of research in how these women are responding to these messages. I am interested in what these responses have to tell us about concepts such as power, agency and ideology. I am currently working on an undergraduate honours thesis which examines, through in-depth interviewing, the responses that single women use in these social interactions, and whether single women are using strategies of resistance. Alternatively, if the women in my study are not using resistance to these messages, I hope to examine the limitations that they face in demonstrating agency as single women.

FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 2012
Escalus Room, MacEwan Student Centre

8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Breakfast and Registration

9:00 a.m. – 9:50 a.m. People and Identities
Chair: Dr. Scott McLean

Passing Behaviour: Strategies in Impression Management
-Brian Hansen
My research proposes to investigate the “passing” behaviours of gay men. Previous research has found that invisible minorities such as homosexuals may manage their identities by passing as heterosexual as a means of concealing their sexual identity. Recent research has identified how participating in passing rituals reduces the likelihood of stigmatization based on sexual orientation that can lead to the loss of status, stereotyping, discrimination, embarrassment and violence. I am proposing to conduct a series of semi-structured, in-depth personal interviews with gay Canadian respondents in Calgary, Alberta. I want to explore the experiences of homosexual men and the ways in which they may engage in passing behaviours and in what contexts they might employ these identity-management strategies. This work will apply a contemporary, Canadian lens contextualized within a national environment of governed equality to this topic. Further, this research will contribute to the literature on gender and sexuality as well as the growing body of knowledge around sexual minority experiences.

Beyond Cross-cultural Comparisons: Lived Experience as Cultural Phenomenon
-Basia Ellis
Although cross-cultural psychology persists as the dominant research approach to cultural inquiries within the psychological discipline, a recently developed research framework is becoming increasingly prominent. Cultural psychology has over the last few decades grown into a promising field of research that incorporates interdisciplinary ideas from the social sciences, especially from sociology, anthropology, and history. Whereas cross-cultural research
continues to treat culture as external variable affecting autonomous individuals, cultural psychology recognizes culture as constitutive of the very development of psychological life. Specifically, cultural researchers treat psychological phenomena as dynamically emerging through cultural and individual tensions and contradictions. In my presentation, I exemplify the advantages of the cultural perspective through a study of shimcheong, a unique, affective state considered central to Korean culture. I argue that in contrast to cross-cultural methods, the cultural approach leads to a comprehensive understanding of the lived dynamics of shimcheong experience

9:50 a.m. – 10:55 a.m. Gender
Chair: Dr. Jean Wallace

Becoming Woman: Gender Construction in Roman Catholicism
- Sarah Hagel
Feminist and queer theories have shown that current understandings of sexuality do not adequately represent the diversity of human experience. Contained within the social systems that inform and construct our notions of sexuality there exists hegemonic constraints that keep perceived sexual taboos and minorities subordinate. This presentation will utilize feminist poststructuralist theory to analyze the construction of women’s sexuality by the Roman Catholic institution. By examining the institution’s responses to feminist initiatives with regards to women’s bodies and women’s sexuality, the continuation of limited and limiting understandings of women’s sexuality will be addressed; as well as the hegemonic benefits this provides the institution. By problematizing current constructions of women’s sexuality it becomes possible to create new understandings of sexuality that better represent the diversity of human experience.

Methodological Issues in University Faculty Pay Equity Studies
- Alicia Polachek and Kristen Desjarlais-DeKlerk,
University faculty salary equity studies exploring the connections between gender and salary were prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s. The majority of these studies found significant salary difference between men and women which inspired initiatives to create more equitable pay structures. However, methodologically speaking, faculty salary equity studies have been controversial. This controversy revolves around which variables should be incorporated as controls, as well as which statistical methods most effectively address the question of whether or not men’s and women’s salaries differ in academia. Politics motivated by assumptions of gender inequity also fuel this debate. This talk therefore explores this methodological controversy, issues with the data and data collection, potential ways of exploring pay equity in universities, and the findings that result from various approaches.

Assisted Reproductive Technologies: A Feminist Perspective
- Brandi Kapell
Over the past 40 years advancements in medical science have revolutionized women’s reproductive lives and experiences from menarche to menopause. In particular, assisted reproductive technologies (ART) have been at the center of this transformation. The rapid evolution of these technologies, coupled with the expansion of the medical profession into areas of women’s reproductive health, has been a cause for concern for many feminists. In this paper I examine empirical literature to uncover the ways in which feminists approach and conceptualize ARTs, with a particular emphasis on the common feminist argument that ARTs are one representation of an ongoing attempt to medicalize the female body. Feminist perspectives have revealed problems inherent within ARTs such as: facilitation of biological parenthood, medicalization of the female body, routinization of ARTs, and ‘prescribing risk’ to women who undergo these treatments. By exploring these issues, feminists have indicated how ARTs are gendered, classist and racist. As a result, feminists argue that there is a need to focus on preventative measures instead of just treatment.

10:55 a.m. – 12:10 p.m. Criminology and Deviance
Chair: Dr. Augustine Brannigan

Bullying Victimization, Perceptions of School Safety, and Carrying a Weapon
- Chris Esselmont
A key issue in regards to bullying victimization is its ties to future violence. This analysis examines one key manifestation of this violence – carrying a weapon – and the role played by a perception of school safety in mediating these effects. Using data from a national probability sample of U.S. middle and high school students, the
author finds that victimization significantly predicts the odds of carrying a weapon, but these effects are mediated by a perception of school safety. Additionally, both legs of the indirect effects of victimization on carrying a weapon through school safety differ by gender. Perceived school safety is reduced by victimization to a greater extent for boys, and school safety has a weaker effect on the likelihood of carrying a weapon for boys. This research contributes to the study of bullying by illuminating one key mechanism for the relationship between victimization and future violence.

"It’s Not about Victim-Blaming, it’s about Being Safe": Talk about Sexual Violence Prevention
- Kiara Okita
Acts of sexual violence are, and have historically been, crimes largely perpetrated by men, against women. Notably, however, sexual violence prevention strategies are, and have historically been, largely directed at women. As such, women are positioned as responsible for preventing sexual violence and as partially to blame for the sexual violence men perpetrate against them. This presentation critically engages with these contemporary sexual assault prevention/risk management discourses, and takes up how said prevention messages can serve to reify rape mythology; represent common forms of sexual violence as inevitable and deferrable; locate male perpetrators ‘beyond the pale;’ and, construct women against whom sexual violence is perpetrated as foolish, failed managers of obvious risk.

Alberta’s Safe Communities Innovation Fund (SCIF)- Effective Crime Prevention?
- Crystal Hincks
Crime prevention has historically been achieved through two major forms: situational approaches, which attempt to reduce the opportunity for crime by increasing the risks for offenders; and through police, courts and corrections, which are the most traditional forms of crime prevention (CPSD). Research indicates that while these methods of crime prevention do have a role to play, addressing the risk and protective factors of children and youth by focusing on changing the underlying social conditions of families, a strategy known as crime prevention through social development (CPSD), has been demonstrated to decrease crime more effectively than traditional crime prevention methods. I propose to evaluate the Safe Communities Innovation Fund (SCIF), a government-funded, social development-based crime prevention initiative. Crime affects all members and aspects of society, and therefore it is a worthwhile endeavour to evaluate and determine the best ways to prevent it in a cost effective and beneficial manner.

12:10 p.m. – 1:10 p.m. LUNCH

1:15 p.m. – 2:20 p.m. Internet and Connectivity
Chair: Dr. Art Frank

Old Communication – New Means: Linguistic Analysis of Ukrainian Orthodox Websites
- Iasolav Pankovskyi
The Ukrainian Orthodox Churches have called for cooperation of the state and society to unify their efforts in promoting moral norms and democratic principles in the Ukraine. One group that the Churches are seeking to address specifically is youth. Youth represent the most active segment of the population, but at the same time the number of youth in the Churches is decreasing. This study explores how effectively the Churches are communicating with youth in implementing the principles that they have declared. One specific venue of communication is examined in this research – websites. In addressing its goal, the study is using a linguistic model developed, within systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF MDA). The websites under analysis are examined as complex multimodal entities. The analysis is structured around three integral components of websites: (1)design, (2)content, and (3)navigational tools. Both theoretical and practical implementations of the study are discussed.

Social Networking Sites: Online Spaces for Informal and Incidental Learning
- Jacqueline Warrell
Internet social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have become increasingly popular over recent years, especially among university students. These sites have the potential to be dynamic learning environments where students engage in the collaborative creation, modification and sharing of information, ideas
and knowledge. However, little is understood about how students can harness the potential of online social networking as a powerful learning tool. This study explores the unique affordances and challenges of SNS to foster informal learning during graduate study. Using an autoethnographic approach, this research will explore graduate students’ significant learning moments as they engage in these conversation spaces on the Internet. It also advances the dialogue on bridging formal and informal learning in today’s digital age. Additionally, it addresses important issues about conducting Internet research, such as online methodologies and Internet research ethics.

A ‘Controversial’ Decision: The Internet, Multiple Sclerosis Patients and the CCSVI Procedure
- Jenny Kelly
Previous research has been conducted on how patients use the internet to verify, investigate and challenge medical information. However, little research has examined how online information may influence a patient’s decision to have a controversial medical procedure such as chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI). This paper seeks to examine how multiple sclerosis patients read, and interpret online information as they decide whether to travel abroad to seek the controversial procedure. Multiple sclerosis patients discussed the negative connotations of using the internet for health information, but provided two distinct strategies to ensure they were not duped by online information as they used the internet to enact their agency against their debilitating disease. First, some participants cited accessing academic papers online that they felt confident interpreting via their scientific or medical backgrounds. Second, the participants that did not have a medical background relied on multiple sources such as fellow patients in discussion boards, or news sites that reported similar information on CCSVI. These strategies helped patients to be objective researchers as they become more informed about their disease and treatments; however their ultimate decision rested on the state and progression of their illness.

2:20 p.m. – 3:25 p.m. Art and Perfomance
Chair: Dr. Liza McCoy

The Human-that-Fantasizes-and-Plays: Art, Imagination and Libido in a Postmodern Subculture
- Nazario Robles
This article delves into fan art, a particular form of artistic imagination that characterizes certain heretical communities, such as Japanese animation fans. Adressing some of its embodiments in this particular subculture -cosplay, fansubbing and yaoi,among others-, this text aims to illustrate how members of certain postmodern subcultures have redefined art, thereby creating a new creative space where politics, imagination and libido flow and mingle inside virtual artistic creations and three dimensions sensuality. At the end of this redefinition of the field of art, this paper proposes, there is a world of carnivals, dreams and simulacra, in which fans of anime,
also called otaku, have opened the doors of their own heretical otherness that is translation and seasoning of an other in principle untranslatable.

Experiencing Artwork: A Sensorial Exploration of Art Galleries and Museum Websites
- Lauren McDougall
Museum websites bring together images and information to deliver a museum experience to a worldwide audience. In 2011, the National Gallery of Canada relaunched their website to offer greater virtual access to their collection. Despite the ease of access and increasing sophistication of digital reproduction on internet websites, traditional museum viewership continues to thrive. Even the most technologically advanced websites cannot reproduce elements of the physical gallery settings. The aim of this project will be to examine how the communicative abilities of paintings are affected by these divergent viewing situations by focusing on the sensorial aspects of the museum experience. Using the painting Voice of Fire as a case study, this paper will present data gathered at the National Gallery of Canada in an effort to indentify differences between the physical viewing experience and viewing art in virtual galleries.

New Folk, Old Lore: Intertextuality, Intersubjectivity, and Trickery in the Tradition of Mummers’ Plays
- Mat Levitt
For the past few years I have been studying mummers’ plays – a style of British folkplay – and the appearance of the mumming tradition in both Coventry, England, and the Edmonton neighborhood of Alberta Avenue where it has been performed at the annual Deep Freeze Byzantine Winter Festival as part of a grassroots movement aimed at the revitalization of the Alberta Avenue community through an artistic and carnivalesque spirit of shared tradition and
heritage. While my MA thesis focused on metafolklore about the origins of the folkplay, my PhD research is concerned with the adaptation of the tradition to new sociocultural contexts as well as the intersubjective relationship between myself, the mumming tradition, and the Alberta Avenue community. I have also begun to question the paradoxical and liminal nature of the tradition, considering it as a kind of ‘trickster phenomenon’ characterized by a sociocultural ‘slipperiness.’

3:25 p.m. – 4:20 p.m. Health and Medicine
Chair: Dr. Jenny Godley

Worse for Women? Exploring HIV Risk and Heterosexual Relations
- Sonja Schuetz
The purpose of this paper is to explore how gender inequality disadvantages women in the contraction of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) through heterosexual relations. Specifically, this paper examines why heterosexual sex is the greatest site of HIV infection for women. Globally, approximately 15.9 million women are infected with HIV. Of those cases, 85 percent are transmitted through heterosexual sex. As heterosexual sex is one site of gender relations, HIV risk can be assessed in a gender context. To explore women’s HIV risk in heterosexual relations within a gender context, Connell’s (2009) four dimensions of gender relations serve as a framework to analyse existing empirical research. It was found that structural and interpersonal gender inequalities such as the effects of violence, economic disparity, lack of education, and ideals of motherhood increased women’s risk of HIV. In addition to the identification of risk, the paper suggests strategies to reduce the effects of these inequalities.

Exploring Relationships between Socio-Economic Status and the Health Correlates of Excess Weight
- Ben Higgins
Research into health inequalities, especially the uneven patterning of obesity in Canadian society, is extremely important given that it is now estimated that more than half of adult Canadians are either obese or overweight (23.1% and 36.1% respectively (Tjepkema, 2006). These high rates mean that people are increasingly exposed to risks of developing type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, osteoarthritis, some cancers, gallbladder disease, and several mental health outcomes (Tjepkema, 2006). While several studies have illustrated differing relationships between social class and body weight for men and women (Godley & McLaren, 2010; Matheson et al., 2008; McLaren, 2007; Sobal & Stunkard, 1989), very few have examined how social class is related to the various physical, psychological, and functional comorbidities that the Edmonton Obesity Staging System (EOSS) (Sharma et al., 2009) associates with excess weight. For my Master’s thesis I propose to use the Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS) to explore the relationship between social class and various comorbidities that the EOSS associates with excess weight.

University of Calgary Students’ Opinions about Health
- Robert Shyleyko
This paper presents preliminary findings from a novel quantitative survey used to examine how University of Calgary students understand health; specifically, whether students believe health is mediated by individual behavioral and genetic factors or by key social determinants. The research project aims to identify demographic variables that are most highly associated with adopting a social determinants of health perspective, and to explore the mechanisms through which social status might influence opinions on health. Academic literature notes that the public’s perception of the relationship between health and its determinants (that is, individual or social) will influence the content of health policies and programs (Reutter et al., 1999). Thus, this paper will attempt to elucidate the ways that public opinion among University of Calgary students acknowledges or ignores the social determinants of health in order to highlight the barriers that exist in implementing social and health policy that effectively promote health equity.

4:20 p.m. – 4:20 p.m. Closing Remarks

4:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. RECEPTION (Bianca Room, MacEwan Student Centre)

Graduate Student Research Symposium 2012

Friday, March 2, 2012

2012 Graduate Student Research Symposium Schedule

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

DEADLINE EXTENDED!

Thursday, January 5, 2012

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: ped(ANTICS): Research as an Enterprise of Unapologetic Imagination and Creativity