Concordia Philosophy Student Weekly Tabloid Vol. 20
The semester courses are nearing a close (it’s sooner than you think!) but SoPhiA is still here with news and events for you.
Our next social event is but 3 weeks away (Dec 8th!), and is a great time to de-stress after your last classes and before exams. Stay tuned for more information!
Here’s the 20th Volume of the Concordia Philosophy Student Weekly Tabloid! Bringing you all the hottest and best events and relevant philosophy news.
This week, we disseminate news about:
- Philosophy building closure
- Our November executive meeting recap
- SoPhiA by-elections
- A call for editors!
- Philosophy department speaker
- The Humanities+ skill development program
- Various Concordia events:
- A lecture series on sensation
- Department of Education Graduate Programs Info Session
- Workshops
- And more!
Philosophy Department (S-annex) Closure
Due to a structural failure in the philosophy department, the building remains closed this week and until further notice.
Any classes taking place in the department will be relocated. You should receive an email about the new classroom location. If you did not, please contact Candace Mooers, the department assistant, or your professor.
Our office hours will not be held in-person until the department reopens. If you need to reach us, see our executives page. We’re also happy to meet you face-to-face on Zoom or elsewhere on campus if needed!
The Environmental Health and Safety and other Concordia departments are working to make sure the building is safe before they allow anyone back in. If you have anything in the department you need to retrieve, please contact Candace, the departmental assistant to set up an appointment.
Recap of the SoPhiA November Executive Meeting
SoPhiA held their November Executive Meeting on Thursday November 10th, at 4:10pm in H-511.
Here are some main points of our meeting:
- Jonnathan Koonings, the Society of History Students at Concordia’s ASFA Councilor, attended as a visitor to present a petition calling for an ASFA Special council which discusses the recent situation at ASFA:
- The recent wave of resignations of ASFA Executives
- The lack of placing the Executive Coordinator position up for election at the ASFA by-elections
- The significantly lowered Member Association budgets and lowered ASFA budget
- Ways to improve the situation for future ASFA and Member Association executives
- We appointed Ashkan Highaghat as our interim ASFA Representative to attend this meeting
- We finalized the date for our Special Assembly to discuss student grievances which was mandated at our General Assembly
- This will be held on Dec 8th, 2022
- We will host our end-of-term social directly afterwards
- We’re working on setting up what this will look like and what we are allowed to discuss in relation to sexual harassment cases
See our full meeting minutes
Member Association by-Elections: Campaign Period
The Arts and Science Federation of Association (ASFA) by-elections for Member Associations (Such as SoPhiA) are in full swing!
If you’ve nominated yourself for a SoPhiA position, now is the time to campaign! Here are the election dates:
- Nomination period: Nov 7 – Nov 11, 2022
- Campaign period: Nov 14 – Nov 21, 2022
- Voting Period: Nov 22 – Nov 24, 2022
Campaigning involves advertising your candidacy so people will vote for you. ASFA allocates a bit of money for this purpose, so feel free to make use of it!
See the ASFA website for more by-election information.
Call for Editors: The SoPhiA Review
Are you interested in taking part in a cool editing project? Want to be part of a fledging journal?
SoPhiA is hoping to bring back this year its annual undergraduate journal, The SoPhiA Review! And we need your help!
We’re looking for people with a good eye, a capacity to read different texts, the ability to work in a team, and solid editing skills. The candidates will be part of the editor team to read, edit, design, and publish student works in our annual journal!
The journal is usually published in the winter term, but the recruiting and planning of the journal occurs in the late fall.
Contact president dot sophia at asfa dot ca for more info.
Who: The SoPhiA Review
What: A call for editors
See some previous published works on our website.
Philosophy Department Speaker Talk: Philosophical Silences: Some Thoughts on Race, Gender, and Eugenics
Dr. Robert Wilson
Dr. Robert Wilson, Professor of Philosophy at University of Western Australia in the School of Humanities, will discuss the work of Charles Mills on race and of Susan Babbitt on gender, as well as the speaker’s own on eugenics and disability.
The talk raises some questions about philosophy’s boundaries, history, sociology, and community engagement. The discipline of philosophy has had (and continues to have) an uneasy relationship with race, gender, and disability.
Time: Friday, November 18, 3 – 5 p.m.
Place: J.W. McConnell Building, room LB-362.
Humanities+ Skills Development and Internship Program
Feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of embarking on a career after graduation? Unsure of what direction to take, or how to present the value of your degree to employers? Concordia’s Humanities+ program might be for you!
Humanities+ is a free* skills development and internship program for students studying in Humanities-based programs at Concordia. Offered in partnership with FutureBound and Career and Planning Services (CAPS), it includes 53 hours of skills training workshops (Jan – May 2023) followed by the opportunity to engage in a paid, 200-hr internship in the summer.
Through H+, you will:
- Learn to articulate and translate skills from your undergrad to employers
- Identify your career interests and strengths
- Gain new tools and opportunities
- increase your self-awareness and confidence
Please see our website for details, and don’t hesitate to email humanitiesplus@concordia.ca if you have any questions!
Info Sessions: Nov 9th, Dec 2nd
Deadline to apply to H+ is December 4th, 2022.
* While no tuition fees are applied to the Humanities+ program, the Registration fee under point 4, Compulsory fees on the Concordia Fees webpage does apply.
What: Humanities+ skills development program
When: Winter semester, deadline to apply is Dec 4th
Various Concordia Events
There are several events in the next week that may be interesting to philosophy students. Here are a few:
- Learning to Smell: a pragmatist view on perception: November 18, 11am
- “This conference will focus on learning to smell. Yet, how is it possible to learn to smell? We all can smell. There is no need to learn it. Furthermore, if perception results from experiential “faith,” as Merleau-Ponty puts it, it’s not something you perform and can learn.”
- Department of Education Graduate Programs Info Session: November 22, 11am
- “Interested in Applied Linguistics, Child Studies, Educational Technology, Instructional Technology, or Educational Studies? Join the Graduate Program Director and the Graduate Program Coordinator for an overview and discussion about the research opportunities, the program options and how to apply.”
- Writing Help: November 22, 12pm
- “Get help with your writing assignments in English and French at any stage of your writing or research process. Drop by for help from a writing assistant and bring your assignment or rough draft, if you have one. No appointment necessary. Available every Tuesday from 12–3 p.m. on LB-2 (Webster Library, 2nd floor) near the Ask Us! desk.”
- Fail to Succeed: November 22, 4pm
- “Do you find yourself failing to succeed? The reason may just be that you don’t allow yourself to fail! It’s not just you… In fact, we are socialized to avoid failure and when we do fail, the same social norms encourage us to feel shame and regret.”
- Counsellor chat in the Zen Dens: November 23, 2pm
- “Drop by the Zen Den to meet with a Concordia counsellor for a chat about available resources!”
- 5 Best Practices to Build Authentic and Lasting Professional Relationships: November 23, 10am
- “Is relationship building a new power skill? We definitely think so! The literature highlights the impact of positive work relationships as a predictor of job performance, career satisfaction and leadership potential. So how to do we develop positive, collaborative and authentic relationships at work?
- In this interactive workshop, you will learn 5 best practices to help you be more intentional with how you approach your professional relationships.”
- Cripping Storytelling: Disability, Accessibility, and the Senses: November 24, 1pm
- “For many people, research designs — including participatory and arts-based research — are inaccessible. How can we address the inaccessibility of research that privileges certain ways of knowing and communicating? How might we prioritize different sensory methods while creating designs that mitigate ableism?”
- Angele Alook: Traditional Knowledge and Indigenous Caring Economies: November 25, 3pm
- “Professor Angele Alook will be discussing her film, Pikopaywin: It is broken, which documents Bigstone Cree Nation members’ experiences of resource-extraction projects and activity within the First Nation’s traditional territory.”
See more of Concordia’s events
SoPhiA Book Library: Weekly Book Recommendation
This week’s highlighted book:
We do not have a highlighted book for you this week. Feel free to have a look at our online library!
If you didn’t know, SoPhiA has a library of over 650 books! We have books from different domains of philosophy and some outside philosophy (psychology, business, political science, and even novels). We even have textbooks for some of your courses! (e.g., PHIL-210, 235, 260, 266, and more)
You can borrow a book for an hour, or even the whole semester. Just drop by our office or send us an email.
You can see our complete library of books online on our Librarika virtual library.
What: Books!
Where: The SoPhiA library (in our office space)
Do you know of any cool philosophy-related events in Montreal or the Concordia Community? Please let us know and we will advertise them here!
**Pictures are for representative effect only and aren’t actual photos of the events, products, or services we report on.
Students of Philosophy Association 