Dr. Arthur Kahn

Dr. Arthur Kahn with Mrs. John W. Reed, a member of the Niagara Peninsula Archaeological Society, and artifacts from the Chesnola Collection.

'What ever happened to breakdancing?' : transnational b-boy/b-girl networks, underground video magazines and imagined affinities

In 1997, Paul Gilroy was able to write: "I have been asking myself, whatever happened to breakdancing" (21), a form of vernacular dance associated with urban youth that emerged in the 1970s. However, in the last decade, breakdancing has experienced a massive renaissance in movies (You Got Served), commercials ("Gotta Have My Pops!") and documentaries (the acclaimed Freshest Kids). In this thesis, 1 explore the historical development of global b-boy/bgirl culture through a qualitative study involving dancers and their modes of communication. Widespread circulation of breakdancing images peaked in the mid-1980s, and subsequently b-boy/b-girl culture largely disappeared from the mediated landscape. The dance did not reemerge into the mainstream of North American popular culture until the late 1990s. 1 argue that the development of major transnational networks between b-boys and b-girls during the 1990s was a key factor in the return of 'b-boying/b-girling' (known formerly as breakdancing). Street dancers toured, traveled and competed internationally throughout this decade. They also began to create 'underground' video documentaries and travel video 'magazines.' These video artefacts circulated extensively around the globe through alternative distribution channels (including the backpacks of traveling dancers). 1 argue that underground video artefacts helped to produce 'imagined affinities' between dancers in various nations. Imagined affinities are identifications expressed by a cultural producer who shares an embodied activity with other practitioners through either mediated texts or travels through new places. These 'imagined affinities' helped to sustain b-boy/b-girl culture by generating visual/audio representations of popularity for the dance movement across geographical regions.

Introduction to engineering : a case study of an interdisciplinary course in Mathematics, Science and Technology

This thesis research was a qualitative case study of a single class of Interdisciplinary Studies: Introduction to Engineering taught in a secondary school. The study endeavoured to explore students' experiences in and perceptions of the course, and to investigate the viability of engineering as an interdisciplinary theme at the secondary school level. Data were collected in the form of student questionnaires, the researcher's observations and reflections, and artefacts representative of students' work. Data analysis was performed by coding textual data and classifying text segments into common themes. The themes that emerged from the data were aligned with facets of interdisciplinary study, including making connections, project-based learning, and student engagement and affective outcomes. The findings of the study showed that students were positive about their experiences in the course, and enjoyed its project-driven nature. Content from mathematics, physics, and technological design was easily integrated under the umbrella of engineering. Students felt that the opportunity to develop problem solving and teamwork skills were two of the most important aspects of the course and could be relevant not only for engineering, but for other disciplines or their day-to-day lives after secondary school. The study concluded that engineering education in secondary school can be a worthwhile experience for a variety of students and not just those intending postsecondary study in engineering. This has implications for the inclusion of engineering in the secondary school curriculum and can inform the practice of curriculum planners at the school, school board, and provincial levels. Suggested directions for further research include classroom-based action research in the areas of technological education, engineering education in secondary school, and interdisciplinary education.

A Notorial Transumpt, 1497

Govan was an ancient settlement, former burgh and now a district in Glasgow, Scotland. It is situated 2.5 miles west of Glasgow City Centre, on the south bank of the River Clyde, opposite the mouth of the River Kelvin and the district of Patrick. Archaeological evidence shows that there was a church and burial ground here as early as 600-800 AD. Numerous carved tombstones dating from 900- 1100 have been found. Govan was a village comprised of thatched cottages until well into the 19th century. It became a shipbuilding town in the early 19th century.

Dr. Stuart D. Scott Papers, 1837-2010 (non-inclusive)

Dr. Stuart D. Scott has written extensively in the fields of prehistory and history. As an archaeologist, he has traveled to some of the most significant sites in the world, including Pompeii, Stonehenge, the Valley of the Kings, Egypt’s pyramids and the Taj Mahal. He spent nine months excavating with the Tikal Project in Guatemala before returning to the University of Arizona where he received a Ph.D. in 1963. He excavated in New Zealand as a Fulbright scholar in 1963-1964. In the fall of 1964, Dr. Scott started a long career in the Anthropology Department of the State University of New York. He taught graduate and undergraduate archaeology courses and continued his archaeological and historical research. In 1979, Scott established the Old Fort Niagara Archaeology in Progress Project at Old Fort Niagara in Youngstown, New York. For many years, he became involved with historical archaeology in western New York. It was during this work that he became interested in the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837-1838 and its aftermath. Dr. Scott and his wife, Patricia Kay Scott, would use Christmas breaks, summer vacations, and sabbatical years to travel. They were repeatedly lured back to the South Pacific, conducting research in New Zealand, Australia and many of the Micronesian and Polynesian islands. To tell the whole story of the Rebellion and the prison exiles, they traveled extensively in Canada, the United States, England and Tasmania to collect archival research and to experience the scenes of this remarkable narrative. In 2004, Dr. Scott published To the Outskirts of Habitable Creation: Americans and Canadians Transported to Tasmania in the 1840s, which told the story of the men captured, tried, convicted, and exiled as a result of the Rebellion, also called the Patriot War. Other contributions include: • A collaboration with Dr. Charles Cazeau on the book Exploring the Unknown, Great Mysteries Reexamined published by Plenum Press in 1979 • The Patriot Game: New Yorkers and the Canadian Rebellion of 1837-1838, which appeared in New York History, Vol. 68, No.3. 1987 • A Frontier Spirit: The Life of James Gemmell published in Australiasian Canadian Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 2007 • To the Outskirts of Habitable Creation which appeared in the Friends of the National Archives, Vol. 20, No. 1 2009 • Numerous academic journal publications • Service on conference panels • Various research papers and proposals Before retiring in 1997 and while still a resident of Buffalo, N.Y., Dr. Scott spent considerable time with Brock University President Emeritus James A. Gibson and History Professor Colin Duquemin. The three shared a love of Rebellion history. It was largely because of this connection that Brock University was chosen as the recipient of Dr. Scott’s research materials.

How are Girls' Attitudes Toward Cyberbullying Affected by Drama for Social Intervention?

This is a study exploring teenaged girls’ understanding and experiences of cyberbullying as a contemporary social phenomenon. Participants included 4 Grade 11 and 12 girls from a medium-sized independent school in southwestern Ontario, Canada. The girls participated in 9 extracurricular study sessions from January to April 2013. During the sessions, they engaged with Drama for Social Intervention (Clark, 2009; Conrad, 2004; Lepp, 2011) activities with the intended goal of producing a collective creation. Qualitative data were collected throughout the sessions using fieldnotes, participant journals, interviews, and participant artefacts. The findings are presented as an ethnodrama (Campbell & Conrad, 2006; Denzin, 2003; Saldaña, 1999) with each thematic statement forming a title of a scene in the script (Rogers, Frellick, & Babinski, 2002). The study found that girl identity online consists of many disconnected avatars. It also suggested that distancing (Eriksson, 2011) techniques, used to engender safety in Drama for Social Intervention, might have contributed to participant disengagement with the study’s content. Implications for further research included the utility of arts-based methods to promote participants’ feelings of growth and reflection, and a reevaluation of cyberbullying discourses to better reflect girls’ multiple avatar identities. Implications for teachers and administrators encompassed a need for preventative approaches to cyberbullying education, incorporating affective empathy-building (Ang & Goh, 2010) and addressing girls’ feelings of safety in perceived anonymity online.

Affect, ontology, and pedagogy: An autoethnographic study on student-teacher relationships

In studying affect within the realm of student-teacher relationships my thesis project use the concept of “affect” as composed by Baruch Spinoza (1992, 2007). I focus specifically on how Deleuze (1988) interprets and implements the term within his own philosophy, as well as on Antonio Negri’s (2011, 1991) work on Spinoza including his and Michael Hardt’s (2000, 2004, 2009) more recent works. This thesis will explore Spinoza’s affect within the discourse of Affective Pedagogy and Critical Pedagogy while remaining committed to a Spinoizist ontology as outlined by Deleuze (1988). I used artefacts from my past experiences as a student and teacher to produce evocative writing pieces which act as affective continuances of my past experiences as a student, student-teacher, and teacher, and the relationships of affect that composed them. This project used these artefacts and the writings they produced as sites of intensity that are carried through from traces, to evocative thresholds, to concepts, and finally into analysis.