News
The Foundation Year Programme: in itself and for itself. F ALL 2 016 Upcoming in FYP ∙ December 7–9 Oral exams! ∙ January 9 First day back after the break ∙ April 10 “We seem to have come to a certain end of Western Civilization”: Endings and Beginnings. Final FYP lecture by Dr. Wayne Hankey, Founding FYP Director
NIGHT FYP Events ∙ January 19: Bach’s Harmonic Universe by Paul Halley and King’s Chapel Choir Alumni Hall 7:30
A RETIRING WISDOM: PAT DIXON “What I have brought to and/or gained from my years at King’s is the direct result of a group effort – made possible by the individuals who stood beside me or who had led the way. “ — Read the article by Neil Robertson on page 4. INSIDE: PAT DIXON ∙ ELISABETH STONES ∙ PATRICK GRAHAM ∙ ELI DIAMOND’S ANCIENT WORLD ∙ ANGUS JOHNSTON’S CLASSICS IN THE QUAD REVIEW ∙ ZUPPA POP-UP LOVE PARTY ∙ ELIZABETH EDWARDS’ MEDIEVAL WORLD ∙ PRESIDENT LAHEY’S NOTE ∙ ATHLETIC WRITE-UPS ∙ “ONE HELL OF A COMMUTE” ∙ TUTORIAL: “A CALL TO ARMS FOR ARMCHAIRS” ∙ “TIME AS SONG: LIFE AS A FYP CHORISTER” ∙ FYP IN RESIDENCE ∙ INFERNO FILM REVIEW ∙ ROBERTA BARKER’S RENAISSANCE & REFORMATION ∙ LEONARD COHEN LISTENING PARTY ∙ ARTIST IN FYP: “RUINS OF AN IMAGINED FUTURE” ∙ HYPSTER è FYPSTER ∙ ANNOUNCEMENTS
∙ March 8, Wagner: The Art of the Future by Walter Kemp and guest singers, KTS Lecture Hall 7:30 ∙
March 29, Prince and the Revolution by Eli Diamond KTS Lecture Hall 7:30
FYP Announcements ∙ Babies, books, music and more on page 22
Welcome to FYP NEWS. Have a FYP story to tell? Spot something that you think missed this edition? Please contact us with your ideas for the next issue. Email: susan.dodd@ukings.ca
CONTENTS 4 “A Retiring Wisdom: Pat Dixon” Neil Robertson (FYP 1981-82) 6 “Taking the Reins” Elisabeth Stones (FYP 2005-06)
NEIL ROBERTSON FOUNDAT ION Y EAR PROGRAM M E DIRECT OR
neil.robertson@ukings.ca
Welcome From The Director We are very excited to launch FYP News. The plan is that it will appear twice a year, at the conclusion of each academic term. This is very much an in-house publication: the work of many hands, but especially those of Susan Dodd, the faculty editor and Miranda Bowron, the student editor, Matthew Frise from the King’s Advancement office and Elisabeth Stones, our new FYP administrative assistant. The essential idea behind this newsletter is to simply have a forum by which Foundation Year Programme students and faculty, alumni and former faculty, can communicate with one another both about FYP present and FYP past so as to tell stories and to think thoughts about our shared educational endeavour. So, in that vein, this welcome is also an invitation to all who receive it to become active contributors. We are looking for shortish texts about FYP, about the books we read, about how FYP has shaped your life after taking it,... really about anything related to this strange, perhaps unique, first year of study. Further, I want to suggest for those of you who are alumni of FYP, and live in or are visiting Halifax, please feel yourself most welcome to return to take in a regular lecture during the day or to come to one or all of our FYP evening events. It would be lovely to hear from you, please contact me at neil.robertson@ ukings.ca
7 “Light in Dark Times” Patrick Graham (FYP 1984-85) 8 FYP’s Ancient World: “The ‘Porous’ Person” Eli Diamond(FYP 1995-96) Coordinator Section I 9 Theatre Review: Classics in the Quad Angus Johnston (former FYP Director and Inglis Professor) 11 Theatre as the Examined Life: Zuppa’s Pop-up Love Alex McLean (FYP 1992-93) 12 FYP’s Medieval World: “1400 Years in 14 Days” Elizabeth Edwards Coordinator Section II 13 A Few Words from President Lahey 14 “One Hell of A Commute” Mikey Weaver (FYP 2016-17) 15 On General Tutorial: “A Call to Arms for Arm Chairs” Lucy Fitch (FYP 2016-17) 16 Time as Song: Life as a FYP chorister Katerina Cook (FYP 2015-16) 17 FYP in Residence David Butorac (FYP 1995-96) Don of Middle Bay 17 FILM REVIEW: FYP’s Ron Howard’s Dan Brown’s Dante’s Inferno Mike Bennett (FYP 2003-04) 18 FYP’s Renaissance and Reformation, “A Culture in Motion” Roberta Barker (FYP 1992-93) Coordinator Section III 19 Leonard Cohen Listening Party Kait Pinder (FYP Tutor) 20 Artist in FYP: “Ruins of an Imagined Future” Andrew Milne (FYP 2016-17) 21 The Future: From HYPster è FYPster Nicol Keeping 23 Announcements
P HOTO FROM THE RECORD, 1986. COMPLIMENTS OF JANET HATHAWAY, KING’S ARCHIVIST
A RETIRING WISDOM: PAT DIXON BY NEIL ROBERTSON
When Pat Dixon was approached to find out if she wished an event to recognize her retirement after 32 years of being Secretary to the Foundation Year Programme and to the King’s Residence this was her response:
“What I have brought to and/or gained from my years at King’s is the direct result of a group effort – made possible by the individuals who stood beside me or who had lead the way.” Pat Dixon
“Growing up in a large Cape Breton family allowed me the privilege of knowing that little in life is accomplished alone, and, what is, usually comes at great cost. What I have brought to and/ or gained from my years at King’s is the direct result of a group effort – made possible by the individuals who stood beside me or who had lead the way. I am a ‘background’ person – my success measured in the success of those I support. My FYP directors/Deans, past and present, have been quick to recognize that any displays of public acknowledgement for me must occur without my being present. The knowledge that the thought is there is more than sufficient.” Such beautiful words of service and grace, so true to Pat’s essence, and, after all that she had given to the College, the only proper thing to do was to ignore them. And so on Friday, September 16, after careful planning and the utmost secrecy, Pat Dixon was utterly surprised as the elevator “accidentally” opened on the second floor of the NAB, and she was greeted and cheered by many of her friends, colleagues, and ghosts from the past, gathered to honour her years of service to FYP and the King’s Residence. Fundamental to that beauty was a painting of King’s (especially commissioned for Pat’s retirement) by Jane Reagh (Bruce-Robertson), herself formerly a Dean of Residence who worked for many years with Pat. In this wondrous painting I think we can find a true commentary on Pat and on King’s as we see the College and, all about, presences, both real and imagined, who have peopled her time here. And yet, above all this, the sky of a new dawn, of a future… For three quarters of its existence, Pat has held FYP together. While in her time the Programme more than doubled in size, in both its student and faculty numbers, by her extraordinary
FYP News – Fall 2016
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dedication and commitment to FYP, Pat was the stable centre in all this flourishing. Pat never regarded our students as numbers. From their first contact with King’s, whether through FYP or through residence, she saw them as individuals, whom she advised, supported and looked out for. She took care of them and they deeply cared for her in return. And it wasn’t only the students she kept an eye on: each Director or Associate Director or Dean of Residence can speak to her care and her life- (or, at least, career-) saving capacity to gently counsel or wryly question. She has been the constant, the memory of the Foundation Year, the voice of experience who has supported and sustained all involved in FYP and Residence. Above all, she was the gracious guardian of the Foundation Year Programme, ensuring that its not-always-organized faculty and its not-always-self-reliant students were able year after year to enter into a common engagement of thought and wonder... “…and prepared to leap up to the stars” (Dante, Purgatorio). ❧
1988
“I was so surprised and touched. Although I had repeatedly asked that I be permitted to depart with no fanfare, this event was truly beautiful.”
PHOTOS COMPLIMENTS OF JANET HATHAWAY, KING’S ARCHIVIST.
2001
DETAIL FROM COMMISSIONED PAINTING BY JANE REAGH, “GOODBYE PAT,” 11” X 14”, OIL ON BOARD, 2016. PHOTO BY JANE REAGH.
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Foundation Year Programme: in itself and for itself.
PHOTO BY MATTHEW STONES.
TAKING UP THE REINS
as receiving the degree that is still rolled up in a gold-coloured tube on my desk at home.
BY ELISABETH STONES, FYP ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT
“It’s good to be home.” When I had the opportunity to come back to King’s as the Administrative Assistant for FYP and Residence, eleven years after my first FYP lecture, I expected it would be surreal to be on the other side of the FYP office desk. I would sort and stamp and shuffle the essays that structured my own year a decade ago, and see the bones of the programme laid bare. And, of course, it was strange. Pat Dixon, the legend who knitted FYP together for over three decades before her retirement this summer, was my paperwork Beatrice. She led me through the array of spreadsheets, binders, and file folders that encapsulate the effable part of FYP administration. But then we started distributing FYP handbooks, and I met the students that would shape my first year of FYP from this new angle.
Though my first weeks on the job in August were completely devoted to tightening up the final details for residence and the Foundation Year Programme, I didn’t really feel that I had come back to King’s until the Quad was full of students with their heads bent over The Epic of Gilgamesh, and I had tried to explain how to find Seminar Room 7 a dozen times. It’s good to be home. ❧
I think there was a part of me that couldn’t really conceive of FYP without Pat Dixon, so it was both fitting and terrifying that my first day flying solo in the office was a FYP paper Monday. Indeed, when I posted the set of questions for that essay, knowing I didn’t have to write the papers that would respond to them, it was somehow just as strange and liberating
“Pat Dixon, the legend who knitted FYP together for over three decades before her retirement this summer, was my paperwork Beatrice.” SAM CAT ASSISTS THE DEAN. PHOTO BY NICK HATT.
FYP News – Fall 2016
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keeping lights on in the dark. As a war artist in WWII, Colville had seen Nazi concentration camps liberated--not something you can live with easily. Grant had a mental breakdown as an air warden during the London Blitz—pulling plaster-caked bodies out of the rubble like White Helmets in Aleppo today. They brought the chaos home, as everybody does. To keep the ‘light on’ they did what they had to do. Colville painted uneasy visions of quiet dread. Grant thought and taught modern mass culture’s threat to what makes us human.
LIGHT IN DARK TIMES BY PATRICK GRAHAM
I learned a little of how Colville and Grant felt during the 9/11 wars. I sensed that chaos, inside and out.
“Who in Plato’s image carry the puppets…?” The journalist Patrick Graham writes for major international media outlets. He has covered conflicts in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. He is a FYP graduate and this term received an honorary degree from the University of King’s College. Patrick graciously condensed his comments from the installation of President Lahey so that we could include them in our first FYP newsletter.
Back home, I was drawn to writers from the 1930s when crime and political thrillers expressed the anxieties of the era; Noir pop culture grappling with evil. I read a lot Eric Ambler and Graham Greene, along with political writers like writer Rebecca West and the poet W.H. Auden who branded the thirties “the low, dishonest decade,” a line that gets recycled often
The first FYP oral exam is hard to forget. One last humiliation before the holidays. Angus Johnston dealt me an easy card: ‘Who in Plato’s image of the cave carry the puppets that cast shadows on the cave wall?’ Nervous or just stupid, I blanked. Of course, you remember the ones you can’t answer longer than the ones you can. Earlier this summer, Neil Robertson told me what he hoped to accomplish with FYP, apart from the intellectual humility instilled by oral examination. It boiled down to ‘turning the light on’ inside the students. Would I have understood him 30 years ago slogging through those strange, impenetrable books? I doubt it. Perhaps I do now. Who isn’t overwhelmed trying to preserve a sense of yourself in the chaos of nowadays? Not long ago my roommate from Chapel Bay sent me an article about the friendship between the painter Alex Colville and George Grant the philosopher. When we were at King’s both these men lectured occasionally, presences as intimidating as Heidegger. In a letter, Grant describes looking at a Colville painting with his son in what Grant calls ‘silent rapport’. Jamie loved the ‘silent rapport’ idea and said it reminded him of rolling Drum tobacco and looking quietly out at the Atlantic storms on our trips to his home in Cape Breton. Alex Colville and George Grant knew something about the chaos that can overwhelm people, even civilizations, and of
PATRICK GRAHAM AND JAMIE BRIGGS, 1988, THE WARDROOM COMPLIMENTS PATRICK GRAHAM
these days. To my surprise, many of these writers reached back to earlier theologians, especially Saint Augustine, who thought through the chaotic collapse of the Roman Empire. I knew enough about Augustine, thanks to FYP, to get the gist of their interest and knew enough not to dismiss theology. What Auden, Greene and West discovered in Augustine was a still-functioning but long ignored algorithm they could use to penetrate their own chaotic times, both political and
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Foundation Year Programme: in itself and for itself.
psychological. They were looking for patterns in the disorder that avoided easy ideologies of the day. In the 15 years since 9/11, arguments between public intellectuals like Chris Hedges and Christopher Hitchens morphed from war to God, echoing older unfashionable problems of evil and human limitations. Long-banned Theology, as opposed to religion, had crept back into public discourse just as Noir and thrillers and newer genres that deal with evil, mostly vampire and zombie series, became the cash cows of HBO and Netflix. I thought I’d put a stake through FYP but it kept on reoccurring. The answer to my oral exam seems obvious now. It’s the journalists and screenwriters who carry the puppets whose shadows are projected on the screen of the cave wall. Angus had me pegged from the get-go. It was true in Plato and Augustine’s day, just as it is true in all low, dishonest decades. FYP, to use Neil’s image, has kept the light on in the chaotic times in my life, or at least kept the fuses working should I want some light (and war, like life, blows fuses). But in the end, keeping the light on is perhaps just keeping our capacity for George Grant’s ‘‘silent rapport.’ Those moments when friends roll cigarettes and look through the chaos to something recognizable, that strange and seemingly impenetrable subject of those very odd books that demand so much concentration and humility. ❧
“FYP, to use Neil’s image, has kept the light on in the chaotic times in my life, or at least kept the fuses working should I want some light...” –Patrick Graham
PHOTO: BUSTS OF CICERO AND DEMOSTHENES. PHOTO BY ALEXANDRA BUFFY SWENY.
FYP’S ANCIENT WORLD FROM SECTION ONE’S COORDINATOR ELI DIAMOND
After beginning in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the bulk of the Section I on the ancient world is divided between the Jewish, Greek and Roman – striking something resembling a balance between these three strands is tricky. In general Section I of FYP has been a bit Hellenocentric, mostly due to the embarrassment of riches of extremely foundational and teachable Greek texts – especially Homer, Greek Tragedy, and Plato. But it is very important that students leave Section I with a sense of the Hebrew Bible and the different sense of divinity, of politics, of nature and of history in the early Jewish and Greek traditions. This year we tried something new – a comparison between Hebrew and Greek love poetry, reading the biblical Song of Songs alongside the Greek lyric poetry of Sappho. It is also important that FYPers leave Section I with a sense of the difference between the Greek and Roman sense of the gods, political community, and the individual – here understanding the differences that separate the Homeric epic from Virgil’s Latin epic is a great way to think about the transition from Greece to Rome. Another new lecture in Section I this year was FYP News – Fall 2016
a day on Roman Stoicism - the stunning fact that a freed slave and an emperor – Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius – were two of the most important Stoic philosophers in Rome. This would never have happened in 5th century Athens! One of the hard things to convey but which defines all the texts we study in the first section of FYP is the absence of any strong sense of independent human self. We have such a clear sense of ourselves as independently existing individuals who then come into relation with others, but the oldest texts constantly present to us a sense of the self that is what philosopher Charles Taylor calls “porous.” You simply do not exist as an individual apart
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from past and future generations, your ancestors and your descendants. Who you are includes other members of your family, and of your political community; it includes forces in the natural world. And it includes the will of the divine. Only by the end of the section do we start getting a sense of the human individual as existing already prior to these relations, but when this thought emerges – in ancient comedy, in sophistry, it appears not as a brute fact, but as a problem.
the criticisms of the modern self which emerge towards the end of the programme, it is important to meet these ancient texts which do not seem to assume an independent self at all. They are not rejecting the idea of the self, since they have not even entertained it as a possibility yet. Exposing FYP students to thoughts this alien is one of the wonderful things about teaching in the programme. ❧
Encountering this idea right from the beginning of the programme is a wonderful important decentering act. With all
RUTH BALLARD AS THE CRIERESS. PHOTOS BY ALEXANDRA BUFFY SWENY.
THEATRE REVIEW: CLASSICS IN THE QUAD “…a revelation of ‘admirable talent’ – a shocking development…”
As someone who seldom visits King’s in retirement, I was so encouraged to see that the thirty year tradition lives on, in which students, many of them first year, scramble together, in the first weeks of the year (when they have little to do), a Greek play for ‘Classics in the Quad’. The Aristophanes play this year achieved the crucial end of these dramas: the recognition by both audience and players that one has to lose any form of self-respect and dignity if one is to learn what King’s has to teach us. That said, and it is meant as the highest praise, the production failed in a number of ways. THESMOPHORIAZUSAE BY ARISTOPHANES REVIEWED BY ANGUS JOHNSTON PHOTO FROM THE RECORD, 1986 COURTESY JANET HATHAWAY.
Firstly the night was far too warm and comfortable. It is the tradition at King’s that ‘Classics in the Quad’ is the form in which the bone-chilling side of Fall in Nova Scotia reveals itself. The drama starts in the late afternoon when there is still just enough sun to lull students into the sense that sitting on the grass, often in shorts, will be just fine. Then as the drama moves to its climax the audience, beginning to suffer the early stages of hypothermia, enjoys the play all the more for the euphoria verging on hallucination which results, and catches their death of something. (Thanksgiving break is often timed precisely to allow recovery from ‘Classics in the Quad’.) If the play this year taught us anything it is that seemingly objective things like the weather are really the work of imagination, context and narrative. In this respect then the production was a disappointment.
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Foundation Year Programme: in itself and for itself.
ABOVE : THE MUSICIANS AND CAST OF THESMOPHORIAZUSAE, DIRECTED BY VICKY COO.
Cast (all first-years):
And then there was the acting, the diction, the music, the perfect costumes and the dancing! An old friend, unconnected to King’s but who had attended many former productions, complained (at least that is how I took it) that, unlike many earlier stagings, he could hear clearly what the actors were actually saying. Traditionally, despite truly fine performances, because of wind, street noise and the general problems of open-air acoustics, part of the fun of being the audience was that you had frequently to guess at what exactly Oedipus, or whoever, had actually said. But now the major players , especially the women, spoke so well and projected so beautifully that this key aspect of the enjoyment of the play was denied to us. The direction and performance of the music and the dancing, the timing and unity of the choruses made me suspicious that they had been secretly rehearsing all summer in preparation. Virtually all the actors, and I mention especially Robbie Dryer as Mnesilochus, were in danger of turning that crucial loss of self-respect and foolishness I stressed at the beginning into a revelation of ‘admirable talent’ – a shocking development which should be discouraged. Despite the fact that they were undeniably hilarious.
Mnesilochus - Robbie Dryer Euripides - Maximilian Makarov Agathon - Daniel Halpern Servant - Ebi Helmke Cleisthenes - Levi Clarkson Policeman - Samuel Owen Dancing-girl - Lucia Helder Crieress - Ruth Ballard Chorus - Ella MacDonald, Riel Clark, Gill Gawron, Ellen Zagar, Frances Grace Fyfe, Maddy Hanzlik-Meech, Iloe Ariss, Dominique Amit Several FYP students were involved in the crew as well.
But the greatest flaw was that the production was so irrelevant to our times. For this I blame ‘Classics in the Quad’ itself, the director, Vicky Coo, and, of course, Eli Diamond, who has inflicted Aristophanes on Foundation Year, and who must have rejoiced at seeing some of the speakers of Plato’s Symposium actually appear on stage.
Sophie Winer played flute and Olivia Malley played harp. Chelo Gonzalez designed the poster, and Morgen Grandy, Dylan Leiper, and Sophie Vaisman helped make costumes.
But how can a play in which serious issues are constantly and cunningly being turned into questions of mythical nationalism, personal self-created heroic narratives, and into matters of gender and sexual histrionics speak to us? ❧ PHOTO BY ANGUS JOHNSTON.
FYP News – Fall 2016
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ZUPPA POP-UP LOVE PARTY NIGHT FYP EVENT BY ALEX MCLEAN
“The theatre is, for me, a way to live a full and examined life.” I left high school determined to pursue an artist’s career, but it was in FYP that I became enthralled by the parallel stories of art and ideas. With some help from the KTS I became the kind of person who makes theatre, for better or for worse. Ever since, I have tried to translate the comparative rigour of an education at King’s into the rehearsal hall, while knowing that the creative process – like the pursuit of philosophy – is also fundamentally wild at heart. The theatre is, for me, a way to live a full and examined life.
“The way that we look at ourselves is changing, and that means that the theatre must change, as it has before. All of us who try to work thoughtfully in the theatre are digging for clues, trying to figure out what the theatre of tomorrow might be.”
I have a professional’s interest in the theatre and an amateur’s interest in philosophy. The two pursuits, of course, have endured a long and sometimes fraught relationship. When I gave the final FYP lecture three years ago I suggested that this antagonism was, at its best, highly productive. The critique of theatre from philosophy has compelled the finest playwrights, actors and directors to think more deeply about what they do and their tacit contract with audiences. The nature of this contract has evolved over time and, it seems to me, is undergoing a substantial revision at the moment. The way that we look at ourselves is changing, and that means that the theatre must change, as it has before. All of us who try to work thoughtfully in the theatre are digging for clues, trying to figure out what the theatre of tomorrow might be. This brings me to Pop-Up Love Party, a show that my Zuppa Theatre colleagues and I have been touring nationally and internationally, and that we recently performed in Prince Hall. Pop-Up Love Party is our contemporary imagining of Plato’s Symposium –filtered through the prisms of our own experiences, tastes and inclinations. We usually perform it in restaurants, in partnership with a Michelin-starred chef from New York (whose food wasn’t part of the Prince Hall show). The goal of the show is to render ideas as visceral as possible, in the context of a genuine drinking party. At its heart, Pop-Up Love Party is an attempt to locate truth in the theatre and the theatrical in truth. Both, it seems, are moving targets, but there is a joy in the pursuit. Foundation Year, to me, is all about that joy and that pursuit. ❧
Alex McLean is a co-director of Zuppa Theatre (along with King’s grad Susan Leblanc, and Ben Stone). Alex adapted Plato’s Symposium for the pop-up, and so the Zuppa Theatre’s Night FYP production of his Pop-Up Love Party was an exuberant tutorial on the definition of Eros. Alex founded Classics in the Quad, which he believed at the time would be a one off event…and he has gone on to adapt and direct, many and diverse wonders including Nosferatu, Duck Zuppa, and Five Easy Steps (to the End of the World).
GABRIELLE DOUCET CURRENT FYP STUDENT
Gabrielle is from Dartmouth. She had a great first year and was a big part of a successful season for Kings Women’s soccer. She was always a threat to score and showed great maturity for a first year player. We look forward to seeing her again next season.
Neil Hooper
DIRECTOR KING’S ATHLETICS
“Why, words / set everyone aflutter”, Aristophanes, The Birds. There is a wonderful sense of belonging about being a part of a program and community that takes such a profound appreciation of the words in the texts that we read together. For this reason, it is not only our love of words that sends FYP students aflutter, but perhaps it is the fact that we have people to share it with.” – Gabrielle Doucet
(Current FYP Student) PHOTOS BY SCOTT KIRKPATRICK.
PHOTO BY SCOTT MUNN.
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Foundation Year Programme: in itself and for itself.
FYP’S MEDIEVAL WORLD FROM SECTION TWO’S COORDINATOR ELIZABETH EDWARDS
“Yes, that is fourteen lectures for fourteen hundred years, and six of them devoted to the year 1300, the date Dante gave to the Divine Comedy.” JACK CREASER CURRENT FYP STUDENT
Jack comes from Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia and had an outstanding year as a first year student. He scored a number of key goals as a Striker for the King’s men’s Soccer Season en route to a Silver medal performance at ACAA Championships. His great season earned him the unanimous choice for ACAA Rookie of the Year. He definitely turned some heads this season and made King’s very proud of his accomplishments.
Neil Hooper
DIRECTOR KING’S ATHLETICS
FYP News – Fall 2016
I’ve only coordinated the Middle Ages section of FYP once before, and then only for one year. So it was a bit of a thrill to finally get my hands on it—only to find the thrill was now going to be limited to fourteen lectures. Yes, that is fourteen lectures for fourteen hundred years, and six of them devoted to the year 1300, the date Dante gave to the Divine Comedy. So no Abelard, no Maimonides, no Monasticism…etc. On the simplified plan, we pared the section down to intense analysis of Augustine and Dante, filled out with short but I hope emphatic looks at the birth of Christianity and Islam, the invention of romance, the proofs for God, and the waning of the period. As has become the habit of the programme, the Dante lectures were divided among three. One day I hope to be good enough for Paradiso, and to leave my natural home, Inferno. Thanks to the daytime and evening lecturers in this section, and to the many engaged students. ❧
(LEFT) SAINT AUGUSTINE: 6TH CENTURY ROMAN DEPICTION (WIKICOMMONS) (RIGHT) Nick Halley (Director of King’s Chorus and sometime percussionist with James Taylor, right) listens reverently as Paul Halley (Director of King’s Chapel Choir and winner of 5 Grammy Awards—none in medieval chant, he admits) explains sacred music in the middle ages as part of a “Night FYP” event. PHOTO BY SUSAN DODD. (BELOW) Codex Manesse (early 14th century) Source: Wikipedia
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THE PRESIDENT AND CASEY ACHIEVED THE EMPYREAN ROSE. DID YOU? (CAVEAT: the President never claimed to reach the Empyrean Rose, but it’s obviously Casey’s home—you can tell by the square halo around Casey’s head).
“To date, I have been most surprised with St. Augustine’s Confessions. The book challenged all of my previous misconceptions of Christianity, and I believe it has made me both more aware and more compassionate. I am moved by the burning devotion Augustine expresses, which I had never previously experienced passionately through any text” ELLA MACDONALD, FYP STUDENT
A few words from President Bill Lahey … Enjoying as many FYP lectures as my schedule allows has been a highlight of my short time as President at King’s. I can’t single out some lectures over others – they have all been wonderfully thought-provoking! I am grateful for the opportunity FYP has given me to read some great books for the first time and grateful also for the new understanding I have of the books I have been brought back to by FYP. I have been most affected by Plato’s Symposium (Pop-Up Love Party helped) and St. Augustine’s Confessions and by the associated overriding attention to love within this edition of FYP. For a law professor accustomed to think in a “rights and obligations” and “authority vs. freedom” framework, it has helped me to better appreciate the contribution the humanities can make to our capacity to be more fully human with ourselves and each other. ❧
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Foundation Year Programme: in itself and for itself.
ONE HELL OF A COMMUTE BY MIKEY WEAVER, CURRENT FYP STUDENT
Midway upon the journey of FYP, I find myself putting my pants on backwards again, struggling through the darkness of the morning, ever wearily wary of the bestial fatigue trying to pull me back to bed. Stepping in and out of the shower, a ball cap suppresses my unruly bed head.
Ancient brickwork and acute landscaping guide me to the new academic building, where the angelic voices of Dr. Daniel Brandes and Dr. Eli Diamond join each other in a welcoming hymn for the tired-eyed students. The omnipotent voice of Dr. Robertson introduces today’s topic, opening with “And we came forth to contemplate the stars”.
My only guiding light is the car that carries me to the bus stop, a brief moment of air-conditioning and solace, before I encounter the second beast, Metro Transit bus 61. Its overheated, overcrowded interior leaves me standing precariously against the middle door, looking to throw me off the bus the first chance it gets.
Just as the lecture takes flight my phone rings with a growl. It’s a text from my wolf-boss calling me in early tonight, affirming another sleepless night. ❧
Dante found nine levels in hell, and two-thousand years later they’ve migrated from under the Earth, and evolved into public transportation.
ILLUSTRATION: “DAY STUDENTS CONFRONTED BY A LEOPARD, LION AND WOLF AT THE BUS STOP.” Illustration by Mary Campbell (FYP 1983-84), publisher of online news source, The Cape Breton Spectator.
We pass the usual stops: Penhorn Mall, the City of Dis, the bridge terminal, and after what feels like an eternity of starting and stopping, we reach Hell’s over-world embassy. Our bus driver nobly puts the pedal to the metal and heads for King’s. His identification tag reads: “Geryon”. The bus exhales us at the foot of campus, where a slice of paradise comes in the aroma of coffee. In Paradise, the Tim Horton’s lines are always empty. Beatrice hands me my double-double and I embark for lecture.
FYP News – Fall 2016
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talking about, or to even talk at all. Just sit back and relax, if you’re able to find a chair that is. As great as General Tutorial is, the lovely Wilson Common Room has only so many cozy couches and armchairs for the studious go-getters of FYP to occupy. Those coveted couches are soon claimed, leaving the unlucky masses to perch on tables and windowsills while others huddle on the floor.
A CALL TO ARMS FOR ARMCHAIRS
WRITTEN BY LUCY FITCH (CURRENT FYP STUDENT)
“And that’s all General Tutorial is really, a bunch of people who care about these topics and want to discuss them with you.” PHOTOS: FYP TUTORS CALEB LANGILLE AND KAIT PINDER ENJOY THEIR ARMCHAIRS. PHOTOS BY SUSAN DODD.
It doesn’t take much time for you to realize that King’s is fairly unique among universities. Here at King’s, professors aren’t just distant figures behind a podium, but the person in line behind you for Sodexo or the guy walking the cute dog. The accessibility and role of professors at King’s is perhaps best seen at the weekly General Tutorial. This gives students the opportunity to ask lecturers to clarify and expand on their often complex and at times mind-boggling insights into the milestone works of western civilization.
Though not only the students have to struggle for seating. Scattered through the room are tutors awkwardly hovering along the walls and crouching behind couches. A question from a student will often devolve into a drawn out session of excited tutors chiming in from across the room after the lecturer’s response, adding sage comments from all corners. And that’s all General Tutorial is really, a bunch of people who care about these topics and want to discuss them with you. So all in all, even with the seating shuffle, General Tutorial is well worth your time. ❧
For all its benefits and value, daily tutorial can make you feel put on the spot every once in a while. General Tutorial offers the poignant points and tidbits of wisdom found in tutorial without any pressure to sound as if you know what you’re
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Foundation Year Programme: in itself and for itself.
TIME AS SONG: LIFE AS A FYP CHORISTER
BY KATERINA COOK (FYP 2015-16)
Before joining the University of King’s College Chapel Choir I had never been to church. I joined the choir to sing, and so had little interest in the rest of the service. I was surprised, then, when I heard my first sermon, because it sounded like a lecture from the Foundation Year Programme. The priest spoke of the Bible like a literary work full of poetry and hidden meaning. They often pulled from works studied in FYP and works which I had never heard of, but which I immediately googled when I got back to my dorm room. And so, in between songs I began to listen, to learn what I could of this different way of understanding what I was learning in class; an understanding guided by belief and compassion. Though I have always felt welcome anywhere at King’s, I have never met so much kindness as I have in the chapel. The music I was singing also took on new meaning as I spent more time in the chapel. The music we sang came from all across the FYP timeline. The plainchant sung regularly in the chapel is similar to that used in the 4th century Roman church. I found the melody frustrating to learn because it was so different from the music I was used to. It is sung without accompaniment or harmony and so the beauty and meaning rely solely on the words, the melody, and the singers. Every week the choir would receive a new stack of music, and at the end of each week I kept my favourite pieces instead of giving them back. By the end of the year I had a fat stack of masses, anthems, and plainchant in wildly different styles to accompany my teetering tower of FYP books. ❧
NIGHT FYP—MEDIEVAL ART PHOTO OF CHAPLAIN GARY THORNE BY SUSAN DODD.
FYP News – Fall 2016
“The ontological argument in St. Anselm’s Proslogion was startling and succinct. It was a pleasure to delve into its philosophical workings, and its theological applications, regardless of religious beliefs” – Anonymous. [ 16 ]
CHARTRES CATHEDRAL, 12TH C . PHOTO: CHARTRES, WEST PORTAL, CENTRAL TYMPANUM, WIKICOMMONS.
FYP IN RESIDENCE BY DAVID D. BUTORAC DON, MIDDLE BAY
It is early in the year - students have just completed reading Dante’s Paradiso and then writing their mid-term - so it is hard to say how much FYP has already shaped discussions of life on campus, at least for first years. What is clear is that something is happening in their lives. I think this is the first time that many of the FYPers (as past FYPers) have so many people around them with similar interests, something which I think can be quite exhilarating and which opens them up to encounter in a profound way the characters and ideas that they meet along the way. One student told me that in the first lecture by Dr. Kyle Fraser on Gilgamesh that she “just didn’t want it to stop”. That is an awakening of intellectual eros, if ever there was one, and ‘it’ hasn’t really stopped: going to lectures and tutorials, eating
and living with each other, ‘it’ goes on. I would be hard pressed to say what that ‘it’ is, even after so many years with my FYP experience, but I would say that there is an excitement for texts and the past, that these are alive and matter, somehow. I think that’s what matters, for now at least. An open horizon and path is now there for them, which either wasn’t there or there but as a spectre of unarticulated longings, and there is now a community of misfits around them thinking through the same things. This means so much to them because the world is not experienced as ‘mere anarchy... loosed upon the world’, but just how things are - swipe left or right as one pleases - and FYP gives them a reason to hope. FYP introduces big game about life which matters, perhaps for the first time, and that requires some getting used to. ❧
FILM REVIEW FYP’S RON HOWARD’S DAN BROWN’S DANTE’S INFERNO REVIEW BY MIKE BENNETT FYP TUTOR
“We left the theatre debating where in hell the evil billionaire would be punished.” Midway along their journey through Dante’s Divine Comedy, a group of twenty or so FYP students found themselves walking from the King’s quad to Park Lane Cinemas to watch a movie. Was la diritta via smarrita? Probably. But since we were all keen to grasp the layers of significance in both medieval Christian allegory and contemporary American popular cinema, we made the trek and bought our tickets for Ron Howard’s Inferno.
PRESIDENT WILLIAM LAHEY listens to the Rev. Dr. Thomas Curran on Dante’s Paradiso. Across Alumni Hall, in the back row are FYP tutors (Left to Right) Dr. Susan Dodd, Dr. Elizabeth Edwards, Dr. Neil Robertson, Dr. Daniel Brandes, Caleb Langille, Dr. Kait Pinder, Suzanne Taylor (now Dr.), Dr. Michael Bennett. PHOTO BY KATHLEEN JONES, FYP JOURNALISM.
The movie, based on the novel by Dan Brown and starring Tom Hanks and Felicity Jones, begins with a hallucination. Hanks’ character, the Harvard “symbologist” Robert Langdon, finds himself in a bustling modern business district when disturbing visions straight out of a malebolge assail him: businesspeople
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Hannah Fisher, Sarah Griffin, and Rozzi Curran thoughtfully ferry St George to the island chapel at the fall retreat. PHOTO BY IMOGENE BROBERG-HULL.
Foundation Year Programme: in itself and for itself.
with boils and sores (“falsifiers!” the FYP students gasped), corporate types with their heads facing backwards (“soothsayers!”), and even some poor soul upside down in a burning hole in the sidewalk. It’s a bold film these days that dares to make reference to the sin of simony—or “clerical profiteering,” as Hanks says, so that the audience doesn’t need to consult a footnote. This was definitely the best part of the film, at least for us who were just then steeped in the logic of nether-hell. Sadly it’s over within the first ten minutes. What follows is a pretty by-the-numbers thriller, in which the characters occasionally speak awkward dialogue that sounds like they’re reading it from a Lonely Planet guide. It turns out that Hanks and Jones are on the trail of a neo-Malthusian American billionaire (Ben Foster) with plans to unleash a bioengineered plague and jumpstart a new renaissance. Can our heroes use their knowledge of medieval Italian art and history to unravel his cryptic clues and stop the diabolical plot in time? Naturally, yes. For us, though, the joy of the film was in the
little details. For example, Jones’ character, the medical genius Dr. Brooks, has the significant first name “Sienna.” If you know much about medieval Florentine politics, you can probably guess that she turns out to be a bad guy. Likewise, in an early scene, there’s a newspaper clipping in Sienna Brooks’ apartment that reads, “Prodigy, 12, attends King’s College.” When it appeared onscreen the FYP contingent whooped. We left the theatre debating where in hell the evil billionaire would be punished. Two frontrunners emerged—either among the violent against nature or the traitors to community—as we came out to see, once more, the stars. ❧
BELOW: ROBERTA BARKER IN THE DUCHESS OF MALFI, (BY JOHN WEBSTER, FIRST PERFORMED IN 1614, AND HERE, BY THE KTS). PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBERTA BARKER. RIGHT: ROBERTA BARKER DISCUSSING POETRY WITH STUDENTS ON THE CHAPEL RETREAT TO MERSEY RIVER NEAR KEJIMKUJIK PARK. PHOTOS BY SAMUEL LANDRY. BELOW RIGHT: CAMERON LOWE ON THE CHAPEL HIKE TO CAPE SPLIT. PHOTO BY IMOGENE BROBURG-HULL.
FYP’S RENAISSANCE & REFORMATION
FROM SECTION THREE’S COORDINATOR ROBERTA BARKER The Renaissance—a word that literally means “rebirth”—is often imagined as a “brave new world” for Western culture. It saw the emergence of many of the institutions and ways of thinking that have shaped modern lives. But it’s also a time of creative looking back—especially at ancient philosophy, art, and literature, much of which was being rediscovered at this time—and of building on the ideas and innovations of the Middle Ages. For me, what defines the period above all is a tremendous sense of mobility. People, texts, and images travelled across and between continents with unprecedented speed. Women and men moved across established boundaries of class, gender, and ideology during a time of unprecedented urbanization, social upheaval, and technological change. For example, thanks to new technologies of printing, incendiary ideas like Martin Luther’s call for a reformation of the Christian church spread rapidly from country to country, permanently transforming the political and spiritual lives of thousands of people. Western colonists travelled to the Americas and encountered ancient, complex civilizations, setting off a process of negotiation and conflict whose profound impact is still being felt today. The very idea of the self—of what it meant to be an individual human being—was radically transformed. My biggest challenge in coordinating this section has been deciding which of the many facets of this extraordinary, glittering, and contradictory era to highlight. We could easily
FYP News – Fall 2016
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spend the whole section exploring the religious and philosophical debates that gripped Europe in this period; looking at the tremendous artistic and literary legacy of the age that gave us Botticelli, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Marlowe; or considering the encounters between European modes of thought and the wisdom of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. As it is, the section offers students a sequence of lectures that introduce them to each of those strands of the Renaissance, while remaining unified by the theme of the Renaissance self: its possibilities, contradictions, triumphs, and failures. I hope that students will emerge with a sense of this period as a time of thrilling, terrifying possibility and change whose debates and struggles still shape our world—for good and ill. That sense of being part of a huge, ongoing transformation is what makes me so excited to dive into this section! ❧
*Dr. Roberta Barker is also this year’s Chapel Theologian. In the two photos immediately below, Roberta is discussing poetry with students on the chapel retreat to Mersey River near Kejimkujik Park.
ABOVE: KAIT PINDER AND THE LEONARD COHEN LISTENING PARTY GATHERED IN THE SENIOR COMMON ROOM. PHOTO BY MIKE BENNETT.
LEONARD COHEN LISTENING PARTY BY KAIT PINDER FYP TUTOR
On the evening of November 16 close to 50 members of the King’s and Dalhousie community gathered in the Senior Common Room to celebrate Leonard Cohen’s life and to discuss his final album, You Want It Darker. Paisley Conrad and I planned this event after Cohen’s album was launched in October. Initially conceived as a party to celebrate Cohen’s latest achievement, after Cohen’s death on November 7, the event became a celebration of an unparalleled life in art. Cohen was 82, and his oeuvre, from Let Us Compare Mythologies to You Want It Darker, spans seven decades. I struggle to name another artist with Cohen’s longevity, or his grace. As many have noted, Cohen had impeccable timing. His death on November 7 came on the eve of Trump’s election in the United States, and it is perhaps a gift of mercy that such a prophet of love, a poet who spent the mid-60s studying the “authoritarian psychology” that haunted his Jewish community, did not live to see the catastrophic finale of Trump’s hateful campaign. As nearly 50 of us listened to his album in silence and as we discussed the intimacy of the experience afterwards, King’s students found space for some fragile light amid the darkness. Students noted Cohen’s constant confrontation with the dark characteristics of our human condition, his condemnation of the powers that demean human dignity, and his struggle—even in this final spiritual expression—to know for sure that the God he has addressed across his many works will come to him in the end. In “Loneliness and History,” a speech Cohen gave in 1964, he explained the isolation of the prophet and his relation to community. Positioning himself as (CONTINUED ON PAGE 21...)
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Foundation Year Programme: in itself and for itself.
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: HOLOGRAPHIC ZOETROPE, HOLOGRAPHIC ZOETROPE (INTERIOR) 2013, FORGOTTEN FUTURES 2015. PHOTOS BY ANDREW MILNE.
RUINS OF AN IMAGINED FUTURE The Artist, Andrew Milne is a current FYP Science student who also studies Physics, Calculus and the History of Science and Technology. Andrew’s installation “The Halifax Constellations” was featured in this year’s Nocturne. PHOTOS BY ANDREW MILNE. Can you describe how your artwork relates to attending FYP? The work that I create now realises cutting edge optical technologies by combining computer automated manufacturing and design with obsolesced materials and optical techniques. These re-invented devices create an imagined obsolescence that pulls a contemporary technology from a ‘future’ space into an imagined historical context. In creating this work, I increasingly felt that I needed a deeper awareness of history to be able contextualise the work, as well as an expanded knowledge of math and physics to open a wider range of technologies that I could engage and discuss. Attending FYP and the History of Science and Technology program will make it possible
FYP News – Fall 2016
to do just that. So, it is as if you are trying to invent a future that has already passed? Yes, at least, I think that’s what is happening. Can you describe how that process came about?
ask whether there was a way to contextualize technological desire in a way that didn’t directly perpetuate it. Intuitively that led to working with mechanical systems that can be understood through a direct engagement. Can you give an example of one of these devices?
I began making art with an ambition to discuss the emergence of the cyborg body using physical computing and performance. Physical computing is the integration of performing body with sensor based computer controlled systems, typically to generate real-time video and audio. In performing these works, I found that I received as much enthusiasm to access or acquire the technology that had been created as there was an engagement with ideas that the work was attempting to explore. This led me to
Absolutely, in 2015 I created a series of augmented reality viewers (above), that were made from wood, mirrors and printed images. A little crank on the side is turned while a person looks through the eyepiece and animated images are seen that appear to exist as part of reality in-front of the viewer. The photographs on the wall show a ruin in eastern Manitoba and the viewers superimpose a fictional future technology into the photographs. After operating
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the viewer, there is a sense in which the photograph becomes a ruin of future technology. Is there anything in FYP which has impacted the way you think about your work, or is it too soon to tell? The truth is that everything has had an impact, but Aristotle stands out. I had previously felt a link between philosophy and mechanism, but the way that Aristotle is working out ideas not only reinforces this association but extends it to ethics as well. ❧
(...CONTINUED FROM “LEONARD COHEN LISTENING PARTY”)
“There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in” –Leonard cohen
HYPSTER TO FYPSTER:
AN INCOMING FYP STUDENT WRITES TO HER PEERS.
HYP (Humanities for Young People) is a residential summer programme for high school students at the University of King’s College. Here, Nicole Keeping writes of her experience in the inaugural year of HYP. George Elliott Clarke, Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, was HYP’s first keynote speaker. PHOTO COMPLIMENTS OF HYP.
HUMANITIES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE Know someone who would find a home in HYP? For more information on HYP or to apply online, visit hyp.ukings.ca
a prophet, Cohen claimed, “I am glad to be alone. A man must be alone before he can declare: We are not alone.” On that dark evening in November, Cohen united us through precisely our loneliness, through the vulnerability and isolation that we share with him and each other. Without escaping the darkness of these days, we nonetheless found the shelter that Cohen promised in “Anthem,” where he sang that “Every heart to love will come, but like a refugee.” ❧
“I even discovered that if you love the work you’re doing, you won’t think of it as work, you’ll think of it as an opportunity to broaden your mind.” Hello, my name is Nicole Keeping and I am currently in my last year of high school in Corner Brook, Newfoundland! Humanities for Young People (HYP) at the University of King’s College is a phenomenal program in which students get the opportunity to experience firsthand what university life is like, to learn an abundance of different things, and to make connections and friendships that will last a lifetime. I was fortunate enough to be accepted into this program during the summer of 2016. It was, without a doubt, the most amazing trip of my teenage years! For someone like me, with a passion for theatre, literature, writing, and learning new things, HYP felt like a home away from home. During grade 11, I began to realize that university life and adulthood were just around the corner. Like most, I’d been [ 21 ]
Foundation Year Programme: in itself and for itself.
“A lot of times in high school, kids feel like they are out of place or that the people around them just aren’t into the same things as them. I often feel this way myself. I realized very quickly that this wouldn’t be the case at HYP.”
pushing the thought of growing up way down to the bottom of my mental toy trunk, hoping the Barbie dolls and sock monkeys would keep it far, far away. However, when I was sent an email promoting this program, I felt as though I’d been presented with an opportunity. Maybe by studying at a university for a week would make me less nervous about going there after high school! Boy, was I right! I instantly fell in love with the campus, the food, the professors, the library, the dorms, and EVERYTHING about King’s! I even discovered that if you love the work you’re doing, you won’t think of it as work, you’ll think of it as an opportunity to broaden your mind. I loved it all so much that I hope to become a King’s student this fall! Also during this trip, I got to learn so many different things about the world we live in today. Whether it was learning about Greek writers and plays (my personal favourite), or how to debate, or how relationships have been displayed through portraits for hundreds of years, I was always interested and hungry to learn more. However, not everything you learn at HYP is from lectures. After every lecture we would join a tutorial group with about a dozen or so more HYPsters to discuss our opinions and ask questions on the day’s topic. It was amazing how many different viewpoints there were. I was able to open my eyes and empathize the opinions and sentiments of others. I guarantee you won’t find a wiser group of teenagers anywhere else in the country. Perhaps the best part of this trip was meeting so many amazing, intelligent, and overall great young people. A lot of times in high school, kids feel like they are out of place or that the people around them just aren’t into the same things as them. I often feel this way myself. I realized very quickly that this wouldn’t be the case at HYP. Everyone was so mature (something that isn’t always the case at school!) and we all had so much in common! It was as if we had all known each other for years. It was as if the conversations we were having mattered. It was as if we could all make a difference if we worked together. Its relieving to know there are so many young people out there with the same passions as you HYP was an absolutely spectacular experience. I will never forget the friends I made, the things I learned, or the experiences I had. I recommend it to everyone I know who isn’t in their last year of high school! For someone who loves English and history and theatre, who loves to learn, and loves to meet new people, there could not be a better program. If it’s something you’re considering, you should most definitely apply. I guarantee you will not regret it! Nicole Keeping, age 17. ❧
ANNOUNCEMENTS MUSICIANS IN FYP Al Tuck (FYP 1985-86) recently released his album Fair Country, available on line at altuckmusic.bandcamp.com/album/ fair-country. DR. JANNETTE VUSICH NIGHT FYP
Dr. Jannette Vusich speaks on Ancient Art in our ongoing Night FYP initiative. Night FYP was made possible by a generous donation from an alumna. Please join us for one of the Night FYP Humanities in the evening this coming term.
FYP News – Fall 2016
AL TUCK WITH THOMAS MCCALLUM
Thomas McCallum (FYP 2009-10) recently released his album Crocus Song, available at the King’s Co-op Book Store. Ben Caplan (FYP 2005-06) released his album Birds with Broken Wings. Follow him at http://bencaplan.ca/. Becky Siamon (FYP 1998-99) recently released her album, Breakfast Epiphanies, online at beckysiamon.bandcamp.com
BLESSED CHEESEMAKER VICTORIA GODDARD
Congratulations to Dr. Victoria Goddard, Medievalist, Farmer, Novelist, Cheese Monger on the opening of the “Charlottetown Cheese Company”. PHOTO BY SUSAN DODD. [ 22 ]
Welcome Avon Bezaire Cohoon! “I’ll attach a photo that shows him in contemplation—perhaps about the One, but more likely about the Mom.” (from Christopher Cohoon, FYP tutor)
Dr. Suzanne Taylor and her editor Yuki take a much deserved rest after Dr. Taylor’s successful defence of her doctoral study, “In and Out of Character: Moral Action in the Eighteenth Century, “ in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.
Editors’ Note: For this inaugural edition of FYP NEWS, we gathered stories from all “five corners of the FYP Student’s Quad,” that is, from the Chapel/Pit, Residence, Athletics, Alumni Hall, and The City Beyond (i.e. Day Student Life). Future editions will be shorter! We hope you enjoy reading this as much as we have enjoyed compiling it. Please consider contributing a few sentences for our upcoming edition.
Congratulations to Prof Simon Kow on the recent publication of his book: China in Early Enlightenment Thought, from Routledge.
Halifax Humanities Society published Each Book A Drum: Celebrating 10 Years of Halifax Humanities, including short essays and stories by FYP professors, alumni and Halifax Humanities participants.
Congratulations to Eli Diamond on his timely book: Mortal Imitations of Divine Life: The Nature of the Soul in Aristotle’s De Anima from Northwestern University Press.
More FYP NEWS in the Winter Term In our Winter Term Edition, Dr. Daniel Brandes will offer Reflections on Life After Five Years as FYP Director
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Foundation Year Programme: in itself and for itself.
THE LAST WORD “FYP is like putting on a new pair of glasses; it’s a bit fuzzy at first, but eventually your eyes adjust to it and you begin to see everything with a clarity you’ve never experienced before. I did not expect to feel so passionately about the content of the Ancient World, in particular, Sappho’s poetry. The most memorable quote, which I feel sums up my experience in the Foundation Year Programme thus far, is from Anne Carson’s
translation of Sappho’s fragment 16: ‘some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. But I say it is what you love.’” –Miranda Bowron (FYP 2016-17) PHOTO BY IMOGENE BROBERG-HULL (SEE PAGE 17).
U NIVE RISTY OF K I NG ’S C O LLEG E ∙ 6350 Coburg Road, Halifax NS B3H 2A1 CANADA ∙ (902) 422-1271 ∙ www.ukings.ca ∙ @ukings