2012-2013 Carleton University Achievement Award Winners
Teaching Achievement Awards
Alexis Luko, Assistant Professor, School for Studies in Art and Culture: Music, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Teaching Music History in the First-Year Seminar and the Second-Year Lecture:
For her medieval and renaissance music history courses, Dr. Alexis Luko will design multimedia assignments to help students better appreciate links between music and poetry in troubadour songs and renaissance madrigals. Audio-visual educational packages will be developed to facilitate the creation of individual “pop-up” videos in which students will interpret poetry and associated musical gestures. In a multimedia environment, students will be able to follow the music without the aid of a score and will better appreciate the historical, cultural, and social references in genres celebrated for their rich and imaginative poetry. Dr. Luko will also assess experiential learning strategies in her ArtsOne first-year music seminar within the context of the “I am Canadian” cluster.
Deidre Butler, Assistant Professor, College of Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
An Invitation to Research: Undergraduate Researchers in the Religious Studies Classroom:
This course-based project opens up unprecedented access to the world of real research in the academic study of Religion at Carleton University. Through a new course, Judaism and the Practice of Ritual (to be offered September 2013), students will receive training in research design and interview-based research. They will investigate home ritual practices in the Ottawa Jewish community with attention to the phenomena of intermarriage, conversion, and same-sex marriages. Combining interview and questionnaire-based research, this project fully takes advantage of the breadth of data that can be collected by a class cohort of researchers. Students will ultimately participate in the dissemination of the research at scholarly conferences and in peer-reviewed publications.
Contract Instructors Award
Christian Caron, Contract Instructor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Being a first year student out of high school and suddenly finding yourself in a classroom with hundreds of students can be a daunting and isolating learning experience. Christian Caron believes that we do not learn best alone, we learn best in conversation with others. We learn best by listening, by asking questions, by explaining. Reflecting this, Mr. Caron structures his large Introductory to Sociology courses to foster a genuine community of learners who will help each other make their way through the material, topics and issues, in collaboration with one another. This is done through a variety of group-learning opportunities and assignments, by building a vibrant online community through the course management system, through weekly group in-class activities, and through a major collaborative term project.
Research Achievement Awards
Dana Dragunoiu, Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature
Kant and Twentieth-Century Literature:
Professor Dragunoiu has developed a research program that will further extend her scholarly preoccupation with the relationship between literature and moral philosophy. Her second book will offer an original account of Kantian moral philosophy’s hold on 20th century literature and intellectual history. By focusing on some of the most influential and beloved works of Henry James, Vladimir Nabokov, and Ian McEwan, she will show that Kantian moral principles fuel 20th century fiction’s preoccupation with the life of the mind and its increasingly self-conscious and beleaguered prioritization of universally binding moral duties over utilitarian calculations.
James Opp, Associate Professor, Department of History
Photographic Mobilities and the Re-Placement of History:
This research explores how historical photographs and changing technologies of circulation reframe the significance of “place.” A wide variety of smartphone apps now deliver GPS-coded digital images that allow the viewer to stand in the same spot as the “history” visualized before them. By comparing past mobilities of the material photograph, with new digital mobilizations, Opp’s analysis traces how the photograph’s loss of materiality has actually produced a new sense of “authenticity” through the experience of viewing digital images “in place.” Without a deeper understanding of how historical photographs have been distributed, archived, and exhibited, we cannot fully grasp the significant narrative shifts that have taken place in the digital realm.
John Zelenski, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology
Using Nature Exposure and Nature Relatedness to Predict:
Environmentally Sustainable Cooperative Behavior Exposure to natural environments has significant benefits for human beings. In addition, individual differences in nature relatedness, the subjective sense of connectedness with nature, predict well-being and sustainable behaviour. A limitation of this research, however, is that it has only been able to demonstrate an association; the causal direction remains ambiguous. To further examine the effects of nature and nature relatedness on sustainable behaviour, studies that experimentally manipulate nature exposure with walks in natural settings and videos, will be conducted. Beyond the simulation, Zelenski will assess environmental concern and solicit environment donations as additional indicators of sustainable behaviour.
