Winter 2010

Welcome to winter term at the IGSF. The first major event of this year at the Institute is the public lecture by Colm Tóibín on February 11, co-sponsored with the Department of English, and supported by the Beatty Memorial Lecture Fund. Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist and journalist, perhaps best known for his novels, The Master and, most recently, Brooklyn. He will be speaking on ‘Oscar Wilde in Prison,’ a topic that, judging by conversations with colleagues, friends, and contacts in the community, is of interest to many people at McGill and beyond.

We are delighted to be hosting Tóibín’s lecture, as well as the symposium on the History of Sexuality (organized by members of the Historical Perspectives research axis) planned for March 4 with senior scholars Joan Cadden and Valerie Traub, and emerging scholars Sebastien Matzner and Ara Osterweil. Upcoming events also include a film series organized by Elisabeth Engebretsen, Faculty Lecturer at the IGSF, presentations in the seminar series by our visiting scholars Naima Benlarabi, Heidi Epstein, and Caroline Bassett, as well as a seminar on teaching challenges by Heidi Epstein. For updated information on all of these, see our web-site www.mcgill.ca/igsf.

Most of our events are initiated through the IGSF research axes (for more on these, see IGSF Research Axes. ) – if you are a researcher at McGill or another university, and would like to be sent information about any of these, please let Natalie Amar, our Communications Director, know (natalie.amar@mcgill.ca). We look forward to seeing you at IGSF events – and please keep bringing us your ideas, and alerting your graduate students and new colleagues to the research axes and their activities.

Marguerite Deslauriers
Director, IGSF