A free public reading of his work will introduce writer-in-residence Phil Hall to the campus community, Thursday, March 7, at 2:30 p.m. in Ambassador Auditorium’s Salon A.

Hall, a UWindsor alumnus (BA 1976, MA creative writing 1978), has begun a one-month appointment in the English department. Killdeer, a book of poems and essays, won the 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry, the 2012 Trillium Book Award, an Alcuin Design Award, and was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize.

His 2001 book Trouble Sleeping earned a nomination for the Governor General’s Award and An Oak Hunch (2005) was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Hall’s other titles include Old Enemy Juice (1988), Hearthedral—A Folk-Hermetic (1996), White Porcupine (2007), and The Little Seamstress (2010).

In the early 1990s, Hall served as literary editor at This Magazine. He has taught writing and literature at York University, Ryerson University, Seneca College, George Brown College, and elsewhere; currently, he offers a manuscript mentoring service for the Toronto New School of Writing.

Artspeak Gallery, 1942 Wyandotte Street East, will host Hall for another public reading on Thursday, March 14, at 7 p.m.

Against the backdrop of a city on the verge of financial ruin and staring down the possibility of an even bigger disconnect from its Canadian cousins thanks to a recently approved U.S. budget bill, a group of artists and researchers will gather here this weekend looking for ways to encourage people to think of Detroit and Windsor as a singular cross-border metropolitan environment.

Michael Darroch.

“With the great deal of attention that Detroit receives as a site of potential change, it’s not really thought of as a border city,” said Michael Darroch, a professor of media art histories and director of the IN/TERMINUS art and research collective. “Its relationship to Windsor and to Canada isn’t really mentioned that often. We want to start that conversation.”

This weekend, the organization is co-organizing a symposium at the Art Gallery of Windsor called Diversions: Detroit-Windsor Conversations on Borders, Traffic, and Circulation, along with Lee Rodney’s Border Bookmobile Project, Srimoyee Mitra, curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Windsor, and the McGill-based Media and Urban Life project.

Besides a number of free panel discussions that are open to the public, the group will cross the border Saturday for a bus tour of Detroit – hosted by Dylan Miner, a border-crossing artist, activist, historian, curator and professor at Michigan State University – and then spend the night there. On Sunday, they’ll meet again to talk about new ways to reconsider the “obstacles and mobilities that have emerged” in the Detroit-Windsor urban locale.

Darroch said the point of IN/TERMINUS, born out of a similar symposium two years ago and supported by the University’s Strategic Priority Fund, is to conduct interdisciplinary research at the intersection where creative art meets science and technology, with a specific interest in the ecology of cities, and the social and cultural fabrics of city life.

“We’re creating a space to think about Windsor as an interesting urban environment, a concept which we felt had been neglected,” he said. “In terms of thinking about the culture of the place, we felt the university needed a central space to bring various strands of urban, cultural, and creative research together.”

The group couldn’t be going to Detroit at a more historic and critical time. Last Friday, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder declared Detroit in a state of financial emergency and suggested he may point an emergency manager within the next 10 days. At the same time, lawmakers in Washington approved a sequestration bill which will result in the slashing of more than 5,000 border guards, which will have “serious consequences to the flow of trade and travel at our nation’s ports of entry,” U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned.

Despite the city’s woes, being at a critical juncture in Detroit’s history offers a rare opportunity to reimagine it in the context of its relationship to the border and to Windsor, Dr. Darroch said. While Windsor’s urban character has been closely tied to Detroit’s rise and fall, he added, much of the artistic and intellectual activity from Detroit focuses on the city’s internal divisions while the international boundary on its southern edge remains ignored.

“Largely due to the fact that it’s such a complicated place internally, Windsor is fairly low on its radar,” he said.

Check out the symposium program.

Advance tickets are now available for the Ontario University Athletics women’s basketball championship—pitting the Windsor Lancers against the Carleton Ravens in the St. Denis Centre at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 9.

The Lancers are seeking to regain the provincial title, which they won in 2009, 2010 and 2011 before losing in the finals last year. The 2012 team subsequently won a second-straight national championship.

Admission to Saturday’s decider is $10, with a youth and senior rate of $8.

Advance tickets will be sold on an in-person, cash-only basis at the St. Denis Centre from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday to Friday, March 6 to 8.

A new associate head coach for Lancer football will be called upon to help with recruiting and fundraising, as well as coordinate the team’s on-field defence.

Head coach Joe D’Amore announced the appointment of Donnavan Carter, a former Canadian Football League all-star, to fill the position Tuesday. Over his eight-year CFL career, Carter started at the safety and linebacker positions with the Toronto Argonauts, Ottawa Renegades, Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Winnipeg Blue Bombers. As team captain for Ottawa in 2003, he was selected as a Canadian Football League Players Association all-star at the free safety position.

The Brampton native comes to Windsor from the University of Toronto, where he served four seasons as defensive coordinator for the Varsity Blues.

“Donnavan not only has experience running a defence at the CIS level, but his extensive playing career in the CFL gives him instant creditability with our players,” D’Amore said. “He brings with him a sound defensive system that will allow our players to play fast and adapt quickly.”

Read the full story at goLancers.ca.

What does feminism mean today? What does it look like?

Writer Nicole Baute will discuss what it means to identify as a feminist today in a free public presentation Thursday, March 7, in celebration of International Women’s Day.

Baute is co-editor of EAT IT, a collection of women’s writing on food and gender politics due out this spring. Her fiction has been published in Joyland Magazine and The Feathertale Review, and her journalism has appeared in Toronto Life, Open Book: Toronto, and several Canadian newspapers.

Her morning appearance, sponsored by the Young Feminist on Campus Speaker Series, begins at 10 a.m. in room 186, Essex Hall.

She will also discuss journalism and writing, as well as her unique and rewarding experience as a feminist journalist, in a follow-up session at 1 p.m. in McPherson Lounge, Alumni Hall.

Sexual assault survivor to discuss her experiences

The campus Womyn’s Centre will present Melissa McCormick, author of The Queen’s Daughter, discussing her story as a survivor of sexual assault in a free public talk at 6:30 p.m. at Iona College, 208 Sunset Avenue.

Dion Carter, equity and human rights manager, and Denise Livingston, administrative assistant in the Office of Human Rights, Equity and Accessibility, staff a booth during Accessibility Awareness Day activities Tuesday in the CAW Student Centre. Students, faculty and staff learned about a variety of topics during the day-long series of sessions on the theme “Building an Accessible Community.”

Friday’s open house is aimed at helping applicants appreciate what the University of Windsor has to offer, but that doesn’t have to mean just first-entry programs, say organizers of a project in the Faculty of Education. They are hoping to attract University graduates interested in pursuing study in education.

“An education degree will enhance graduates’ abilities in leadership, professional development, instructional, motivational and interpersonal skills,” says acting dean Karen Roland.

The event runs 3 to 6 p.m. in the Neal Education Building, with classroom demonstrations for the first hour. Faculty and teacher candidates will be on hand to answer questions and showcase their work pertaining to specialized programs, including:

• Leadership Experience for Academic Direction
• Urban Education Project
• Language and Cultural Engagement Seminar
• Teachers for Tanzania
• Reciprocal Learning Program – China

The UWindsor open house will offer tours of campus facilities, presentations on academic programs, information on scholarships and awards, and opportunities for individual discussion with instructors and current students. Find details, including a full schedule of events, on the open house website.

Is humanity “going the way of the dodo” if it cannot learn to adapt, change and work together?

Artist Lisa Hirmer of DodoLab will discuss her experimental and creative approaches to research and community action in a free public talk at noon Thursday, March 7, in room 115, LeBel Building.

The dodo reminds us that a lack of resiliency and a solo existence is a precarious strategy for survival, Hirmer says.

“For generations, the dodo has also been understood to have been a slow, lazy, gluttonous bird with limited intelligence,” she says. “It is now believed that this large flightless bird may have actually been reasonably intelligent and active and that its unflattering portrayal resulted from encounters with overfed, captive species.”

She cites the dodo as a reminder that sometimes the stories we tell become barriers to understanding and resolving the issues we face.

The International Wednesdays documentary series presents A Walk to Beautiful today—Wednesday, March 6—at noon in the International Student Centre on the second floor of Laurier Hall.

A Walk to Beautiful tells the stories of five women in Ethiopia ostracized by their family and villages due to their suffering from obstetric fistula, a serious medical condition caused by failed childbirth under poor conditions.

These women live in isolation with a sense of loneliness and shame due to rejection by their own. Each of these five women chooses to reclaim their lives by taking the long and exhausting journey to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital so they could receive free medical treatment available only there.

While not every patient can be cured, each woman takes her own journey toward becoming independent and productive members of their communities once again.

International Wednesdays screenings are free and open to the public.