UCN Faculty and Students Present at Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences

September 03, 2019

The University College of the North (UCN) was well represented at the 2019 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in June. Drs. Ying Kong and Joseph Atoyebi, along with UCN students Taylor Flett and Kassidy Burden, attended the conference and delivered individual presentations under the theme: “Voice, Image, Prose, and Poetry from Indigenous Students.”

The presentations highlighted Muses from the North, an on-line journal through which UCN students express their musings about northern tradition and culture in text, images, and pictures. The publication includes works from students in The Pas and Thompson as well as UCN’s 12 Post-Secondary Education Access Centres. Muses also includes students’ academic works to showcase achievements from their northern learning environments.

This was the first time that the students attended and presented at Congress. “It felt very good to represent northern Manitoba and to bring the talent of northern Manitobans to light in other parts of Canada,” said 3rd year UCN Nursing student Kassidy Burden, “A big highlight for me was having the opportunity to see Vancouver and represent UCN and northern Manitoba.” Burden added: “Following a passion can lead to wild and unexpected outcomes. I never thought I’d ever get a chance to represent the voices of UCN’s writers and artists. I never thought my own writing and art would go this far because of living in northern Manitoba.” First year UCN Bachelor of Arts student, Taylor Flett’s presentation was titled, “A Copy Editor’s Point of View on Students’ Publication.” She said that a particular highlight of the trip was meeting Elder Maria Campbell, an internationally acclaimed writer, researcher and teacher. She said that experience made her realize that she wants to pursue graduate studies at UBC or other university. Flett added it has motivated her to complete a novel after seeing so many authors who had their works displayed at the congress.

Following the 2019 Congress, Dr. Kong and

Dr. Atoyebi embarked on a visit to China with the primary purpose of fostering research collaboration between faculty at UCN and faculties at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University; the School of International Studies, Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), and the School of Foreign Languages; Harbin Engineering University. During their visit to HIT, both delegations agreed that a special issue of Muses from the North would be dedicated to publishing articles by HIT students under the theme of “the impact of publication and research on students’ life and career.”

For more information, please contact:

Dr. Ying Kong (ykong@ucn.ca)
Dr. Joseph Atoyebi (jatoyebi@ucn.ca)

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