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This inquiry focuses on the diverse representations of marginalized women’s experiences in the texts of Francophone comics or la bande dessinée. This project and its goals are twofold. First, it is about understanding explicit and implicit messages conveyed in contemporary autobiographical French comics written by women of colour. I will analyze the visual and linguistic elements that are unique to the comic book form in order to understand how the personal experiences, self-expressions, and world views of women of colour are visually depicted and linguistically expressed. The second part of this project focuses on the extent to which women of colour writing in French have filtered their unique stories, experiences, and challenges to conform to a French-speaking audience, reflecting their particular societal norms and values. Filters are especially important as they provide insight into the ways in which authors and scénaristes adapt their narratives to accommodate for their readers or audience, their publishers, or for themselves. I will analyze the following comics through a child or humour filter.

Map of China. Text in Chinese.

This document is available in Simplified Chinese. Additional resources are available at: - Personal Directives Act, RSA 2000 c P-6- Powers of Attorney Act, RSA 2000 c P-20

Rural electrification and population control have as much to do with technology as they do with politics. This leads to the question of whether technological or political change was more revolutionary in the Chinese countryside since 1949? Which type of change had a more lasting impact? Official class status labels are gone, but the lights are still on. Of course, technology and politics are intertwined and cannot be examined in isolation from one another, but scholars have tended to overemphasize politics (阶级斗争、政治运动、阶级成份) while overlooking other forms of transformation that brought fundamental changes to the countryside. I suspect that this is because the Chinese Communist Party’s own emphasis on politics has been so prominent, especially during the Mao years. Yet every noisy political treatise was matched by quietly distributed manuals about how to operate machines or apply pesticides. Eagerly reading materials about political campaigns while ignoring dry technical manuals leads to an unbalanced view of what was so revolutionary about the Chinese revolution in the countryside. It reveals more about the scholar than it does about the society he or she is studying.

This is the slide show for a public seminar organized by and held at Calgary Chinese Community Service Association on February 3, 2014, about the basic legal procedures of divorce application in Alberta. This is the full (traditional) Chinese version of the presentation.

This document is available in Simplified Chinese. Additional resources are available at: • Wills and Succession Act, SA 2010, c W-12.2

It is generally acknowledged that Europe will not be a super power in the sense of a political-military ensemble on an equal footing with the United States or China. Europeans reject this possibility across the board. Moreover, even if they wanted to go that route, wouldn't it expose them to reproducing on a European scale what they have struggled to combat amongst themselves: the idea of becoming a great power with all the attributes of force and supremacy that such a project implies?So if Europe will not be a super power, how can it be a power at all? Probably by reinforcing what remains its major political resource: its capacity to produce and set up at the global level a system of norms as broad-sweeping as possible that can organize the world, discipline the interplay of its actors, introduce predictability in their behavior, develop among them a sense of collective responsibility, and offer those who engage on this path, particularly the weakest, at least the partial possibility to use these norms as an argument/force* against all, including the world's most powerful.The task may seem colossal, even outrageous. It probably is, but does Europe have any other choice but to assume its responsibility as a normative power? Probably not.[publisher's website]

This is an audio recording of the Wills presentation. Additional resources are available at: • Wills and Succession Act, SA 2010, c W-12.2

The contemporary Taiwanese author Wang Ching-hsien (penname: Yang Mu) occupies a nearly unique position in modern literature from Taiwan as a native Taiwanese with complex affiliations to modernism, nativism, lyricism, literary scholarship, and prose. He is best known for his poetry but he is a prolific writer of prose essays as well. Most of the scholarship on him in English focuses on his poetry. This essay seeks to examine more carefully several of Yang Mu’s most important essays, and it suggests that such an examination sheds important light on the other facets of Yang Mu’s life, in particular his poetry. The essays also all dwell on various experiences that Yang Mu had in the United States, his adopted second homeland. As an immigrant, Yang Mu is able to reflect on the strangeness and sometimes alienating dimensions of the United States, such as the wide-open spaces and social reserve of Americans in contrast with the crowds and more group-oriented culture he perceived in Taiwan. He also wrote extensively about his experiences as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley and some of his most important mentors. These experiences helped shape his literary sensibilities and work ethic and had a dramatic impact on the kind of writer Yang Mu came to be. The one consistent point running through his essays is the author’s sense of inclusivity and tolerance. Above all, Yang Mu is an eclectic poet and scholar of comparative literature, and a culturally hybrid intellectual.

This is an audio recording of the PD and PA presentation as well as the Wills presentation. Additional resources are available at: • Personal Directives Act, RSA 2000, c P-6 • Powers of Attorney Act, RSA 2000, c P-20 • Wills and Succession Act, SA 2010, c W-12.2