A seminar linking graduate students at the University of New Brunswick and the Université de Montréal made possible through funding from the Religion and Diversity Project.
On Tuesday 24 January 2012, graduate students enrolled in a course taught by Nancy Nason-Clark of the Sociology Department at the University of New Brunswick joined with graduate students in a course taught by Solange Lefebvre of the Faculté de théologie et de sciences des religions at the Université de Montréal participated in a joint seminar. The theme of the seminar was Insider/Outsider which offered the graduate students an opportunity to consider these issues in relation to their research in a context which included linguistic, disciplinary, cultural, pedagogical, and geographic diversity.
The participants at the University of New Brunswick had created blogs and invited the Université de Montréal participants to join with them in writing, reading and commenting on blog posts based on the assigned texts, their personal research experiences, and the seminar.
The seminar was conducted using webinar technology. This enabled participants in Fredericton and Montreal to speak and listen to one another from their respective classrooms as well as to view PowerPoint presentations and websites that accompanied the lectures. The afternoon began with Nancy Nason-Clark’s presentation of her research on religion and domestic violence focusing on issues associated with insider/outsider status. This was followed by Lamphone Phonevilay’s presentation of his research on “la communauté catholique laotienne de Montréal” in which he emphasized the project’s relation to proximité/distance both theoretically and methodologically. Informal summaries of the presentations were offered for unilingual participants at each campus by bilingual colleagues on site. The presentations were followed by questions and answers from both campuses.