Research Council funds conferences

Two conferences at Trent have received funding of almost $20,000 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

The 8th annual International Simone de Beauvoir Conference, to be held May 26-28, will examine the life and works of this influential philosopher/writer. Trent literature professor Helene Benbaruk-Lapointe is the on-site organizer.

Sound Escape: an international conference on acoustic ecology, will take place between June 28 and July 2. It is co-sponsored by the Frost Centre for Canadian Heritage and Development Studies at Trent, and the Canadian Association for Sound Ecology. Prof. Ellen Waterman, of the Cultural Studies Program, is the on-site organizer.

The Beauvoirian conference will examine Beauvoir's philosophical analysis, her writings and her militant commitment in well-known political and social causes. Perhaps her most famous work, The Second Sex, published in 1949, researched the oppressive condition of women, analyzed masculine myths about women and represented a forceful call for women's liberation. It was considered the definitive declaration of women's independence.

She published about 20 books, among them a four-part autobiography.

Beauvoirian scholars from 12 countries will present papers at the May conference.

The acoustic ecology conference will build on resolutions at a conference two years earlier in Stockholm. Acoustic ecology is an interdisciplinary field pioneered in Canada by renowned composer and writer R. Murray Schafer, who will participate in Sound Escape.

Sound Escape has attracted delegates from 10 countries in fields ranging from architecture, music, and geography, to communications media, and noise pollution activism. The conference includes a number of community events open to the public.

Featured are: RaDio Burst! - a three-day radio art festival hosted by Trent Radio; Sound Tracks - an exhibition of visual art with an audio component mounted by ArtSpace; an evening of inter-media performance present by Peterborough New Dance; and a public forum on noise and health.

For more information on Sound Escape, check out www.trentu.ca/soundescape.

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