Academic Labor Politics in the Air

It must be the season or something. Today, our TA union staged a demonstration outside the front gates in support of their ongoing contract negotiations. McGill teaching assistants are quite underpaid compared to their counterparts at other Canadian universities and “R1” universities in the U.S. It’s a Quebec thing, since they’re better paid than TAs …

This week’s blog topic: our vacation in Mexico

That’s the plan anyway, if I can get the time free to write (even though I swore I was done with book reviews, I’m finishing a review of Steven Wurtzler’s Electric Sounds for Cinema Journal). In the meantime, I would like to briefly comment on two things only loosely vacation-related: 1. The Orlando airport is …

Quebec Alternative

Last night, I attended the vernissage for Quebec Alternative. The exhibit shows off some of the materials in Marc Raboy’s collection of alternative publications, which he dutifully stockpiled — eventually renting a storage locker until he was able to donate them to the McGill Library. For last night’s event, many key figures in Quebec’s alternative …