September 2025 Recap
And so begins a new academic year!
Events
We welcomed our first-year students on September 3 at the Academic Garden Party, as part of UTM Orientation 2025. Our Department Chair, Prof. Arsalan Kahnemuyipour gave a brief overview of our programs and then joined Dr. Paul Alexander, Prof. Zain Mian, Prof. Jeffrey Steele, Prof. Magda Tigchelaar, Rosa Ciantar (Academic Advisor & Undergraduate Program Administrator), and Jennifer Fischer (Academic Advisor & Project Administrator), greeting our new students and answering questions.
Photos courtesy of Rosa Ciantar
We officially kicked off the new year with our departmental Meet & Greet on September 12. Faculty, instructors, teaching assistants, and staff enjoyed lunch with our students on the MN 4th floor patio, and our Program Coordinators hosted program information sessions to discuss course options and experiential learning opportunities with interested students prior to the lunch.
Photo courtesy of Dr. Xinliang Jiang
Speech-language pathology is a highly competitive graduate program, so to help students get a head start in preparing for this pathway, we hosted an information session with guest speaker, UTM alum Shukri Nur (Linguistics Minor, 2018) on September 29. The session was attended by about twenty students, who were able to get a first-hand account of the application process and early career path of a practicing Speech-Language Pathologist.
Students interested in French studies also enjoyed lunch with Prof. Marie-Paule Lory at our Meet Your French Professor event this month!
Guest Lecture
ITA256H5 Italian-Canadian Studies: Literature, Theatre, Cinema welcomed back Prof. Paolo Frascà (Department of Italian Studies, University of Toronto) to UTM. Prof. Frascà shared about the intersections between indigenous and Italian-Canadian histories and cultures, exploring connections that shed light on migration, identity, and intercultural exchange.
Publications
We are also thrilled to announce that Prof. Aqsa Ijaz's English translation of Tohfat ul Kiram (Gift of the Generous)—an 18th-century Persian chronicle of Sindh by Mir ʿAlī Sher Qānī Thattavī—was featured in Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English-language newspaper. Tohfat ul Kiram is a landmark of Persian histiography, situating the histories of Sindh within the wider Persianate world. The product of over two years of international research, Prof. Ijaz's translation makes this historical source accessible to a wider audience to help broaden perspectives in the scholarly field of Persian and Iranian studies.
