YorkSpace

YorkSpace is York University's Institutional Repository. It supports York University's Senate Policy on Open Access by providing York community members with a place to preserve their research online in an institutional context.

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    Social Cohesion in Protracted Displacement: Limits to Peace Between Young People in Camps
    (Wiley, 2025-09-02) Baú, Valentina
    This article brings to light the limits to peace that currently exist between young people in Kakuma refugee camp through a framework of social cohesion. The main drivers of conflict among the vastly diverse youth of Kakuma are examined to provide evidence of the gaps in social cohesion that endure in the camp. A framework of analysis built around notions related to social cohesion is applied to the qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews with humanitarian professionals working in the camp. The discussion arising from the findings offers key considerations on humanitarian work with young people in contexts of protracted encampment such as Kakuma, and on how such work can more effectively address cohesion among diverse youth. Ultimately, the insights offered want to inform the trajectory of humanitarian work with encamped young people, with the view of enhancing peace, wellbeing and cohesion in camps.
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    No Way Out: Gendered Vulnerability and Social Entrapment in Frances Burney’s Evelina (1778) and Daniel Defoe’s Roxana (1724)
    (2025-03-28) Bianco, Simoné
    The eighteenth-century novel emerged as a powerful literary form amid profound social and economic transformation. As London expanded into a centre of commerce and spectacle, novels reflected and shaped mounting anxieties about urban life. In particular, they explored how women navigated these shifting landscapes, revealing that cities—often portrayed as sites of opportunity—were instead structured to entrap and expose them to danger. Urban life demanded social performance, requiring women to carefully curate their identities under constant surveillance, a dynamic that reinforced class hierarchies and patriarchal authority. With the rise of “possessive individualism” (Macpherson 1964), a defining ideology of the period, personal autonomy and social legitimacy became increasingly tied to self-ownership and economic agency. Yet for women, whose identities were dictated by patriarchal surveillance and marital dependency, true autonomy remained an illusion. Within this context, Frances Burney’s Evelina (1778) and Daniel Defoe’s Roxana (1724) frame the city as a space of gendered vulnerability, where class anxiety and social mobility depend on performance and gothic entrapment. While Evelina initially suggests that patriarchal structures protect women from urban chaos, both Burney and Defoe ultimately reveal how these structures enable rather than prevent harassment, social danger, and gothic terror. Through staged performances and coerced social interactions, both novels expose the city not as a space of female empowerment but one where women are persistently policed, manipulated, and controlled.
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    Figures of Speech Are Not For Women: Metonymy, Rhetorical Questions, and Simile in The Calf That Frolicked in the Hall
    (2024-03-23) Sivakumar, Kalyani
    Language reflects the broader systems of oppression that cultivate it. These structures extend beyond institutions and into the interpersonal realm, shaping discourse itself. Ambai complicates this distinction by illustrating how her female protagonist remains an outsider despite mirroring the figurative speech of her male peers. Her innate inability to conform to masculine literary devices excludes her yet allows her to succeed in the long-term. In The Calf That Frolicked in the Hall, Ambai utilizes metonymy, rhetorical questions, and similes as a language of agency for women, while the male characters–particularly Udayan and Kadir–use the same figures of speech in ways that reflect not only patriarchal exclusion, but also the melancholia of a generation confronting the failure of its revolutionary ideals.
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    Emotionally Unavailable by Design: An Analysis of Narrator Reliability in Nevada and The Yellow Wallpaper
    (2025-04-08) Sivakumar, Kalyani
    What readers consider a “reliable” narrator often reveals more about their assumptions than about the narrator’s truthfulness. Imogen Binnie’s Nevada and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper prompt readers to critically examine their internalized biases regarding narrative reliability. Each text achieves this through distinct approaches to narrative structure, perspective, and the portrayal of emotional vulnerability. Nevada employs third-person indirect discourse to follow Maria on a road trip, while The Yellow Wallpaper unfolds through the first-person epistolary format of an unnamed narrator. Despite the immersive intimacy of the first-person voice, Gilman’s narrator remains unnamed. By contrast, Maria is named early, with her gender and social context made clear. Yet the narrative structure flattens her personhood through emotional detachment and stereotyping. The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper appears more emotionally accessible and credible to readers, despite lacking the most basic marker of personhood—a name. Meanwhile, Maria is difficult to empathize with, due to the narrative distance mirroring her dissociation. This disparity raises important questions about whose pain is believed, and which ways of expressing that pain are accepted as valid or deserving of empathy in literature.
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    Bridging Knowledge Mobilization and Inclusion by Developing a Community of Practice DEI Action Plan
    (Emerald, 2025-09-09) Waariyo , Bissy; Tang, Connie; Phipps, David
    Purpose: This Viewpoint article presents the intersection of knowledge mobilization and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from the perspective of knowledge mobilization practitioners. We represent the Knowledge Mobilization Unit at York University (Toronto, Canada) and Research Impact Canada (RIC), Canada’s knowledge mobilization network. We reflect on building and animating a Community of Practice (CoP) with the Future Skills Centre (FSC) and outline the DEI Action Plan we developed for that knowledge mobilization mechanism. We provide recommendations for researchers and research organizations to strengthen the role of DEI in knowledge mobilization. Design/Methodology/Approach: We provide critical inquiry into our knowledge mobilization practices through self-reflection, comparison to the literature, and testing against the lived and living experiences of knowledge mobilization and DEI practitioners. Findings: We outline the steps taken to build the CoP and develop and implement the DEI Action Plan to support peer exchange and learning, collaboration, and capacity building. We also conclude that knowledge mobilization and DEI are mutually reinforcing. Both seek excellence in diverse forms. Both seek to maximize access to research programs, outputs, and evidence. Both are common features in the Canadian research landscape. Originality: The intersections of knowledge mobilization and DEI are only starting to be explored. As a Viewpoint article, we have written from our perspective of knowledge mobilization practitioners who bring diverse personal and professional DEI perspectives to our work. This complements the literature review conducted by Cornelius-Hernandez and Clark (2024) with recommendations derived from our practice.