PWIAS: Page by Page

August 15, 2021


PWIAS Wall Scholars are published across a wide range of genres, presenting ideas and scholarship for academic audiences and the general reading public. PWIAS has also published collaborative book projects that bring together Wall Scholars and other thinkers.

The following list is just a small selection of the many lauded books and publications written by PWIAS scholars.

As a Wall Scholar, I worked on a three volume book, a collection of personal essays, called “The Colour of God” and have just secured an agent for the book at a top literary agency in NYC. Of course, all of these things are connected, as my time at PWIAS cultivated my intellectual trajectory, allowing me to think in new ways, in conversation with scholars in other fields, and gave me the support network to develop my scholarship in new directions.

Ayesha Chaudhry, 2016 Wall Scholar

Collections by PWIAS

Chromatic: Ten Meditations on Crisis in Arts & Letters, a collection of essays and illustrations as diverse as the subject of crisis itself.  (Forthcoming by PWIAS, October 2021)  The project was written and produced by the 2020 Wall Scholars cohort in collaboration with local artists.

Memory, Edited by Philippe Tortell, Mark Turin & Margot Young (PWIAS, UBC Press, 2018)

“Fascinating read. Memory as a theme is captured brilliantly in all the essays.” – Goodreads

“Top 11 list of 2018 non-fiction books by BC writers” – Georgia Straight

Reflections of Canada: Illuminating Our Opportunities and Challenges at 150+ Years. Edited by Philippe Tortell, Margot Young, Peter Nemetz (PWIAS, 2017)

“Reflections of Canada represents the open-minded and interdisciplinary intellectual tradition that’s quickly becoming a hallmark of Canada’s Pacific province.” – Georgia Straight

2018 Wall Scholar Ian Williams wins the 2019 Giller Prize

The interdisciplinary intellectual exchange at PWIAS is a kind of diversity – or at least a refreshing expansion from the siloed world of departments.

Ian Williams, 2018 Wall Scholar & 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize Winner

Books by PWIAS Scholars

Reproduction Ian Williams (Random House Canada, 2019) Winner of 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize

“With subtlety and wit, this prizewinning debut explores a liaison across race and class divisions in Canada”;  “There’s a fluidity and zest to Williams’s insightful writing, underpinned by numerous experiments with form and style…” – The Guardian

The Colour of God Ayesha Chaudhry (One World Publications 2021), 

“This is an exquisite, engrossing, and very moving book.” – Jane Haile

Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge Michelle Stack (University of Toronto Press, 2021)

“This is an excellent read which gives both conceptual and empirical analysis on the mediatization of higher education“ – Dorothy Ferary

Contact! Unload: Military Veterans, Trauma and Research-based Theatre – George Belliveau & Graham Lea (UBC Press, 2020)

“Extremely powerful in communicating the experience of those on operations” – Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex
“Accessible and moving, Contact!Unload lays bare the deep work that went into creating the namesake play from soldiers’ stories.”  Stéphanie Bélanger, Canadian Institute for Military and Veteran Health Research

The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya Mark Turin (Open Book Publishers, 2019)

“[the] essays…demonstrate that the history, present, and future of language contact and politics in the Himalayan region are complicated, nuanced, and changing.” – Miranda Weinberg

Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire Renisa Mawani (Duke University Press, 2018)

2020 Association for Asian American Studies Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in History

“…a convincing and elegantly argued analysis that positions this historical voyage as a lens through which to scrutinise broader issues of race, migration, jurisdiction and power” – Jen Hendry

Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast Sebastian Prange (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

2019 American Historical Association’s John F. Richards Prize for the most distinguished work of scholarship on South Asian history.

“[Prange] has brought scrupulous multilingual scholarship to difficult questions of history, identity, and myth and his book deserves to be widely read.” –  Samira Sheikh

Foucault on the Arts and Letters Catherine M Soussloff, Sima Godfrey (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2016)

“As transdisciplinary methods in the arts and sciences are ascending, Foucault emerges as a central thinker, again, because his oeuvre embodies knowledge that defies disciplinary boundaries.“- Michael Kelly

Research-based Theatre: An artistic methodology George Belliveau, co-editor (Intellect Limited, 2016)

“[a] praiseworthy effort to demonstrate that research into a variety of topics can be meaningful but more importantly entertaining in the best sense of the word.” – Goodreads

There Goes the Gayborhood Amin Ghaziani (Princeton University Press, 2014)

Honorable Mention, 2016 Robert E Park Award, American Sociological Association

“Ghaziani offers passionate and refreshing insights on a politically charged issue.“ – Publishers Weekly 

For more in this series, please visit PWIAS: Ideas and Impact and PWIAS: Connections and Collaborations.