posted on March 15: Undergraduate peace symposium takes place Saturday, March 16

This Saturday, McMaster's Peace and Conflict Studies Society (PACSS) will be hosting its third annual Undergraduate Peace Symposium.

The conference is drawing participants from universities as far afield as New York and Quebec, as well as those closer to home like York, Waterloo, Toronto and, of course, McMaster itself.

This year's theme – the Art of Peace – was suggested by organizer Lesley Steeve, a third-year English and comparative literature student, who wanted to encourage creative submissions, without excluding more theoretical explorations of peace issues.

The symposium's theme touched a chord, attracting great interest, and 18 presenters have been selected – almost twice as many as in previous years.

Presentations will range from essays, poetry and fiction, to discussions of health, terrorism, international law, and UN tribunals, to artworks such as paintings and sculpture, with plenty of time left open for discussion.

“I had two main aims coming into this,” Steeve said, who is gaining credit for her work on the symposium as an applied humanities course. “One was to learn how to organize this kind of event – find out about all the practical issues that literature students don't usually encounter. And the other was to learn from what others have to say about peace issues. I'm sure it will be a pretty informative day.”

Six months after the events of Sept. 11, she hopes that the symposium might help in a small way to make people think about the issues of peace.

“Raising awareness of world events, even at a local level is good. I was so affected by what happened in September, it propelled me to want to do this, to get more people thinking about peace.”

The Art of Peace Symposium takes place Saturday, March 16, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

There is no charge to attend, and a free lunch will be provided.

Participants are welcome to come for the whole or part of the day. Morning sessions take place in KTH 104 and 109, and the afternoon presentations will be in the New Space (TSH 114). For more information please contact Lesley Steeve at peace_symposium@hotmail.com.