Articles by author: Brock University

• Classics prof reflects on legacy of Spartacus

  Monday, February 10, 2020 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 10 February 2020 – R0027

  Of all the films he appeared in, Kirk Douglas, who passed away last week at the age of 103, was perhaps best known for his starring role in the 1960 film Spartacus.

  Although Douglas was a controversial figure — including serious sexual misconduct allegations that came to light later in his life — Spartacus is seen as an important film that dealt with significant contemporary issues.

  “The film was pivotal to 20th century history of confronting injustice and oppression,” says Katharine von Stackelberg, Associate Professor with the Department of Classics at Brock. “People keep thinking slavery is just something that belongs to the past, but as I emphasize in the slavery module of my introduction to Roman civilization course, slavery is very much a present and ongoing issue.”

  The study of Classics and ancient history encourages students to engage with current social justice issues, she says.

  A 2017 UN report on slavery estimates that 40 million people worldwide are commodified and trafficked as forced labour and forced sex workers.

  Spartacus is based on real historical events. The Third Servile War was the last in a series of slave revolts in the Roman Republic. Begun in 73 BCE by a group of seventy escaped slave gladiators, the revolt swelled to 120,000 men, women and children over two years. After it was crushed by Roman military forces under Crassus in 71 BC, more than 6,000 of the slaves were crucified along the Appian Way, leading from Rome to southern Italy.

  Howard Fast wrote the novel on which the film is based while in jail for refusing to testify before the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC). The film parallels American history and the civil rights movement, including the fight to end segregation and promoting the equality of African-Americans.

  “Spartacus was an enormously controversial film,” says von Stackelberg. “The book on which it was based was banned during the McCarthy era because the resistance of slaves to masters was understood to promote Communism.”

  The movie’s climatic scene, where each recaptured slave claims to be Spartacus and thereby share his fate, dramatized the solidarity of those who were blacklisted as Communist sympathizers because they refused to implicate others.

  “The film protested against HUAC censorship and oppression by employing artists, writers, actors and technicians who had been blacklisted for many years,” says von Stackelberg. “It was credited with effectively ending the Hollywood blacklist and has been recognized as providing social commentary on the Civil Rights Movement in its treatment of women, African-Americans, and same-sex relationships. “The actual Spartacan uprising was also followed by a period of increasingly progressive legislation in the Roman Empire, so Ancient History is closer to the present than we think,” says von Stackelberg.

  Katharine von Stackelberg, Associate Professor with the Department of Classics at Brock University, is available for interviews.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca, 905-688-5550 x5353 or 905-347-1970

  Brock University Marketing and Communications has a full-service studio where we can provide high definition video and broadcast-quality audio. 

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  Categories: Media releases

• Brock chemist partners with startup to develop new copper production method

  Thursday, February 06, 2020 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 6 February 2020 – R0026

  Brock University Professor Emeritus of Chemistry Ian Brindle can still remember witnessing a mesmerizing experiment that’s often conducted in high school chemistry classes.

  The experiment involves putting an iron nail into a solution of copper sulphate and then watching dark, reddish-brown patches of copper metal adhering onto the nail.

  While it’s an exciting way to grow copper, the fun stops when students are faced with scraping the copper off the nail. Not only is it tough work, but the copper becomes contaminated with iron in the process.

  Fast forward a few decades, where Brindle points to a vat containing a copper-covered iron bar immersed in a leached copper solution. He picks up the bar, but instead of scraping the copper from the iron, Brindle merely wipes it off. The shiny, high-purity copper crystals fall from the iron effortlessly, like tender meat off a bone.

  The copper in the solution came from an abandoned Ontario mine that has only tiny deposits of the element tucked away in many layers of rock.

  Brindle has partnered with Destiny Copper Inc., a resident company in the Goodman School of Business’ Goodman Group-Venture Development in the Brock LINC, to develop new methods of producing copper. These methods have the potential to revolutionize the copper mining industry in Canada and beyond because they are simple and mobile.

  “We’ve had interest from South America, Mexico and the U.S.,” says Dave Cousins, co-founder of Destiny Copper.

  “We’ve already got Swiss copper traders that are willing to buy as much as we can produce, so the demand is there,” adds co-owner Greg Hanna.

  The aim of Destiny Copper’s work is to offer a new way of extracting copper from small deposits of copper ore (crushed rock and other deposits) that most large-scale mining companies would consider to be too small to process using conventional methods.

  The first step involves extracting and dissolving copper from rocks in which the mineral is contained. The company collects ore from the surface layer of test sites in several Ontario mines that are old or abandoned, which is then brought to the lab, where water and chemicals are filtered through the material to leach the copper out.

  The leached liquid is a copper sulphate solution that Hanna affectionately calls “blue juice.” Once an additive is added and comes into contact with iron, it produces the granular copper.

  The provisionally patented ‘granular copper process’ is what differentiates Destiny Copper from other copper processes.

  “The discrete crystals don’t stick to the iron, so you can easily separate the copper once it’s produced from the iron,” says Brindle. “That gives you the opportunity of purifying the copper further into big sheets that weigh 125 kilograms, which can be sold on the international market.”

  The game changer, says Hanna, is that this method uses virtually no electricity and requires far less equipment than conventional methods. Normally, sophisticated extraction equipment would be needed to remove the copper from the iron.

  “It’s a far greener process than the current copper extraction technologies, which require huge amounts of electricity,” he says. “It’s the cleanest form of mining there could be.”

  Hanna notes that as green technologies such as electric vehicles, solar and wind power generation gain traction, copper will be in even greater demand.

  “These technologies take up to 12 times the amount of copper when compared to fossil fuel electricity generation,” he says.

  Destiny Copper’s modular process makes it ideal to set up operations directly on site, a huge advantage for mines that contain small copper deposits not worthwhile for large mining companies, says Brindle.

  “You’ve got high-value copper essentially marooned in the environment and nobody is going to spend the money to extract that copper using conventional techniques, so you’ve got to come up with something novel,” he says. “Because of the simplicity of the technology, you can load all of the equipment you need on the back of a flatbed truck; when the copper is mined out, you put everything back on the truck and go to the next place.”

  The company is now working on additional funding to further refine the equipment needed for mobile operations.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews: 

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca, 905-688-5550 x5353 or 905-347-1970

  Brock University Marketing and Communications has a full-service studio where we can provide high definition video and broadcast-quality audio.

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  Categories: Media releases