Russ Kilbourn, Chair of English and Film Studies, in conjunction with the English Students and Film Studies Students Associations, organized a book launch and Meet the Profs event held on October 18, 2023. The event was well attended, with convivial intellectual and social exchange.
Students introduced faculty members who talked about and read excerpts from their recent books.
Makayla Mallet introduced Professor Tamas Dobozy who launched 5 Mishaps (School Gallery, 2021) and Ghost Geographies: Fictions (New Star Books, 2021).
Alejandro Mansilla introduced Professor Richard Nemesvari who talked about why there was a need for Wilkie Collins in Context (co-ed. William Baker) (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Mazada Eva introduced Professor Mariam Pirbhai who read from Garden Inventories: Reflections on Land, Place and Belonging (Wolsak & Wynn Publishers, 2023)
Deni Pivač introduced Professors Philippa Gates and Katherine Spring who talked about the genesis of Resetting the Scene: Classical Hollywood Revisited (Wayne State University Press, 2023)
Virginia Murphy introduced Professor Eleanor Ty who spoke about Beyond the Icon: Asian American Graphic Narratives (Ohio State University Press 2022)
Lauren Miatello introduced Professor Jing Jing Chang who talked about the essays inChinese Cinema: Identity, Power, and Globalization (co-eds. Jeff Kyong-McClain, Russell Meeuf) (Hong Kong University Press, 2022).
The evening ended pleasantly with informal conversations over light snacks. Some books were even sold, courtesy of Laurier Bookstore.
Chang, Jing Jing, co-edited with Jeff Kyong-McClain and Russell Meeuf. Chinese Cinema: Identity, Power and Globalization. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2022.
Gates, Philippa and Katherine Spring, eds. Resetting the Scene: Classical Hollywood Revisited. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2021.
McDonald, Terrance H. and Christine Daigle. (eds.). From Deleuze and Guattari to Posthumanism: Philosophies of Immanence. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022.
Poetzsch, Markus and Cassandra Falke, eds. Wild Romanticism. Routledge, 2021.
Ty, Eleanor, ed. Beyond the Icon: Asian American Graphic Narratives. Ohio State University Press, 2022.
Edition:
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Edited by Richard Nemesvari. Revised 2nd ed. Broadview Press, 2021.
Journal issues edited:
Annett, Sandra, editor-in-chief. Mechademia Second Arc vol. 14 no. 2: New Formulations of the Otaku, guest ed. Susan J. Napier, Spring 2021.
Chapters in Books:
DiCenzo, Maria, Luce Beeckmans, Anne-Marie D’Aoust, Valerie De Craene, Kristien Hens, Anneleen Kenis, Robert McRuer, Anne-Christel Zeiter. “Daughters of the Pandemic” in “Covid-19 Roundtable.” Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies (DiGeSt). 8.1 (2021), pp. 6-21.
Gates, Philippa. “Controlling Racism: The Production Code Administration and the Representation of Chinese/Americans.” In Resetting the Scene: Classical Hollywood Revisited. Eds. Philippa Gates and Katherine Spring. Wayne State University Press, 2021. 155-68.
Gates, Philippa. “Objects of an Orientalist Gaze: Chinese Immigrants in American Silent Film.” In Asian American Literature in Transition, 1850-1930. Eds. Josephine Lee and Julia Lee. Cambridge University Press, 2021. 121-35.
Hron, Madelaine. “Stillbirth Grief, Eco-grief and Corona Grief: Reflections on Denialism.” In Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope: Experiencing the Twin Disasters of COVID-19 and Climate Change. Eds. Douglas A. Vakoch and Sam Mickey. Springer, 2022. 67-75
Jeffries, Dru. “Flickers of Black and White: Cinema and Genre in Watchmen and Doomsday Clock.” In After Midnight: Watchmen after Watchmen. Ed. Drew Morton. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2022: 15–28.
Kerber, Jenny and Cheryl Lousley. “Literary Responses to Indigenous Climate Justice and the Canadian Settler-State.” The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Climate, edited by. A. Johns-Putra and K. Sultzbach. Cambridge UP, 2022, pp. 269-279.
Kilbourn, Russell J.A. “The Pope, The Queen, and the Football Star: An Introduction to Paolo Sorrentino.” Solaris, Textos de cine 6 (Spain). Special issue on Paolo Sorrentino (September 2021), pp. 19-28.
Kilbourn, Russell J.A. “Affect/Face/Close-up: Beyond the Affection-Image in Postsecular Cinema.” In From Deleuze to Posthumanism: Philosophies of Immanence. Ed. Christine Daigle and Terrance McDonald. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2022. 147-69.
MacDonald, Tanis. “Elton John and the Mondegreen Girls.” Rock Music Icons: Musical and Cultural Impacts. Ed. Robert McParland. Lanham, ML: Lexington, 2022. 45-53.
McDonald, Terrance H. “Life, Risk and the Structuring Force of Exposure in Maelström.” Refocus: The Films of Denis Villeneuve. Eds. Jeri English and Marie Pascal. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. 93-109.
McDonald, Terrance H. “Posthuman Cinema: Terrence Malick and a Cinema of Life.” From Deleuze and Guattari to Posthumanism: Philosophies of Immanence. Eds. Christine Daigle & Terrance H. McDonald. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. 129-146.
Spring, Katherine. “Introduction.” In Resetting the Scene: Classical Hollywood Revisited. Eds. Philippa Gates and Katherine Spring. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2021.
Spring, Katherine. “Trading on Songs: The Emergence of the Film Musical as a Genre Label.” In Resetting the Scene: Classical Hollywood Revisited. Eds. Philippa Gates and Katherine Spring. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2021.
Ty, Eleanor. “Empowerment through Multiple Voices: Culture, Media, and Identity in Eddie Huang’s Fresh Off the Boat.” Empowering Contemporary Fiction in English. Ed Ralf Hertel and Eva-Maria Windberger. Brill Rodopi, 2021. 160-171.
Journal Articles:
Jeffries, Dru. “Kayfabe and Authenticity: The Challenges of Extending Professional Wrestling Storyworlds to Comics.” Professional Wrestling Studies Journal 3.1 (April 2022): 63–80.
Kerber, Jenny. “Tracing One Warm Line: Climate Stories and Silences in Northwest Passage Tourism.” Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 55, No. 4 (July 2022), 271-303.
Kilbourn, Russell J.A., “Adorno, Beckett…Wagner, Artaud: Reflections on Stefan Sorgner’s Philosophy of Posthuman Art.” Deliberatio 2:2 (2022): pp. 83-100.
MacDonald, Tanis. “Prescription.” Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, and Social Justice 42.1 (Summer 2021): online.
Poetzsch, Markus. “Picturesque Wilderness and the Human Problem.” The Wordsworth Circle 52.3(Summer 2021): 329-341.
Waugh, Robin, “A Pious Knight’s Flaw, Quandary, and Burden: Gold and Fee in Sir Isumbras,” Viator 51, no. 2 (2022 for 2020): 263-96.
Waugh, Robin, “Satire of Patience Advice in Sir Isumbras,” Studies in Philology 118 (2021): 459-90.
On Saturday, October 22, thirteen students from Dr. Katherine Spring’s undergraduate class, Film History to 1950 (FS240), attended a screening of the venerable silent vampire film, Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, 1922), at the Apollo Cinema in downtown Kitchener.
The Invincible Czars, some members of which can be seen in silhouette at the bottom of this picture, gave “fresh blood” to the film via their myriad instruments, including drums, gong, electric guitar, bass synth, flute, and keyboards.
The band The Invincible Czars, on tour from Austin, Texas, provided an eclectic live score of original music and sound effects. The band also called upon the audience to contribute an essential sound effect: the howl of a werewolf (who, incidentally, is played in the film by a hyena).
We thank the Department donors whose contributions made this wonderful event possible. For their help with planning, thanks also are owed to Joanne Buchan, Senior Admin. Asst., and to Film Studies alum Becca Dallaire (’21), who now is Director of Operations at the Apollo Cinema. (Congratulations, Becca!) We’ll be back, and not just for the best popcorn in town.
Film history students Catherine Guyatt and Grace MacKinnon with Dr. Spring outside the Apollo Cinema.
Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female is a personal essay collection (with some poems along for the ride) that examines the pleasures and the problems of everyday walking: who gets to do it, when, where and how, and the unwritten or unspoken “rules” that speak to bodily experience.
So far, Straggle has been launched in Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, and Waterloo, at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival and several places in Prince Edward County, where Tanis MacDonald was Writer-in-Residence at the Al Purdy A-Frame for two weeks last August. Coming later in the fall, Professor MacDonald will go to Toronto to launch Straggle at Word on the Street, back to the prairies for the Winnipeg International Writers’ Festival, and north for WordStock, held each fall in Sudbury.
From Left: Laurie D. Graham, Tanis MacDonald, Joshua Whitehead, Gillian Sze
Professor MacDonald comments:
“Thousands of books are launched each year, so it’s always an honour to be asked to read from your work, and the serious business of sharing your book with readers is at its most welcoming at a book launch. I felt very lucky to do the late spring prairie tour partnered with the writer Kit Dobson, who is a friend from our graduate student days, and to be on a literary panel with Joshua Whitehead and Gillian Sze, both writers I admire.”
The book is published by Wolsak and Wynn, and is available in Waterloo at Words Worth Books, from the publisher’s site (below), or from Tanis MacDonald.
Dr. Mariam Pirbhai’s debut novel titled Isolated Incident was launched (Mawenzi House) on Sept 13 at Massey College, University of Toronto. It was great to see some English & Film Studies graduate alum turn out, like Dr. Coplen Rose (a lecturer at UofT), as well as doctoral candidate Sanchari Sur.
Isolated Incident follows the lives of Kashif and Arubah, both Pakistani Canadians born and raised in the GTA, as well as Marisol, Arubah’s queer mixed-race best friend at university. Just as Kashif starts to reconnect with Islam, his parents’ faith, and to edge closer to applying to the police academy, a mosque north of the 401 is violently attacked. While the “incident” triggers an unlikely alliance between Kashif and a white retired cop named Frank, questions of allyship only seem to put Arubah and Marisol’s friendship under further strain, not only at a time of intensifying Islamophobia but also across a university campus dealing with a rise in sexual assaults.
Though Pirbhai wrote the novel as a response to escalating hate crimes targeting Canadian Muslims, Isolated Incident also considers what it means for her characters to belong in an already colonized land, probing “deeply into the links between migration and indigeneity, on the one hand, and misogyny and Islamophobia, on the other.” (Dr. Shazia Rahman).
Pirbhai (left) with Mawenzi co-founders, novelist MG Vassanji and Nurjehan Aziz
Pirbhai hopes to host a book launch in Waterloo later this term. More details to come. For now, the novel is available for purchase at Mawenzi and Amazon, and should hit bookstores by month’s end!
The Laurier Graduate Enhancement Fund, in partnership with the Youth Climate Report, is issuing an open call for applications from Laurier graduate and undergraduate students to participate in the Documentary Filmmaking for the United Nations project.
The project provides Laurier students the opportunity to collaborate on the production of short documentary films, each three to five minutes in length, on the subject of climate change research at Laurier or climate change impacts in Waterloo Region and throughout Canada. The short films created by students will be presented to the United Nations for consideration for addition to its Youth Climate Report (YCR) project.
The YCR project is celebrating its 11th anniversary in 2022. The UN program is designed to give youth a voice at the annual UN climate summit known as COP, or Conference of the Parties. More than 600 videos have been added to the UN’s YCR project world map showing climate research, impacts and solutions on all seven continents.
Laurier’s Documentary Filmmaking for the United Nations project is administered by Faculty of Arts instructor Mark Terry, who will provide workshops, training and guidance to participants over a three-month period. Terry also serves as the executive director of the Youth Climate Report and is uniquely positioned to train participants and facilitate getting their films in front of UN policymakers, world leaders and international media.
“We all want to end climate change,” says Terry. “But we often feel frustrated that there is nothing short of participating in the occasional protest that we can do about it. The Documentary Filmmaking for the United Nations program at Laurier gives students the opportunity to ‘speak youth to power’ and directly inform and influence the environmental policymakers of the United Nations.”
Dr. Mark Terry at COP26 (UN Climate Change Conference, 2021), Glasgow
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
Laurier graduate and undergraduate students interested in climate change, climate research and solutions, as well as the impacts of related work being done at Laurier, in Waterloo Region or throughout Canada, are invited to apply to be a part of the Documentary Filmmaking for the United Nations project. Interested students can email Terry at mterry@wlu.ca. The deadline for applications is May 20, but the deadline may be extended based on student interest.
It has been a busy year in the English Undergraduate Program, and it’s time to celebrate some accomplishments!
The tireless Executive Members of the English Studies Association at February’s English Undergraduate Symposium.
First, congratulations to all our students for persisting and succeeding through another pandemic year. That is a significant accomplishment in and of itself. And, particular congratulations to students who will be graduating this spring. We are proud of you and are confident that the skills you’ve developed during your degree – conducting research, analyzing and interpreting texts from different perspectives, and developing strong writing skills and rhetorical strategies – will help you tackle new challenges in work, travel, and further study.
Second, we were pleased to welcome Ali Bryan as the Faculty of Arts’ Edna Staebler Virtual Writer in Residence in the Winter term. Ali is an acclaimed YA and adult fiction writer based in Calgary, Alberta, and she brought a great deal of positive energy and pragmatic encouragement to our writing community – thank you, Ali!
Ali Bryan, Faculty of Arts’ Edna Staebler Virtual Writer in Residence for the Winter term.
Third, thanks to all who organized, attended, and / or presented at our Annual English Undergraduate Symposium in February on the theme of “Imagined Worlds: Literature, Travel, and the Making of Space.” This was one of the first opportunities in a long while to share our work in a face-to-face public forum (with some participants also joining in via Zoom).
It was so heartening to see our students in action, sharing what they’ve been working on through the past year, asking great questions, and supporting one another in community. We were treated to thoughtful presentations on a great variety of topics ranging from the Medieval period, to literary theory, to graphic narratives and memoirs, to literatures in Canada and poetries of resistance. The day proved an excellent showcase of current work in literary studies and reminded us that acts of creating and thinking are often more fun when they’re shared.
Undergraduate student Carter Heer presenting a paper at the English Undergraduate Symposium.
Finally, a few additional congratulatory words for several of our students and their accomplishments this year (and if I’ve missed you, please share your accomplishments and we’ll happily promote them!
Alicia Fong is the winner of the Weldon and Misser Prize for best senior-level essay on poetry.
Alicia Fong
Tyra Forde is the recipient of an Ontario Graduate Scholarship to further her MA work at Laurier, and she has also recently published some reviews in the Cloud Lake Literary Magazine.
Tyra Forde
Mackenzie Wauters is the undergraduate recipient of the 2022 Laurier Student Teaching Award of Excellence in recognition of her work as a first-year peer academic coach within Laurier’s Transition and Learning Services.
Mackenzie Wauters
Well done, Golden Hawks. Have a rejuvenating summer and read some great books!
Tamas Dobozy launched his new story collection Ghost Geographies (New Star Books) via Zoom on the evening of Oct. 23, 2021. Dobozy began by reading from the title story, drawing listeners into the tale of an enigmatic Hungarian immigrant, artist, and visionary whose life moves between the physical geographies of Buffalo and Fort Erie, as well as the more elusive geographies of memory and the imagination.
The reading was followed by a conversation with poet and writer Matt Rader. The dialogue between Dobozy and Rader began with insights into different permutations of ‘utopia’ in the book, and moved on to Dobozy’s preference for the short story, a form wherein he can construct intricate mechanisms whose parts operate in perfect synchronicity with one another. Rader and Dobozy also discussed where to find hopefulness in the human condition despite the cruelties and setbacks of history and the daunting future challenges we face.
The event concluded with questions from the audience, which included guests from as far afield as Dobozy’s home province of British Columbia and Europe. The book has received very complimentary reviews and was featured in The Globe and Mail’s Fall preview of Short Fiction for 2021. Look for Ghost Geographies at your nearest local bookshop.
This fall we are grateful to have four faculty members taking on new administrative roles:
Dr. Russ Kilbourn, Department Chair
Dr. Katherine Bell, Graduate Program Coordinator
Dr. Jenny Kerber, Undergraduate English Advisor
Dr. Sandy Annett, Film Studies Advisor
We are pleased to welcome 13 new MA students into our program:
Saveria Amicucci Manaal Azhar Sarah Caley Emma Davis Megan Heck Ryan Kennedy Justice Noftle Nolan O’Kane Amber Roberts Mathieu Eden Snelgrove Ribovski Aleksander Szaranski Jenny Tubb Blaze Welling
We have accepted two new PhD students:
Deborah Hernandez Will Kummer
Best wishes to everyone as we work together in the post-2020 world!
This fall we welcome eleven new MA students and two new PhD students to our graduate programs in English and Film Studies.
MA students:
Jessica Dong (Laurier) Linn Huemiller (Waterloo) William Kummer (Laurier) Kathryn MacCulloch (Laurier) Emilia Morgan (Carleton-Ottawa) Rachel Panico (Laurier) Sharon Premkumar (University of Toronto Mississauga) Lindsay Santoro (Laurier) Robyn Smith (St. Thomas University) Sidney Sponer (Quest University) Anton Talosi (Laurier Brantford)
PhD students:
David Jackson (Carleton, Manitoba) Daniel Moore (McMaster)
Instead of a reception, we hosted a “Meet and Greet” on Zoom. 2020 here we go…
Laurier English & Film Studies Blog 