Krista Collier-Jarvis, assistant professor (and former BA student!) in the MSVU English department, was recently longlisted for the prestigious CBC Nonfiction Prize. Her book, A Micmac Memoir, was one of only 38 entries out of more than 2000 to reach this stage. Congratulations to Prof. Collier-Jarvis on this amazing achievement!
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“Creepy Little Girl” appears in Gothic Studies volume 25 issue number 1, 2023 on pages 1-19.
The Creepy Little Girl is a subset of the Gothic Child and as such, she works differently from the evil child or the monstrous child in contemporary Gothic. Unlike the contradictions inherent in representations of the evil child whose presence is disruption and destruction, or the monstrous child who is dangerous, the Creepy Little Girl serves as a function of the Gothic: she is that figure through which the narrative is unsettled and the Gothic intrudes. The Creepy Little Girl is defined by her hypergendered position in the narratives in which she appears: as both ‘little’ and very much as ‘girl’. The little girl’s presence in contemporary gothic narratives destabilises the familiar, the domestic, and the cute and that is the basis for the gothic unease that she engenders.
Following a hearty process and much dedication, Dr. Smol has created and launched the website Tolkien and Alliterative Verse. The purpose of the website on the page is: “This site is designed to be a resource for anyone who wants to study Tolkien’s alliterative verse or to understand medieval English alliterative metre.” The link to the site is:
Dr. Smol is an accomplished Tolkien scholar, having published widely on Tolkien and currently serving on the editorial board of the Mallorn, the peer-reviewed journal of the Tolkien Society. Dr.Smol’s assistants in this endeavor include second-year Dalhousie doctoral student Gavin Foster and MSVU alums Jordan Audas and MacKenzie Moore. Funding for the site includes the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant and Mount Saint Vincent University grants.
The logo was designed by Gavin Foster (B.A. Hons MSVU 2020; M.A. Dalhousie 2021). Gavin is currently a PhD student at Dalhousie. Gavin’s explanation of the thinking behind the design can be found on the website’s blog here: https://tolkienalliterative.ca/2022/12/15/some-thoughts-on-site-design/.
Book Launch to be Held 6:30pm on November 30, 2022 at Halifax Library
“‘The Rings of Power’: Every adaptation is re-interpretation so ignore the haters” Published in The Conversation, Winnipeg Free-Press, and Yahoo News
The middle of August sees the tide turning in World War I: the Battle of Amiens, which began August 8th, marks the beginning of the so-called “Hundred Days” before Armistice Day, November 11th.
Those who have been following Percy’s War know that Percy Theobald, a Canadian gunner, has been on active service in France for year now, most of it on the Lens front amid the French coalfields, just north of Vimy. Now he is farther south, as Allied troops drive east, in something approaching mobile warfare after years of trenches taken, lost, and retaken across the Western Front.
Janie Libbey
Day-by-day we have read Percy’s few words about his experience, set in the context of his officers’ reports, accounts written just after the war and histories from the last few years, of poetry and popular song and film of the time. We know about his long-distance romance with Janie, about his reading, about the routine and the anything-but-routine of war. Illustrated with paintings from the collections of the Canadian and the Imperial War Museums, with photographs and maps and cartoons, ephemera and trivia, each entry is different, and there are nearly 900 of these creative non-fiction pieces on the web to date.
The blog is a labour of love for Professor Emerita Susan Drain, who was entrusted with an archive of materials by Percy’s family several years ago: the blog began in 2016 when Percy enlisted (January 1916), and has steadily attracted attention from readers of all kinds. Amateur —obsessive— historians of World War I share documents, lessons in map-reading, and
John Singer Sargent, Horse Lines. © IWM (Art.IWM ART 1619)
fact-checking services, all gratefully received. Professional historians read and comment: “terrific research” said Tim Cook recently. Tim Cook is the pre-eminent historian of Canada’s role in World War I. One reader “likes” every post that has a painting in it; another, every post that refers to the horses that played so important a role; still others are moved by the human-interest details, the poignant and the funny.
You can see for yourself by subscribing to the blog to get each day’s entry delivered to your mailbox. It’s a five-minute immersion in another life, an individual perspective on the maelstrom of the Great War.
The Mount’s annual research day will be held on Tuesday, November 15th in the Rosaria Multipurpose Room from 9:15 to 2:30. The day features short talks, posters, and booths displaying the research of Mount faculty and students across numerous disciplines. Everyone is invited to drop in, have some refreshments, and survey some of the work that goes on in our university.
A couple of English faculty and a former student will be participating. At 12:45, you can listen to Dr. Diane Piccitto‘s talk on “Reconsidering Heroism in William Blake’s Epic Poem, Milton.” Dr. Anna Smol and Rebecca Power (B.A.Hons 2015) will be presenting a poster on “Adaptation as Analysis: Creative Work in a Literature Course,” which is based on their forthcoming essays in the book, Fandom in the Classroom (U of Iowa Press). The poster features some of the creative work done by students in ENGL 4475, Studies in Medievalism: Tolkien and Myth-making. (Poster presentations run from 9:45 – 10:55 and 1:15 to 2:30).
The event begins at 9:15 with an opening and drumming by the Mount’s Nancy’s Chair, Catherine Martin. You can find the complete schedule here: research-remixed-schedule-2016 [pdf]
Take a look at the research that led to Jenny Davison’s sculpture of the Doors of Durin, from Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring. One of several projects featured in the poster by A. Smol and R. Power. Image copyright Jenny Davison 2013.
Give up? You’d need to know that Canadian soldiers on leave in London in World War I often took refuge from the dangerous and dark streets of London in rest centres run by the YMCA. One of those centres was the “Shakespeare Hut,” originally intended to stage Shakespeare plays in honour of his tercentenary, but turned over to the YMCA as part of the war effort. The site is now occupied by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which has given the Shakespeare hut a virtual resurrection on its anniversary.
Kia Ora, a fruit squash to be diluted with water as a soft drink, doesn’t really have anything to do with the others, except that it takes its name from the Maori greeting whose words were emblazoned above the fireplace in the lounge of the Shakespeare Hut. Most of the servicemen who visited it were from New Zealand and Australia.
And the research project? That would be Susan Drain’s blog Percy’s War, the on-line publication in real-time-plus-a-hundred-years of an archive of World War One materials relating to the service in the Canadian Expeditionary Force of Gunner Percy Theobald.
It has been over eight months — and some two hund
red blog entries — since Percy enlisted in Toronto. Last month he sailed from Halifax to Britain, miserably seasick most of the way, in a convoy that zigzagged to avoid German uboats. Now in the artillery training camp on Witley Common, Surrey, he and his pals are expecting to see active service in France before year’s end. In France, meanwhile, the Battle of the Somme has been grinding on since the massacres of July 1st, though the Allied Forces are beginning to make some headway.
Before their training resumes at Witley Camp, the newly arrived soldiers were entitled to six days’ leave — and find themselves in the Shakespeare Hut, about to see the wonders of the Imperial capital.
Sign up to follow the day-to-day experience of Percy’s War. More than a faded military archive, there is something for everyone from shrapnel to sentiment — yes, there’s a romance. It brings together photographs and drawings, artillery lessons and horsemanship instructions, contemporary reports and documents, historical analysis, fiction and poetry. Each day’s brief instalment is different and often surprising. Shakespeare and Kia Ora? Oh, yes, October 6, 1916.
For more information, contact Susan.Drain@msvu.ca or leave a comment on the blog.
Dr. Susan Drain announces the launch of her sabbatical project, the editing and online publication of an archive of primary materials relating to the World War I Canadian Artillery soldier, Percy Theobald.
The archive consists of diaries, letters, photographs, documents and ephemera, and is being published in real time plus one hundred years. Thus the first formal post was January 31, 2016, the hundredth anniversary of Theobald’s enlistment.
This chronicle of the boredom of military training and the horror of active service is liberally seasoned with romance and poetry — something for everyone!
Sign up to follow the project at https://percyswar.wordpress.com
If you love reading Jane Austen’s novels, you won’t want to miss An Invitation to Mansfield Park, an ongoing discussion hosted by Dr. Sarah Emsley, who has scheduled on her blog a series of guest posts in celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of the publication of the novel. This week’s post, “Jane Austen: Dramatist,” is by the Mount’s Professor Emeritus David Monaghan. Professor Monaghan has published several books on Austen; his guest post is reblogged here.
Fifteenth in a series of posts celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. For more details, open Your Invitation to Mansfield Park.
This week’s guest post is by David Monaghan, Professor Emeritus at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He’s the author of Jane Austen: Structure and Social Vision, the editor of Jane Austen in a Social Context and New Casebooks: “Emma” (all published by Macmillan) and co-author with John Wiltshire and Ariane Hudelet of The Cinematic Jane Austen (McFarland). When I was a graduate student at Dalhousie I had the good fortune to audit his class on Austen and film, and I’m very happy to introduce his post on that “ranting young man,” Mr. Yates.
“Then poor Yates is all alone,” cried Tom. “I will go and fetch him. He will be no bad assistant when it all comes out.”
To the theatre…
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MSVU English Department Blog 