Want to hear our Honours students present their fascinating research? Are you an English student wondering whether Honours is right for you and want to see what it’s all about? Or do you just want to hang out with amazing people on a Wednesday afternoon? Join us for the Honours Colloquium!
Join us! February 16th at 4:30pm in SAC 407/409. Open to the public.
Our speakers include Hayley Bone, Sophia Godsoe, and Sam Rooney. Let’s join as they share their research!
February 17, 2022 at 4:30pm (AST) in Seton Faculty Lounge
English Honours student Darcy Eisan will be presenting his thesis research on
Thursday, March 18 at 4:30 p.m.
“A Drag Queen’s Best Friend: Queering the Iconography of Marilyn Monroe”
RSVP for the link to this annual department event by emailing Karen.Macfarlane@msvu.ca; subject line “colloquium.”
Students, friends, faculty, staff are all welcome.
All are welcome to come listen to our Honours students, Rebecca Foster and Michelle Malcolm-Russell, talk about their thesis research on Friday, February 14, at 10:00 a.m. in Seton 404. Refreshments will be served.
Rebecca Foster will be speaking about “The Exiled Voices of Women in the Old English Elegies”
Michelle Malcolm-Russell will present on “Organizing Chaos: Stories, Frames, and Freeplay in Thomas Wharton’s Salamander“
Our English Honours students take a full-year Honours Thesis course, supervised by a faculty member, to research a topic of their choice and to write a substantial thesis. As part of this independent work, they give a presentation to Department faculty and students. This week, Sam VanNorden will be speaking about her research on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which was supervised by Dr. Karen Macfarlane. Students and faculty are welcome to attend.
Sam VanNorden
“Verbal Semaphore. Amputated Speech”:
Wounded Language in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
Friday, February 15
10:30 a.m.
Seton 404
As a small undergraduate department, we have an opportunity to give our Honours students an intensive research experience in which they spend a year working as apprentice scholars in our ENGL 4499 Honours Thesis course. Under the supervision of a faculty member, each Honours student develops a research topic, presents her findings to students and faculty in an Honours colloquium, and writes up her findings in an undergraduate thesis of approximately 50 pages.
Read about this year’s Honours students and what they’re working on:
Katelyn O’Brien
My thesis focuses on the characteristics of an emerging genre of literature called “Sartorial Memoir” (to borrow Emily Spivack’s term). “Sartorial Memoir” is a genre that concerns itself with people, clothing, and most importantly, people’s relationship to and with their clothing. I will be exploring how specific conventions of this genre, such as photography, ‘worn-ness’ and collective narrative all contribute to shape the genre and emphasize sentimentality/memory. The three texts I will examine are Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton, Worn Stories by Emily Spivack, and Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits and Leanne Shapton.
Hope Tohme
Hope Tohme’s research consists of human statues, hunger artists, and museum exhibits. Her readings of Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist”, Edward Carey’s Observatory Mansions, and Beckett’s Catastrophe emphasize the “thingness” of the human body, particularly during the absurd performances presented in these texts. Bill Brown’s Thing Theory serves as a basis for her argument that the human body can be reduced to, not only an object, but a thing – an object with an indeterminate use; an object that no longer fulfills the purpose it was meant to.
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If you’re a Mount English student and think you might be interested in an Honours degree, speak to your faculty advisor or the Department Chair. You can find some information about our Honours program on our Course Guide webpage.
Our English Honours students have a rare opportunity to spend a year researching and writing in the manner of professional literary critics and theorists. Under the supervision of a professor, they select a topic, develop it through research, and write a substantial scholarly work. Last week, our current Honours students presented their research to the department in our annual Honours Colloquium.
Meet our 2016-17 Honours students:
My thesis explores John Gardner’s novel Grendel, which is an adaptation of Beowulf told from the monster’s perspective. Â In my project, I employ postcolonial theory — mainly the theories of Edward Said and Homi K. Bhabha — to explore the ways in which Gardner portrays the relationship between the monster and the Danes.
With a focus on children’s literature, I am examining how structures of surveillance, specifically the panoptical structure, are used for the social conditioning and social control of children. I will be working with Mary Martha Sherwood’s The Fairchild Family, Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons, Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.
My thesis focuses exclusively on novels and short stories by Thomas King. A self-described “contemporary Native writer,” King blends written narratives with oral traditions. I am interested in his specific brand of interfusional storytelling: King creates an intentionally liminal space and deconstructs assumptions about the way stories are told and perceived. The novel Green Grass, Running Water, short stories “One Good Story, That One” and “Coyote Goes West” are a few of the texts I use to explore King’s methods of replicating the spoken voice through written narrative. In my research, I am considering authority and a possible capital-T “Truth” in storytelling.
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If you’re a Mount English student and think you might be interested in an Honours degree, speak to your faculty advisor or the Department Chair. You can find some information about our Honours program on our Course Guide webpage.
MSVU English Department Blog 