Blog
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Adventures in Narnia, or Through the Wardrobe and Back Again
The first time Lucy Pevensie opened Professor Kirke’s wardrobe and entered Narnia, she was eight years old. The first time I went with her, I was nine. There is something especially magical about reading things as a child. You have fewer prejudices, little knowledge of things beyond face value and the all-absorbing wonder of innocence. I certainly experienced Narnia that way, drinking it in fully and unaware of hidden symbols and meanings. Edmund was a jerk, the White Witch was a terribly mean lady, and Narnian talking beavers put Canada to shame. I skipped happily through the series, oblivious to anything beneath the veneer of adventures in a magical land.…
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Canon Cagematch: VILLAINS
💀 The ESA executive team hopes everyone had a satisfactorily spine-tingling Halloween and thanks all the brave souls that made it to our HOWLween event! Fear not, however; there is one last treat in store before we must bid farewell to the spirit of Halloween. Gather around the cauldron as the ESA executive team put forth their most loathed villains (no, professors and essay deadlines do not count). 💀 Jia, President: For the collective “Monster Mash” blog post last year, I wrote about Victor Frankenstein. I was grappling with the task of finding out which villain I wanted to write with when it occurred to me that Frankenstein is still the dude for…
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‘Meet the Profs: They Came from Buchanan Tower’ Recap!
On October 11th, the ESA hosted our second event of the year, Meet the Profs: They Came from Buchanan Tower! We are very lucky in the Department of English to have such easy access to a wealth of intelligent, funny, and personable faculty. This year, we were grateful for the presence of: Dr. Siân Echard, Head of the English Department Dr. Alex Dick, Chair of the Majors Program Dr. Laura Moss Dr. Judith Paltin Dr. Robert Rouse Dr. Rick Gooding Dr. Ian Hill Dr. Barbara Dancygier Dr. Chris Lee Dr. Jessica de Villiers Thank you so much to all of you for joining the ESA at this special event. We…
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AGM Recap!
Welcome to the first blog post of the UBC English Students’ Association for the 2017-18 year! Thank you so much to all of our members—those new and old and not yet—for eating our ice cream cake and having a good time at the AGM. You invigorated the executive team (certainly myself) and we are so excited to serve you for this year and give you more opportunities to mingle, express yourself, and excel as a UBC English student. For those of you who weren’t there, have no fear! Here’s a recap: We began with human bingo while waiting for people (and ice cream cake) to arrive and of course I…
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Separating Art from Artist
Some of the most renowned authors have been horribly problematic people. Salinger was an adulterer and has been accused of pedophilia. Anne Perry murdered her mother. T.S. Eliot was a raging anti-Semite – as were Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway. So why is it that we study these author’s texts with such fervent admiration in our English classes, fawn over their prose in our book clubs, and read their works on our own time? The simple answer is that bad people sometimes create great art. Yet the problem with putting so much importance on works by problematic people is that the things they’ve done and said become forgotten…
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Erotic Literature; A Platform for Feminism
Recently I took to re-watching the TV show Mad Men, which takes place primarily in the ‘60’s in Manhattan. One aspect of the show that makes it so enjoyable – but often so difficult – to watch is the way it calls out the sexism of the time period by portraying strong female leads being held back by the strongly patriarchal environment. In one scene in the third episode of the first season, titled “Marriage of Figaro”, two female leads, Joan and Peggy, as well as two other female receptionist characters discuss D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. As Joan hands the book over to one of the secretaries she borrowed…
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A Novel In Verse: My Take on Eugene Onegin
As someone who is very interested in Russian History, culture, and literature, I love to explore different Russian texts in translation. One of my current favourites is the novel written in verse, Eugene Onegin. Written by Pushkin in 1825, this novel is short, witty, and engaging, with an unexpected twist at the end. It is an easy book to enjoy while juggling schoolwork and readings. Beware, spoilers ahead! Eugene Onegin follows the story of the young aristocrat, Eugene Onegin, as he slowly becomes bored with the debonair life he has been living and withdraws to the countryside. Once there, he quickly forms a friendship with his neighbour, Vladimir Lensky. Lensky…
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Tips for Getting Over Writer’s Block
As someone who loves to write creatively, I’ve encountered my fair share of writer’s block. And as someone who has had to write countless essays, I’ve also encountered the dreaded blank page, staring at me, taunting me with its blank-ness. So, I’m here to try and give you some of my tips for writer’s block, whether creative or academic. 1. Start small Trying to sit down and bang out a whole essay (or whole story/poem/whatever you are trying to write) is just unrealistic. As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your great piece of writing shouldn’t be either. If you feel like you’re stuck, try to start…
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Lyricism as Literature
A couple months ago Bob Dylan accepted a Nobel Prize for literature. This might strike some as odd, because of the stigma of grouping lyricism with literature. People may argue, if one lyricist’s work is considered literature, where do we draw the line? Can the work of Miley Cyrus or Drake be looped in with Bob Dylan and the like? Can Desiigner’s “Panda”, of which the chorus reads “Panda, Panda Panda, Panda, Panda, Panda, Panda, I got broads in Atlanta, Twistin’ dope, lean, and the Fanta” be considered literature? How do we make the distinction between music and literature? Yet on the other side of the debate we must consider…
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My Journey into the Perilous Realm: a Non-English Student Studies Fantasy Literature
As a non-English major, my English courses are often few and far between. This term, I am taking ENGL 227, with the vague course title of “Prose Fiction.” The course itself is centred around the theme of fantasy fiction, a genre I have had little interaction with other than Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, along with other “mainstream” fantasy literature. All other English courses I have taken have been pretty cut and dry: read some Shakespeare, a few poems, and finish off with a contemporary novel. This course, however, has turned my expectations for UBC English courses on its head. The professor, Dr. Daniel Justice, strives to allow…
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Should I Major in English? The Pros and the Cons
This post is for all you baby undeclared Thunderbirds and baby English majors. 2017 marks my final year at UBC and boy, it’s been a ride. A whirlwind of cramming readings, looking up MLA formats, and hitting word counts, to be exact. The first few English courses you’ll take in undergrad are amazing and so very different from high school, with brilliant academics as professors and a high degree of challenge. Upper-year courses are also great—you’re treated with more respect, and the wall between instructor and student crumbles away. At the end of second year, I applied for the Creative Writing program, the English Honours program, and the English Major—Emphasis Literature program.…
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Top 10 Places to Read on Campus
If you’re like me and enjoy reading above and beyond the requirements set by class, you have probably already scouted the campus for private and quiet places to enjoy a few chapters during the school day. So, without further ado, here is my definitive list of the best places to catch a few paragraphs before your next class begins. 10. In your lecture I do not condone reading during lectures, but during syllabus week it can be so hard to stay focused in class. I won’t blame you if you whip out your book and read a few lines while your professor reads the printed out syllabus sheet word for…
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How I Chose My Pen Name: On Racialized Names and the English Literary Canon
Hello, my name is Charmaine Anne Li. That is my full legal name on all my documents, and everyone calls me “Charmaine.” However, I sign off on all my literary pieces as “Li Charmaine Anne.” Truth is, I’ve always been a little sensitive as to how “Asian-sounding” my name is. “Li,” after all, is the most common surname in the world, and is almost iconically Chinese. Growing up, the books I read and the movies I saw with Asian names attached to them were almost always exclusively about “Asian issues.” This gave me the impression that Asian writers can only ever write about Asian Issues and nothing else: no medieval adventure…
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The Bend in the Road: Jobs and Adulting after your BA in English
In case you didn’t know, the Department of English hosted the Brownbag Lunchtime Career Series. You might have been at the popularly-attended first session, where the speaker was Amanda Lewis, who edited for Knopf/Random House. I’m sure most everyone reading this knows that being an editor at a major publishing house sounds like The Dream to an English student, so I’m sure you aren’t surprised that the room was full for Amanda Lewis’ talk. This November, the English department brought in Professor Lindsey Richardson, who works in the Department of Sociology at UBC. If you knew about the event but chose not to attend, it’s probably because you shared my thoughts…
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The Place of Women in Autobiography and Memoir
At the end of every school term, we get pestered with email after email requesting the same thing: please fill out your course evaluations! Usually, unless allotted time during lectures, I do not take the ten minutes required to fill out the online survey filled with boring “scale of one to ten” questions. I’m all for making a change – voting, for example, is very important to me – but I generally don’t find enough faults within a class to prioritize the evaluation of it over end-of-term essays or exam revision that occupies my mind and my time during the evaluation window. Be that as it may, there is one…
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University Haikus
As exams are fast approaching, I have taken the liberty to illustrate the slow, or sometimes fast, descent into panic that we have all experienced at some point in our lives through several haikus. Each haiku represents a month and shows the meticulous organization that occurs at the beginning of the year, and the slow shift to procrastination. Eventually—for they are unavoidable— finals arrive and there are hundreds of pages of readings to slog through and the empty promise that I will never again leave anything to the last minute. September The sun is shining On hopeful smiling faces My readings are done. October The last leaves of fall…
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On The Power of Words
As English students, we know how powerful words can be. They can transport us to different eras and locations. They can make fantasy seem to be reality. They can inspire us, teach us, and create worlds, emotions, and futures. They can even get us an A+ on our exam papers, if we use them well… or possibly land us a position of power. To quote the United States of America’s President-elect Trump, “I’m very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words!” Yet what are these words, these ‘best’ words, that Donald Trump has? Where do they transport us and what do they create? As many of us…
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Notes on Werewolf Survival
I always balk a little at the suggestion of playing Werewolf. This isn’t because I think it’s a bad game. It’s not. It’s a great group game that goes on for a set amount of time (I’m looking at you, Cards Against Humanity), it forces people to be a little creative, and it’s one of those games that encourages players to lynch their closest friends. It’s wonderful to see. If you’re not familiar with the game, here’s an overview (of the version we played). Every player is a townsperson. Lurking among the players are two werewolves—no one knows who they are, except the werewolves themselves. Every night, while the rest…
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The Sad Songs of J. Alfred Prufrock: A Playlist for Times of Rain and Stress
A curated playlist of sad songs for the probably-sexually-frustrated-nihilist in all of us. Bonus Track: Sad Eyes – Mini Dresses Image “1959 Cooley’s Gardens” via Flickr.
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Not Just Baristas: The Case for an Arts Degree
We all hear the typical comment at some point throughout our degrees, whether it be from a family member or a friend: “Why are you taking Arts? The only job you’ll ever get is that of a Barista.” And while the first 10 or 15 times someone dissed my major I was mildly to extremely offended, eventually I embraced what I’d decided to do with my life. I’ll be honest, throughout my first year, I found it extremely difficult to bond with people in my residence because of my degree. While most people on my floor were in Sciences or Engineering, I was one of the few people in the…
