UBC English Students' Association

Today, I did a little experiment. I went to my bookshelf where I keep the books that I have studied in my English classes over the years. I did a quick count of how many works of literature I have read so far for my English major. The number is at about thirty (not counting course packs or works that I accessed online). Then I went to count how many of them were works of fiction that featured a non-white protagonist. That number was five (sadly, that is including a world literature class). I then counted the number of books that featured an explicitly queer protagonist. That number was one.…

I kicked off this year with my first English class about theatre accompanied by a trip to Bard on the Beach. Naturally, I’m finding myself to be quite immersed in theatre at the moment. This makes sense since almost every English course I’ve taken has incorporated at least one play into its reading list. As English students, we are meant to look at the play as a text and analyze it in its written form. But isn’t it more complicated than that? When I sat in class reading a play, I raised my hand and asked the professor how the audience was meant to know what the names of the…

ROFL (Reviewing Our Favourite Literature) is a blog series intended to help you get to know the mysterious faces behind the UBC English Students’ Association. All the execs will share their favourite book or author and this week we are introducing Liam. He is the social coordinator and the official defender of Novels Too Long to Handle. He loves meeting people, learning about other cultures, and making snide comments about bad books. Come to him if you have any events-related ideas or dreams! Anna Karenina. There’s something mysterious about that little Russian social novel. There’s an intangible quality, a feeling in the air every time I open it. Tolstoy writes with…

Over the last six months or so, I’ve seriously started thinking about my future plans, academic and otherwise. After much internal debate I took a course in Creative Writing and it was honestly one of the best decisions I’ve made. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it helped me knock down a few fears… You see, I’ve been questioning my chosen degree and career options for the past year. I have been so focused on finishing my undergraduate studies properly and ticking off the various requirements that I utterly forgot that I was supposed to be enjoying this journey. So, in an attempt to somewhat dial-back my ambitions, I made a…

ROFL (Reviewing Our Favourite Literature) is a blog series intended to help you get to know the mysterious faces behind the UBC English Students’ Association. All the execs will share their favourite book or author and this week we are introducing Erin. She is a fourth-year undergraduate student pursuing a double major in English Literature and Art History. In addition to being the ESA’s Vice-President, Erin is also an assistant at the AMS Art Gallery and a self-proclaimed tea addict. Over the course of the past three years I’ve been introduced to many of the most important, or influential, books in the Western Hemisphere as a part of my education…

The ESA would like to welcome our new blogger Cassie Dominic! Cassie is an international student studying English and Classics with big dreams and an obsession with all things Jean Rhys and Shonda Rhimes.  Before I delve into an attempted explanation of why this novel is near to my heart, I should state that I have a special fascination for Jean Rhys; my admiration for her is on a level of its own and I am rarely able to adequately articulate just how or why – though I did attempt to in my IB Extended Essay. Wide Sargasso Sea tells the story of a woman named Antoinette Cosway (readers may…

ROFL (Reviewing Our Favourite Literature) is a blog series intended to help you get to know the mysterious faces behind the UBC English Students’ Association. Our team will share their favourite book or author and this week we are introducing one of our bloggers, Fatima.  “Have you ever asked yourself what works of art revolve around? Around love, sex, death, and the meaning of life; the struggle of man against his fate, against society; man’s relations with nature and with God. What else?”- Literary Murder. Favourites are complicated. I, for one, am ridiculously undecided. Therefore, my favourites lists are often convoluted and complicated. However, I believe favourites are born when they come to at…

By: Fatima Ahmed Summer reading as an English major can be a tough field to navigate. Personally, I feel completely unable to read for mere pleasure anymore. That can be a problem. Ironically, the love of books that actually got me to sign up for an English major is slowly waning because of it. Whereas I once used to dive into multiple books a week, nowadays I find it exhausting to read for even an hour a day. The excitement and the curiosity are diminishing. This, of course, scares me to death.

ROFL (Reviewing Our Favourite Literature) is a blog series intended to help you get to know the mysterious faces behind the UBC English Students’ Association. All the execs will share their favourite book or author and this week we are introducing Javier. Like Sir James Augustus Henry Murray—polyglot, philologer, lexicographer, and primary editor of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary—Javier Ibáñez is a human being. Additional accomplishments include serving as President of the English Students’ Association, being a fourth-year student in the English Honours program, and having been named Best Editor of The Garden Statuary, an honour that he just made up. Last summer I decided that I would remedy what…

ROFL (Reviewing Our Favourite Literature) is a blog series intended to help you get to know the mysterious faces behind the UBC English Students’ Association. All the execs will share their favourite book or author and this week we are introducing Sara. She is a second-year undergraduate student in the English Honours program and the social coordinator for the English Students’ Association. “Yeah, so things have fallen apart.” Of the many reasons to read Miriam Toews’s writing, her ability to create characters is the one that I usually quote as I try to cram The Flying Troutmans down the throats of anyone unfortunate enough to be in my vicinity. It is nearly impossible…