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✱ TGS Issue 7.1 Launch Party! ✱
We’re back!!!! The English Students’ Association and The Garden Statuary, UBC’s undergraduate literary journal, are excited to welcome all of you to the launch of Issue 7.1! Please join us on Thursday, November 30 from 5-7 pm for: 🍂 Free food!! 🍂 Readings from published undergraduates!! 🍂 Mingling with editors, authors, and artists! 🍂 A chance to purchase or win past print editions! This event is open to everyone from the UBC community and beyond. Please feel free to invite your friends, family, or even complete strangers! 🍂 TERRITORIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 🍂 The Garden Statuary recognizes that this event is taking place on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the…
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Submit to The Garden Statuary!
The Garden Statuary (TGS) is the English department’s student-run multimedia journal. TGS publishes a wide range of student work, including academic essays, fiction, creative-non fiction, scripts, poetry, visual artwork, and more. If you’ve done some particularly stellar creative or academic — or perhaps creative academic? — work, TGS wants you! Successful submissions will be published online and in the beautiful end-of-year print edition. So what are you waiting for? Send us something today! The submission deadline for Issue 7.1 is October 20th! Find out how to submit here!
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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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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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The Third Annual Colloquium
WHEN: 12-4PM, January 21st, 2017 WHERE: Dodson Room, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, UBC The English Students’ Association is excited to present the third annual Colloquium! This conference features presentations from English undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty members. The Colloquium offers the opportunity to share your work and discuss ideas with other students and faculty members in the English Department. The Colloquium will be held on Saturday, January 21, 2017. This event is free and will included a catered lunch! Read on for presenter abstracts and RSVP to the Facebook event to receive all updates and reserve your spot through Eventbrite! We can’t wait to see you there! The…
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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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A Comment on How Lists Shape the Mind
I love lists. Lists are important; they tell you exactly what you need to get done, and then maybe you’ll pat yourself on the back after checking off a task. They help you out when you’re grocery shopping or when you’re idly skimming through your newsfeed. Tables of contents, glossaries, and indexes wouldn’t exist without them. And like everything else, lists can be used to promote, deliberately or not, certain ideas and attitudes. Growing up loving books, I’ve always wanted to finish a “100 books to read before you die” list (still pending), for a variety of reasons that range from fueling my consumption for words, to wanting to be…
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“Outlander” Part 1: A Second Honeymoon
As a student of English Literature, one of the biggest challenges I face is the ability to read for pleasure. I suppose after almost 5 years of dissecting novels for themes, motifs, and symbolism, it’s hard to think of a book as just a book and not a topic for a term paper. For this very reason, I have decided to start this blog, in the hopes that it will keep me motivated to continue reading for pleasure. After hearing raving reviews about the novel and TV show, I have decided to read and write chapter summaries of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander. Chapter 1 – A New Beginning The novel immediately…
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Interview with Laura Bitterlich – Author of Shapeshifters Part 2
I sat down to have an interview with Shapeshifters author Laura Bitterlich, who is an accomplished writer in Germany. At just nineteen, she is a published author and an intelligent thinker of various social issues including gender and sexuality. Her writing is mature, well-thought out and gripping. Focusing her energies on the genre of fantasy, she pays keen attention to her readership and uses her big imagination to transport us all to the universe of Shapeshifters. In this part of the interview, she relays her in-depth views about her ideas on relevant social issues. You use your writing to address social issues as well. An example would be Leara serving…
