Program

9:30     WELCOME AND OPENING REMARKS
             Dr. Yin Liu, Head, Department of English
9:35 - 10:45    PANEL 1: The Haunts of Fools, Footballers, and Ghosts
                        Chair: Dr. Jenna Hunnef, Assistant Professor, Department of English

 

“I met a fool in the forest”: Touchstone and Jaques as Heralds of Realism in Shakespeare’s As You Like It
Elisabeth Bauman
Touchstone and Jaques, the two fools in Shakespeare’s play As You Like It, critique the idealized green world and challenge various perceptions of reality. They comment on their own nature and role within the play. In this metatheatrical mode, the fools reveal the illusion behind the green world and theatre itself, reintroducing reality back into the fantastical world.

 

Ghostly Metaphors, Lively Imaginations: The Braided Narrative and Re-membering Futurity in Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians
Arin Bear
Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians (2020) uses a braided narrative of multiple characters, the community, and connection between them to re-member futurity for Indigenous persons who have been denied existence in time and space outside of residential schools. In the braided narrative, Good establishes fiction and imagination as a counter to ghostly metaphors associated with Indigenous experience of residential schools.

 

“Would you be homesick for it?”: The Haunted House as Home in Shirley Jackson’s The
Haunting of Hill House
Ollie Risling
Scholars have argued that Shirley Jackson’s Hill House is a representation of a mother figure for the protagonist, Eleanor Vance, but I argue that the house becomes a site of identification for her as well. This paper analyzes the unstable nature of the concept of home and the implications of finding home in a haunted house.

 

Repression and Oppression: Female Sexual Desire and Power in Lyle and Nickerson’s Yellowjackets
Jessie Warkentine
Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson’s Yellowjackets (2021) follows a girl’s soccer team stranded in the wilderness after their plane crashes on their way to Nationals. In this paper, I argue that the TV series showcases the violent rejection of traditional patriarchal society in favour of the matriarchal through the character journeys of Jackie and Travis.
10:45-11:10   REFRESHMENT BREAK (RIVER ROOM)
11:10-12:10    PANEL 2: Postcolonial Identities
                        Chair: Dr. Kylee-Ann Hingston, Assistant Professor, Department of English

 

“The beginningest of beginnings”: Historical and Spatial Approaches to Diasporic Identity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth
Maheen Abbas
Complete with a set of tension-ridden family dynamics and an overzealous narrator, Zadie Smith’s novel White Teeth (2000) depicts a multi-voiced England inhabited by overlapping trails of migration, identities, and bodies. I argue that the plurality of the novel’s setting and narrative structure largely reflects the complexity of migrant selfhood and identity in postcolonial contexts.

 

Strangers in a Strange land: The Dynamics of Identity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth
Ben Jorgenson
In conversation with the work of theorist Avtar Brah, this presentation will examine the formation of cultural identity in Zadie Smith’s novel White Teeth. By considering characters from each generation individually, I argue that Smith’s characters form their cultural identities in opposition to their surroundings, even while the formation process retains common traits in each generation.

 

Not Always the ‘Other’: The Mythological Origins of the Blurred Human and Animal in Marian Engel’s Bear
Becca Andelyn
Throughout mythological literary history, the human has been meshed with the animal. This challenges our common modern perception of humanity, wherein we distance ourselves from animals, on the basis that we are their moral superiors—something Bear refuses to do. Engel’s novel alludes to these myths, challenging the notion of animals as our ‘other,’ joining civilization with savagery.
12:10    CLOSING REMARKS
             Dr. Laura Wright, Acting Associate Dean of Student Affairs, College of Arts and Science

Panelists

 

Maheen Abbas

Maheen is a graduating English Honours student with a minor in Psychology. Her literary interests include postcolonial and diaspora literatures. She is also the communications leader of the English Undergraduate Student Society.

Becca Andelyn

Becca Andelyn (she/they) is in her fourth year of a BA Honours Degree in English, with a focus in proto-feminist narratives of medieval mythologies. Becca currently serves as the President of the English Undergraduate Society, works as a Legal Assistant, and intends to continue her literary studies next year in grad school. 

Elisabeth Bauman

English major, Classical Medieval, and Renaissance Studies minor. She plans to pursue further studies in English literature, teaching, or conflict resolution studies. She enjoys reading, baking, and playing piano.

Arin Bear

Arin is from Treaty 6 territory and nearing the end of Bachelor of Arts Honours degree in English with a minor in Psychology, and is planning to continue studying through a Master’s degree. They have taken an interest in Indigenous, women’s, and queer issues in literature.

Ben Jorgenson

Ben will complete his B.A. Honours in English this spring. His literary interests are diverse, but primarily consist of modern and postmodern literature.

Ollie Risling

Ollie is completing a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree in English with a minor in Women's and Gender studies. They are interested in horror fiction and creative writing, and hope to write a book someday.

Jessie Warkentine

Jessie is in her final year of her BA Honours in English. She has a special interest in Queer and Sexualities studies, as well as Gothic fiction, and is intending to further study these topics with her Master's research this following fall.