Lecture: Liminality in Short Story Cycles by Contemporary Canadian Women Writers

Thursday, Jan. 14
4:00 pm, ESB 18 (Georgia Goodspeed Theatre)

Dr Lu is a visiting scholar from the School of Foreign Studies, North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power.

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All are welcome

Short story cycles—collections of short stories that are integrally linked by narration, setting, themes, or protagonists—are surprisingly common in literary work by Canadian women writers of the 1960s to the present. Linked story collections by writers such as Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Eden Robinson, Carol Shields, and Margaret Atwood also exhibit many aspects of liminality, or transgressions of boundaries. Because they exist on the threshold between story and novel, story cycles by these authors are recognizably liminal in form. However, they are also often liminal in terms of their approach to personal transitions and connections. This study addresses, in particular, the liminal status of the mostly female main characters in story cycles by Canadian women writers, characters who are on the border between youth and adulthood and who struggle with issues of artistry, dispossession, cultural alienation, and other manifestations of liminality.

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