In this Issue
50
Years
Ahead
SLSA
conference
Trauma
and
Beyond
Drew
Hayden
Taylor
to
Read
at
St.
Jerome's
Waterloo
English
in
the
International
Rankings
The 50th Anniversary has wrapped up, but there's plenty going on in the English department at Waterloo. We have a new facebook page and a new blog. There's a conference coming up, and a whole crew of new students starting programs and continuing their education. If you're inspired to support our continuing efforts to combine tradition, innovation, and experimentation, please consider making a donation to the department funds, which we use for scholarships, prizes, and projects.
If you have comments or ideas for future issues, please write the Editor, Katherine Acheson.
50
Years
Ahead
-
Shelley
Hulan
If you attended any of our 50th events, then you were also part of a broader community engagement that included re-establishing ties with retired faculty and inviting the Kitchener-Waterloo community at large to come see what English Faculty and students are doing now. Around 40 people braved glacial temperatures to hear former and current students Marcy Italiano, Carrie-Anne Snyder, Christine Fischer-Guy, and Emily Fraser-Jeffries read their fiction and poetry at February’s Creative Writers’ Evening. The Cabs of Curiosity event at the Department’s downtown Kitchener Critical Media Lab attracted more than 125 people in early April to view undergraduate and graduate student arcade projects, which are now on permanent display at THEMUSEUM. The debate between Christopher Hitchens (via video-link) and Barry Brummett closed the year of events on an especially high note, filling the Hagey Hall Theatre of the Humanities and generating much discussion during the reception that followed about the debate resolution, “Religion has been a positive force in culture.”
The 50th is past, but not our commitment to keeping up to date with you and you up-to-date with us. We've started a new department blog, managed by Linda Warley. Please check it out and stay in touch.
SLSA
conference
hosted
by
UW
English
-
Marcel
O'Gorman
Trauma and Beyond - Pamela Mansutti, PhD candidate
Identifying thematic and stylistic differences in novels such as Don DeLillo’s Falling Man(2007), Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), Lynne Sharon Schwartz The Writing on the Wall (2005) and Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children (2007), Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs (2009) and John Updike’s Terrorist(2006), I distinguish between novels that represent directly the jolts of trauma in the wake of the attacks and novels that, while still holding the events as an underlying operative force in the narrative, do not represent them and either anticipate their occurrence or imagine their long-term aftermath.
My
analysis
highlights
ethical
forms
of
relationship
between
authors,
characters
and
readers
that
pursue
integration
and
empathy
inside
the
narrative.
Additionally,
it
investigates
the
socio-cultural
critique
of
post-9/11
America
by
looking
at
how
the
genre
of
the
novel
has
expressed
identity
and
imagined
alterity
after
the
attacks,
and
how
it
has
used
them
to
rearticulate
long-submerged
fears
and/or
introduce
new
concerns
and
hopes
in
American
culture.
Drew
Hayden
Taylor
to
Read
at
St.
Jerome's
-
Tristanne
Connolly
Join us September 21 at 4:30 in Siegfried Hall -- the readings are free, and all are welcome! Please spread the word and encourage others to attend.
For more information, please visit us online at the Reading Series website and our blog.
The Reading Series acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Art, which last year invested $40.3 million in the arts in Ontario.
Waterloo
English
in
the
International
Rankings
-
Fraser
Easton
This is the first year that QS has broken out university rankings by humanities disciplines. As a whole, uWaterloo is ranked by QS as the 160th best university in the world. But along with the overall good ranking of the University of Waterloo, the impressive showing of UW English is great vote of confidence in the Department and a significant reputational accomplishment.
Without placing undue emphasis on one assessment by a single agency, being rated one of the top English departments in the world has special significance for our Department:
1. It provides additional evidence for what our students and graduates have long known: that Waterloo English is a leader in literary and rhetorical education and confers degrees to be proud of.
2. As an assessment by an international agency based in the UK, it sheds light on the tremendous success of our recruitment of international students into the MA and PhD degrees in English. In recent years, students from Russia, France, Italy, the U.S., South Korea, Iran, Iraq, Romania, Trinidad and Tobago, and Brazil, among other countries, have entered and thrived in our graduate programs.
3. It reminds us that the reputation of uWaterloo depends as much on the research and scholastic achievements of the humanities and social sciences as it does on the achievements of traditionally scientific and technological disciplines.
4. And, finally, these rankings challenge us not only to live up to our past successes, but to continue to work hard at our goal of being a leading Department of English in Canada in undergraduate as well as graduate education and research.
Our heartfelt thanks to all the students, faculty, alumni and supporters whose commitment has contributed to this important achievement.