Grad Student Profile: Jess Huber

I am a fourth year doctoral candidate completing research in the fields of feminist, queer and literary theory. My SSHRC funded dissertation entitled Bleeding from Your Fingers: Corporeal Ethics, Embodied Theory and Short Fiction by Canadian Women in English explores female-identified bodies in two collections of short stories. I have presented at conferences both here and away including Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences and a forthcoming presentation at Virginia Tech in April 2012. I have also published internationally in RIAS: Review of American InternationalStudies.

In addition to writing my dissertation, I am a Per-Course Instructor at MUN, manage St. John’s first queer and allies choir and volunteer with a free learn to run group for junior high aged girls. I am also interested in the ways in which knowledge is produced corporeally and own and operate the website Corporeal Knowledge.

What I'm Reading and Listening to: Heather Martin

Heather is a Masters student in the second semester of her degree. Originally from Summerside, PEI, she did her undergraduate degree at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. 

One of the best things about living in St. John's (since moving here in September) is the amazing local literature and music that I've discovered.

Although I'm quite busy with my MA course work, I have recently started reading Patrick Warner's Double Talk on the side. Published in 2011, the novel is set in St. John's and focuses on the complexities of a romantic relationship between Violet Budd and Brian Power. It's been marketed as a "love story in reverse" but the resemblance to How I Met Your Mother stops there. While the story shifts between the present and the past over a fourteen-year period, Warner portrays the perspectives of both characters and highlights the differences of interpretation that can be found in most romantic situations. I think Warner does an especially good job of narrating Violet's experiences in third-person.

I've had the chance to meet Mr. Warner a few times because he works in the Special Collections at the MUN Library, and he is a very personable guy. Although I haven't finished it yet, I'm really enjoying this novel and looking forward to reading more from him.

I have been enjoying the music of St. John's natives Hey Rosetta! for a few years now, but had my first opportunity to see them play live here in December. Since that performance, I have become even more of a crazy fan girl.

Through my appreciation for the group, I have also been introduced to The Head and the Heart, an indie folk-pop band from Seattle, WA. Although the groups are from the opposite coasts of North America, they share a musical connection, as both of them have toured with British rockers Gomez this past year. I can't wait to come across more local books and bands during my time here and find more gems.

Five Questions: Dr. Jennifer Lokash

Into the Deep will be featuring brief profiles of faculty members in which they answer five questions about their own grad school experiences.

A recently tenured associate professor, Jennifer Lokash has been with Memorial’s English Department since Fall 2004. Jennifer’s specialty is British romantic literature, with a special emphasis on medicine, literature and the environment, and the gothic’s challenge to traditionalist conceptions of humanism and rationality. 

Jennifer did her graduate work at McGill University in Montreal.

She will next be teaching a graduate course in the winter term of 2013 with “Posthumanism and the Gothic: Animals, Monsters and Machines.”

1. What was your best grad school experience?

Defending my dissertation.

2. What was your worst grad school experience?

Defending my dissertation.

3. What was the place outside your home/apartment where you spent the most time?

Putting my advanced procrastination skills to good use, I spent a lot of time at the movie theatre, the yoga studio, and the cafe around the corner from my apartment. But I probably logged more hours at Thomson House (McGill's grad society building/bar), than anywhere else in Montreal.

4. What text/book did you do in grad school that you never, ever want to encounter again?

It was during undergrad rather than grad school, but there's a clear double winner: Roland Barthes's S/Z and Henry James's story "The Liar." For an assignment in my Honours Literary Criticism course, we had to use the structuralist method of the former to do a reading of the latter. I went insane and wrote 60 pages. I think the assignment was worth about 10% of my final grade.

5. What was your grad school comfort food?

I ate a fair amount of raw cookie dough, frequently with a red wine or whisky chaser. 

What I'm Reading - Dave Reynolds

Cheers, fellow bookworms!











I find I can't just read one thing at a time. So, while I've been reading George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, I've also read Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, as well as The Rum Diary.

As for A Game of Thrones, I'm sure I needn't say much because it seems like everyone is reading it these days, thanks to the awesome HBO series.

Winter is coming. (Sean Bean as Ned Stark in HBO's Game of Thrones)

Thompson's works can use some hype, however. The Rum Diary is one of his earliest works and, in contrast to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the narrative is very structured and it proceeds at a leisurely pace. Fear and Loathing comes later on, of course, and it's some of the most coherent and insightful drug-induced ramblings I've had the pleasure of reading. I gladly give these three works high praise and would recommend them to any reader in a heartbeat.

Grad Student Profile: Samuel Martin

I am in the fourth year of my Ph.D. program at MUN and my SSHRC funded research is into explorations of the post-secular turn in contemporary arts, thought, and culture. During my time at MUN I have had the opportunity to present conference papers on poetry, fiction, and artwork related to this research at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Brussels, Belgium), the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada), and the University of Melbourne (Melbourne, Australia). My dissertation is focused on “sacramental readings” of contemporary Atlantic Canadian fiction and I will be presenting a chapter from my thesis on novelist David Adams Richards at the 19^th Atlantic Canada Studies Conference, “Contested Regional Identities” (4-6 May 2012) at the University of New Brunswick in St. John.

Alongside my academic work I also write creatively. My collection of linked stories, This Ramshackle Tabernacle (Breakwater 2010), was long-listed for the ReLit Award and short-listed for the BMO Winterset Award. My short stories, creative nonfiction, and book reviews have appeared in Image, Riddle Fence, Canadian Literature, Relief, Cuffer Anthology III, The Telegram, Comment, the Christian Courier, and QWERTY. And my first novel, A Blessed Snarl, is forthcoming from Breakwater Books in 2012.

I have also recently been awarded a Writer Residency through the Fogo Island Arts Corporation to work on a novel-in-progress. And I run the arts and literary blog Dark Art Cafe.

Welcome!

Welcome to Into the Deep, the new blog for the graduate English program at Memorial University of Newfoundland. We don’t have much here yet, but over the next few weeks and months we’ll be posting about student life, classes, academia, and life in St. John’s and Newfoundland.

And we want your suggestions! Friend us on Facebook or leave your thoughts in the comments section as we go. We’ll keep our readers apprised of upcoming events on and off campus, and we’ll post content from grad students present and past. If you would like to contribute, or if you would like to suggest useful links or other ideas for posts, contact us at mungradblog@gmail.com.

That’s all for now, but there will be more coming. See you all soon!