LitMod Turns 10!
LitMod faculty, staff, students, and alumni gathered at Heaslip House on Friday, March 22, 2019, to celebrate the first ten years of our program. The full-day event, illuminating the scholarly, experiential, and creative components of our unique MA, began with opening remarks by Liz Podnieks, current LitMod Director; Andrew O鈥橫alley, Chair, Department of English; and Samantha Wehbi, Associate Dean, Student Affairs--Yeates School of Graduate Studies. Sara Saljoughi (pictured here), one of our impressive grads from the first cohort, and now Assistant Professor in the Department of English, University of Toronto Scarborough, and the Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto, delivered the scholarly keynote address on the topic of 鈥淭he Aesthetics of Future Collectivities.鈥�
Sara鈥檚 talk was followed by a panel of LitMod students, past and present, who read the following scholarly papers: Nisha Eswaran (PhD candidate, Department of English and Cultural Studies McMaster University), 鈥淩e-imagining Utopia: Spirituality and Friendship in the Age of Indian Nationalism鈥�; Natalja Chestopalova (PhD candidate, Department of Communication and Culture, York and Ryerson Universities), 鈥淣ew Ways of Seeing, New Ways of Archiving Indigenous Histories and Displaced Narratives鈥�; and Sam Boer (MA candidate, Literatures of Modernity), 鈥溾�榃itness my Sad Little Nightly Ritual鈥�: Suburban Isolation in Nick Drnaso鈥檚 Sabrina.鈥�
After a catered lunch, a panel on Practicum Success Stories highlighted alumni Gaeby Abrahams (Writers Union of Canada); Stephen Carlick (Exclaim!); Kailey Havelock (CookeMcDermid); and Brianna Cooze (Toronto International Festival of Authors). Our final panel, on Creative Writing, was dedicated to the launch of the special issue of White Wall Review, the English Department鈥檚 literary journal. On hand were contributors Natalja Chestopalova, Chloe Coome, Nisha Eswaran, Alec Follett, Jennifer Fraser, Joe Howell, Rebecca Martin, Aesha Nananso, Robert Pasquini, Alexandra Pospisil, Sara Saljoughi, Tali Voron, and Jason Wang, reading from their non-fiction prose pieces, written in response to the prompt, 鈥淲hat Does Modernity Mean to You?鈥� The Showcase concluded with the creative keynote address, 鈥淕ene Rations--Exploring the History of My M茅tis Family with Poetry and Photos,鈥� by Katherena Vermette, Governor-General鈥檚 Award winning author, anthologist, and documentary filmmaker.
A reception with wine, hors d鈥檕euvres, and cup cakes complemented the intellectual, imaginative, and social sustenance of this most festive and collegial day. Happy Birthday LitMod鈥攈ere鈥檚 to the next ten years!
The Showcase was generously supported with grants provided by the Department of English, the Office of the Dean of Arts, and the Yeates School of Graduate Studies. Thank you to all of the speakers, alumni, and students for helping us to celebrate this ten-year milestone in the history of the Literatures of Modernity MA program.