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Updated – Spaces are still available.  Apply now!

. .  . The . The .

In May 2018, ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ students will again be traveling to the ‘Holy Land’ and walking through these ancient sites, experiencing them not only as travelers but as young scholars.

The travel course poster touts 5000 years of religion and culture in 20 days.   If that sounds like a marathon, it is!

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Open to undergraduate and graduate students, the course explores religion and culture in the ‘Holy Land’ from the ancient period to the present day. Practically, that means that our traveling classroom will include exploring 14 archeological sites (including a Dig for a Day), walking each of the stations of the Cross along the Via Dolorosa, experiencing the beauty of Al Aqsa, moving through the cool stone interiors of a medieval fort in Akko, meeting contemporary activists such the Women of the Wall.

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This year’s course also brings together ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ students with international scholars and students through a partnership with and Tel Aviv University. Fortified by much falafel and ice cream, students experience the rhythms of life in the ‘Holy Land’ as a culturally and religiously diverse modern country: from each of the traditional four quarters of Jerusalem (Armenian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish), to lunch with the Druze, to an Orthodox home Shabbat in Jerusalem, floating in the Dead Sea, crossing into the West Bank and camel riding in the Judean desert, hearing the call to prayer from Mosques against the chiming of church bells and the loud beats of dance music in the streets.

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FASS is home to several travel courses with good reason; former FASS Dean John Osborn fostered these courses that will stand out as bright memories of their time at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´. For students in FASS, who have studied the texts, architecture, art, history, religion, literature, politics, and culture of what we call the “West”, the travel course experience brings their studies to life. It is one thing to study, for example, the diversity of Christianity from a textbook. It is another to see the infamous ladder that cannot be moved in the because of strict rules about each denomination’s rights in this venerated sacred space.

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Participants are characteristically diverse in their backgrounds and academic interests. The course has no prerequisites and attracts students from all programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels as well as auditors who are interested in traveling with an academic focus and experts in the area.

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Religious difference is part of the history of this land, and part of the appeal of the course for many students – they want to understand what they see in the news. While the focus of the course is not the conflict, participants inevitably come away with a richer, more personal and more nuanced understanding of the history this place and how that history drives contemporary debates.

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This year’s course is again being offered by Professor Deidre Butler, program, College of Humanities.  In the hopes of building a long-term sustainable travel course bi-annual program through university partnerships, Professor Mary Hale (Religious Studies, St-Mary’s University, Halifax) will be joining the course with several of her undergraduate and MA students.

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• Spaces are available for both students and auditors with online applications and a 150$ refundable deposit.
• More info about the course (including fees and deadlines)
• Course travel itinerary

Questions? Contact Deidre Butler.

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Snip, snip, go the scissors of the Fates.

Sometimes, my life lies in pieces around me. Consider my apartment: books everywhere, post-it notes with lists of readings, essays to edit; literal pieces (of literature) splay my education languorously across minimal square footage. There is a papered materiality to studying English that I cannot escape. My schoolwork surrounds me in fragments. Loose paper, all my pens four-fifths out of ink.

I begin to think that this is how life works: perhaps it is that everything of import has been sent through a shredder and then lies around you, waiting for reassembly.

Near the end of reading week, I was standing in the , staring at Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte – you know the painting I mean, the Pointillist one, with the woman on the right side who has a pet monkey. I’ve liked it since I’ve known it, which dates to my art history class in second year. I never thought I would see it in real life. I don’t know what it is about the Met, but it pulls together disparate things. There I am, in 19th century European Paintings, reliving art history. Then, downstairs, to Greek and Roman art, where I find stelae from the Temple of Artemis at Sardis and the gymnasium at Pergamon, places I visited in a study abroad class with the department in Summer 2015. And so the windy day on the Pergamon acropolis is before me.

How do you – suddenly and obliviously, and in a strange city no less – find yourself confronted by the missing pieces? In the case of the stelae, I mean that literally; they were pieces missing from the places I’d gone across the globe to see. Does it happen often that a poetic and cyclical pattern shapes your life? How do you ever find yourself in this position you’d never thought you’d be in, a position of ecstatic recognition and overwhelming privilege, as though the world literally revolves around you, for you?

When I write an essay, I have to wander around the space I occupy and find the scraps of paper on which I’ve written my thoughts – single words, exclamation points, long block quotations. I gather, compile, assess. This is the puzzle I’ve made for myself, whence the thesis emerges. I draw it out slowly, tease meaning, solve the mystery. Somehow, over the course of five years, my life has worked itself into something similarly cohesive, emergent, and true.

I blame my education, the thing that has taught me to un-puzzle the pieces and to puzzle them further; the thing that has inspired in me a desire to see. I’m not sure when I became willing to travel in spite of fear, when I put the desire to know more about the world over the desire to be comfortable and safe in my own home. Perhaps it’s been lying latent, but recently – in the rooms and halls of this university – the careful hands of brilliant teachers, the ideas and adventures bound up in pages and pages that have passed through my eyes/fingers/brain have drawn it out, teased the meaning out of me, begun to solve the endless mystery of my own life.

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On Friday the 30^th of September, the program welcomed alumni and their families back to ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ to celebrate the program’s 20^th anniversary. Faculty and former students caught up with each other at an informal pub-night and a gala dinner, and seven alumni turned the tables on their former professors by giving a series of TED-style talks on their current experience and expertise from the front of their old lecture-hall. A family picnic and an opportunity for current students to connect with alumni as mentors rounded out the weekend.

In the mid 1990s, a group of professors who were unhappy with the state of Canadian liberal arts education decided to found the College of the Humanities at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´. They followed the elite Great-Books model pioneered by American institutions such as the University of Chicago and St. John’s College, which emphasizes primary texts and small discussion groups.

After extensive discussion at all levels of the , the opened its doors in 1996, under the direction of Professor Peter Emberley, with a mandate to recruit some of the best students in Canada and to give them a deep and comprehensive liberal arts education. The elite model of the Bachelor of Humanities was soon followed by other limited-enrolment programs at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, such as the Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs.

“I cannot imagine a more gratifying environment to teach in. The students are really brilliant. They do the reading. They attend the lectures. They speak up in discussion group. What more could you want?” remarks Professor Erik Stephenson, who teaches the Core-Humanities Seminar in Ancient and Medieval philosophy.

Bachelor of Humanities students such as religion, philosophy, literature, history, and political theory, through a series of Core–Humanities Seminars, each taught by two professors, including small discussion groups. But they supplement this core with required courses in Greek and Roman literature, the early history of the Abrahamic religions, the history of art, the history of music, British and European literature, and modern science.

Unlike most liberal arts programs, the Bachelor of Humanities has a significant Eastern component, and its students study the great Hindu texts such as the Bhagavad-Gita and Chinese texts such as the Tao Te Ching with as much excitement as they study Plato’s Republic or Dante’s Divine Comedy. In all of their courses the focus is on reading , and students graduate with first-hand knowledge of Homer, Plato, Augustine, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Mary Shelley, Nietzsche, Hannah Arendt, Heidegger, and many others.

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At first Humanities students were restricted to only four concentrations, in the liberal arts, philosophy, literature, and history, but very soon the faculty realized their students had a much wider range of interests than they had anticipated.A curriculum change allowed students to pair their Humanities core with the full range of combined honours subjects at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´. of the Humanities program were added — Humanities and Biology, Humanities with a Study-Year Abroad, Journalism and Humanities — allowing students to use the program as an academic home-base while pursuing even wider interests.

“Our students are incredibly diverse,” says Professor Kimberly Stratton. “They are interested in everything. They all read the same core texts, but then they get interested in diverse subjects like graphic-novel versions of the Bible, the neglected writings of Early Modern female philosophers, or creating music for the surviving lyrics of Medieval troubadours.”

In the meantime, the College of the Humanities itself expanded beyond the original Bachelor of Humanities program, adding a B.A. in , a B.A. and M.A. in , and a minor in , which have proven to be very popular choices for the ‘combined’ portion of Bachelor of Humanities students’ degrees. With the broad variety of subjects that Humanities students now combine with the core studies of their degree, from English to Biology, Philosophy to Art History, Human Rights to Nutrition, the Bachelor of Humanities is easily the most interdisciplinary program at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´.

Students still benefit from the small community offered by the program. Seventy keen minds join their ranks each year, becoming close friends with each other and with their professors. Students support each other in their studies, and remain in touch for years after they graduate. “Some of my best friends are former students,” says Professor Gregory MacIsaac. “Erik Stephenson, for example, was one of the smartest students I ever taught, and he is now a dear friend, in addition to being one of my colleagues. It is such a joy for me to teach HUMS 2000 with him, and really to continue a philosophical conversation that we started over fifteen years ago.”

Humanities graduates have proven to be . A large percentage of them have gone on to further study at prestigious graduate schools such as Harvard, Oxford, the University of Chicago, Boston University, Notre Dame, the London School of economics, Sciences Po (Paris), McGill, the University of Toronto, and many others. Many have entered prestigious professional programs in fields such as law, medicine, or journalism. Alumni work in interesting and challenging careers in fields such as the arts, business, education, international development, cultural planning, high-tech, or public policy, and many others. In all cases graduates report that the skills they learned in Humanities—thoughtful reflection, clarity of written and oral expression, a comfort with diverse viewpoints—have been the foundation of their success.

The Bachelor of Humanities program has much to celebrate. Twenty years of reading, writing and thinking has produced a growing body of interesting and accomplished alumni. The celebration weekend was a wonderful opportunity for them to meet old friends, pick up old conversations, and start new ones. With their support, and a continuing commitment to the principles of Great Books education, the program can look forward to another twenty years of success.

Here are a few examples of the successful alumni of the Bachelor of Humanities program…

Amanda Hadi (B.Hum, 2010) is a Toronto-based editor, cultural communications person and social media technocrat who has made a career successfully bridging the gap between a 19th-century impresario and a 21st-century internet meme generator. She is currently a full-time Digital Engagement Producer for the Toronto International Film Festival, and spends her evenings running the editorial and digital media strategy of the renowned Canadian indie opera company Against the Grain Theatre. She has worked for the Canadian Opera Company, the City of Ottawa Public Art Program, several creative branding studios in Toronto, and, most recently, as the Social Media Officer for the Art Gallery of Ontario. She has been profiled in Flare Magazine, NOW Magazine, Metro News and 500px.

Amanda on the College:

Some of Amanda’s related work:

Saleema Nawaz graduated from the College of the Humanities in 2002.

Since then, she has published a short-story collection, , and a novel, , both of which have received critical acclaim: Mother Superior won the 2008 Writers’ Trust / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize; Bone and Bread won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction (2013) and was a finalist on CBC’s Canada Reads competition (2016).

Saleema discussing her experience with The College of the Humanities:

Jen Carswell graduated from the College of the Humanities in 2006. She went on to receive a master’s degree in journalism from the prestigious Centre de Formation des Journalistes in Paris four years later. After graduating, Jen worked as a production assistant at France 24, the rolling news channel in the French capital, before moving to the economics desk to become the morning business producer. She occupied this role for a year and a half. In 2012, Jen moved to London, England, where, within a few months, she took up a role at the British Broadcasting Corporation as a broadcast journalist for World Television. She has worked as a senior producer for both news and business news over the last three and a half years.

Jen on her experience in the College of the Humanities:

Technically, Francis Bakewell didn’t actually graduate the program, as he was accepted into medical school early, after his 3rd year of Hums. He was in the class of 2010.

Francis is currently in the 5th year of residency in emergency medicine at the University of Ottawa/The Ottawa Hospital. He’s also an MHSc. candidate in Bioethics at the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto.

Francis on his experience in the College of the Humanities:

Deepro Chowdhury graduated from the program in 2015 and is currently studying medicine at McMaster Medical School in Hamilton, Ontario. In the future he hopes to train as an oncologist.

Deepro on the College:

The post Reflecting on Twenty Years of The Bachelor of Humanities appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

Supported by the and the Edgar and Dorothy Davidson Fund in Religious Studies, attend a screening of SANTHARA, an award-winning documentary by , a Mumbai, India-based columnist, law professor, and film-maker. Hattangadi’s interest in the interface between secular law and religious ritual has resulted in a thought-provoking look at the sacred Jain end-of-life fasting ritual and its repercussions in Indian society. Lecture/discussion on October 14th by Prof. Hattangadi to follow the screening.

“SANTHARA”

(A Documentary Film by Shekhar Hattangadi)

SYNOPSIS:

What happens when a traditional religious practice violates the law? This is the central question which the documentary film Santhara addresses. It looks at the tensions that arise and the sparks that fly in such a situation.

Particularly in societies which remain largely faith-based despite their outer trappings of profane modernity, the interface of governance and religion is fraught with tensions caused by friction between religiously mandated rituals and practices and the essential legal and constitutional principles of a secular-democratic polity. In India, the incompatibility between law and religious orthodoxy has manifested in several forms, but most dramatically in the case of “religious suicides” — typically where a religious or sectarian tradition endorses the self-extinguishment of human life — as they occur in a legal system that treats suicide as a criminal offence.

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This documentary film explores the dimensions of the by focusing on the doctrinal-scriptural, ethical, medico-legal and sociological aspects of the controversial Jain practice of Santhara, in which a person gives up food and drink after taking a vow of abstinence, resulting in death by starvation. Based on interviews with, among others, the litigants and their representatives involved in a public-interest litigation in the Rajasthan High Court in 2015 calling for a ban on the practice, the film looks at how religion, law and constitutional secularism over Santhara. The Rajasthan HC judgment originally characterized it as a form of “suicide” and effectively criminalized and banned the practice, although the Supreme Court has stayed the ban for now.

All the same, the practice of Santhara remains a classic example of the law-religion conflict, and provides an ideal template for debating the question of reconciling individual freedom and personal liberty as well as a minority community’s religious rights on the one hand, and, on the other, the justification for state intervention in matters of religion. The film also depicts the last moments in the life of a Jain sadhvi (nun) who adopted this practice.

Read more Freedom to Die (PDF)

AWARDS & HONOURS:

• BEST DOCUMENTARY SCREENPLAY award at the Bangalore Short Film Festival in June 2015.
• SPECIAL JURY award at the Kolkata Short International Film Festival in August 2015.
• SPECIAL ACHIEVER-2015 award at the Woodpecker Film Festival (Delhi) in September 2015.
• BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM (JURY) award at the Indian Cine Film Festival (Mumbai) in September 2015.
• SPECIAL MENTION-JURY award at the Delhi Short International Film Festival in November 2015.
• SPECIAL MENTION-JURY award at the Noida Short International Film Festival in February 2016.
• CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE award at the Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival in April 2016.

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY & FILMOGRAPHY:

Shekhar Hattangadi is a Mumbai-based writer-journalist, lawyer-law professor, and film-maker.

He matriculated from St.Xavier’s High School, graduated in Science from St.Xavier’s College, and got his first job as a newspaper reporter with The Times of India. Then, as Editor-in-Chief of Mirror magazine, he became at 24 the youngest Editor of a nationally circulated publication.

Three years later, he did his first mid-career stint in academia: a dual master’s degree in International Politics and Journalism from Ohio University, and then a Kennedy Fellowship in Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F.Kennedy School of Government. His return to journalism as a Science Writer and Associate Editor for McGraw-Hill Publications in New York City was followed by his appointment as the same company’s South Asia Correspondent stationed in Mumbai.

Shekhar quit his regular job with McGraw-Hill after more than a decade, then spent time learning cinema at the Film & Television Institute of India, Pune, and began freelancing with several Indian and foreign publications, notably Little India published in USA. This freedom also gave him the opportunity to collaborate with the renowned director Kundan Shah in making Teen Behenein (Three Sisters). This two-hour-long Hindi feature film, which highlighted incidents of dowry-related deaths among unmarried girls, was India’s entry in several film festivals at home and abroad. The movie assignment done and dusted, Shekhar then mustered up the gumption to re-enter the daunting world of textbooks and examinations, and this time earned a law degree — topping Mumbai University’s final examination with three gold medals.

Since then, Shekhar has taught law, practised it pro bono, and also used its principles to analyze contemporary trends and events. He writes legal columns for newspapers and journals, and is now deploying his cinematic skills to make a series of documentary films on traditional religious practices which contravene modern secular law.

FILMOGRAPHY:

Teen Behenein—Hindi feature film (as Chief Associate Director)

Santhara—English/Hindi documentary film (as Writer-Cinematographer-Director-Editor) Review

The post SANTHARA – A Challenge to Indian Secularism appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

— Plato, Republic 536e

Associate Professor in the College of the Humanities, Gregory MacIsaac must have been aware of these words when he held a very non-traditional course on the fourth-century Greek philosopher, Plato.

Professor MacIsaac ventured outside the confines of the classroom by offering two of his undergraduate students, Joey Baker and Ekaterina Huybregts, course credit to meet for weekly discussion and debate on the final two of three Platonic dialogues, Theaetetus, Parmenides, and Sophist, that MacIsaac had been working on for the better part of a decade.

This learning model was non-traditional in many senses – Huybregts and Baker weren’t required to write exams or hand in papers, and were graded solely on the quality of their discussion; meetings were held once a week in MacIsaac’s office, instead of a classroom; while formally a series of directed studies courses, the three held a continuous meetings for a year and a half, working even through the summer. “I just happened upon this course set-up without really choosing it consciously,” said MacIsaac. “I did choose a discussion format, but once we agreed to make our meetings open-ended we found it possible to have an incredible depth of discussion, because we could take our talks in whichever direction we liked for as long as we liked. Sometimes we’d spend an hour and a half on a single paragraph. We could look at both the forest and the trees.” Early on their plan became to continue reading and discussing until they finished the two dialogues that MacIsaac had left to work on, however long that would take.

MacIsaac knew that Parmenides and Sophist were two of Plato’s most complex dialogues and quickly realized how much his own research would benefit from his students’ two additional perspectives.

“A Platonic dialogue is a philosophical conversation where different ideas are put into the mouths of different speakers,” explained MacIsaac. “So in order to see why particular ideas are expressed, you have to think about the dramatic setting, the characters, and minor details like jokes. Plato doesn’t come right out and tell you what perspective to adopt in reading the dialogues, conveying it instead through his dramatic details, and these require interpretation. Kat and Joey’s insights were invaluable, often leading me in directions I very likely would not have taken on my own.”

MacIsaac gave structure to their conversations by supplying an overarching interpretation of the dialogues. Against most scholars, MacIsaac contends that Plato is presenting his predecessors’ ideas in Theaetetus and Parmenides, in order to show how his own theories are superior, in Sophist. This dialogue, he thinks, is a sort of justification of all of Plato’s philosophy.

“We were continually testing whether my overall interpretation could make sense of each part of the argument. But along the way Plato discusses what knowledge is, how material objects participate in ideal forms, the character of true and false language, and the catalogue of fundamental metaphysical concepts,” said MacIsaac. “By figuring out these dialogues, Joey, Kat and I had to think about all of these topics. So we were also learning how to think about core philosophical ideas.”

In assisting MacIsaac with his reading of the dialogues, the students themselves were learning how to read a rhetorically sophisticated text. “If you have an entire dialogue, like Theaetetus, that tries to figure out what knowledge is, but ends in failure, you have to ask yourself why Plato would write something like that. Are the theories in it Plato’s own or someone else’s? These two possibilities yield completely different philosophical results, so it presents you with demanding interpretive as well as intellectual hurdles,” said MacIsaac.

Although the subject matter was challenging, the three were able to concoct an effective research and learning setting.

“It was very informal and comfortable. I sat on one couch while Joey and Kat sat facing me on the other. Normally, I would begin by giving a recap of what we discussed the previous week. Then we would read the next section of text together. If there were any tricky words or phrases, I would consult the Greek text. Finally, we would discuss what we read,” said MacIsaac.

Their discussion always focused on how the argument of the 200 pages of text worked. The group would often struggle to decipher Plato’s meanings in the paragraph they had most recently read, but more often than not, they were also figuring out how the text fit into Plato’s argument as a whole.

“Plato gives seven different definitions of a sophist in the dialogue Sophist,” explained MacIsaac. “It’s not enough to understand each definition on its own. You have to ask why there are seven of them and why they are given in that particular order. Do the later ones replace the earlier ones or are they complementary? How do the definitions which make up the first half of the dialogue relate to the abstract metaphysical investigation of Being and Non-Being in the second half of the dialogue?”

Everyone who has every urged us to say just how many beings there are and what they are like…appear to me to have been telling us a myth, as if we were children. One tells us that there are three beings, and that sometimes they’re somehow at war with each other, while at other times they become friendly, marry, give birth, and bring up their offspring. Another one says that there are two beings, wet and dry or hot and cold…And our Eleatic tribe…tells us their myth on the assumption that what they call ‘all things’ are just one.

— Plato, Sophist 242c-d

What do you signify when you say the word ‘Being’? Obviously you’ve known for a long time. We thought we did, but now we’re confused about it. So first teach it to us, so we won’t think we understand what you’re saying when just the contrary is the case.

— Plato, Sophist 244a

Considering these dialogues have been grappled with for two millennia, carrying on an exhaustive discussion of them was not a light task. The two students began reading Plato in September of 2014 and kept reading each week, with a few interruptions, until they finished Sophist and Parmenides, in the summer of 2016 – a week after they both had graduated.

“The directed studies experience gave me the opportunity to read and think in a much more focused way than in any other aspect of my degree,” reflected Baker. “Having the study structured by Professor MacIsaac’s own career-length research project provided an especially unique and advanced opportunity to become a better student of Plato in particular, without the years of work and responsibility involved in conceiving and executing such a project.”

“I doubt I could have learned nearly as much about philosophical method or any particular subject matter in a regular course, seminar or tutorial at the undergraduate level.”

Both the students and professor found this non-traditional learning and teaching undertaking to be very rewarding in a variety of capacities. “A big advantage of this way of working was that we were not pressed for time. The dialogues that we read were very complex and contained many obscure passages. Sometimes we spent an entire session on a single paragraph, or even on a few lines. Because the work was open-ended — early on we decided to keep on reading together as long as they were both in town — we could spend the time we needed to get to the nitty-gritty of things,” said MacIsaac.

MacIsaac asserts that they did just that. He believes there was not a single part of their readings that they did not come to fruitful conclusions about. Reading closely together without a timetable made for a truly creative collaboration of three minds.

“In a nutshell, we had the intellectual satisfaction that comes from really getting to the bottom of something,” said MacIsaac, “which of course requires spending as much time as it takes to figure each problem out.”

The students also found this format satisfying. “Participating in such a close directed study of Plato with Professor MacIsaac gave me insight into what research in academic philosophy could be like,” said Huybregts, “Being a part of a project of this size and at this level gave me skills and confidence that I will carry into all of my future projects, regardless of the subject matter.”

The thoroughness of their discussions has paid dividends. MacIsaac recorded every session, fifty hours of slow, methodical work through the dialogues, that he plans to hire a work-study student to transcribe. When added to his already completed efforts on the first of the three dialogues, this will allow him to produce a solid first draft of a book-length commentary on Theaetetus, Parmenides, and Sophist. The transcription won’t yet be a final text, and will have to be cut down quite a bit, but it will provide a thorough philosophical core for his interpretation of Plato’s argument.

Concurrently, he is also working on a final draft of a textbook on how to write a university paper, called The Humanities Writing Guide. This textbook will be based on his work in HUMS 1200 Humanities and Classical Civilization, which is a required writing course in the Bachelor of Humanities program.

With this course now in his rear view mirror, and Huybregts and Baker both pursuing post-undergraduate ventures, MacIsaac maintains that the format he and his two students used could be a more common undergraduate practice given the right circumstances. He believes the key ingredient is highly motivated and engaged students who are interested in pursuing a longer-term scholarly journey.

He has already signed up a few new students and a retired professor of English for a challenge a little further from his own research, Heidegger’s Being and Time, which they plan to begin reading this September.

*The image in the banner is a panoramic view of Professor MacIsaac’s office — the meeting place for MacIsaac, Baker, and Huybregts.

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Despite the fact that the English Department’s Creative Writing Concentration was only formally established in 2011, the English Department at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ has a longstanding tradition of encouraging students in their creative-writing efforts. For many years, ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s English Department has offered creative-writing workshops in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and stage-and-screen writing. Additionally, students have benefited from encounters with faculty members who went out of their way to mentor students and to provide them with unique opportunities for exposing their work within Ottawa’s vibrant literary scene.

Given the richness of the creative-writing curriculum, the numerous opportunities to form networks with fellow writers and literature enthusiasts, and the mentorship provided by a warm and engaged faculty, ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s English Department is the perfect environment for aspiring writers to flourish. The following publications by current students and alumni serve as a testament to ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s creative-writing accomplishments.

, for example, completed a Combined Honours degree in English and Film Studies; he followed up this undergraduate degree with a at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´.

Today he is an author, ghostwriter, and writing coach; as he put it, writing is his life on three different fronts. The works under his own name include the YA fiction trilogy , instructional writing manuals such as , and children’s picture books such as . Johns has also co-authored many additional works in his role as ghostwriter for various clients who, he explains, “have ideas to share with the world but who don’t necessarily have the skillset to get them written.” For those people who want to see their ideas bear fruit in their own words but need assistance in completing their writing projects, Johns offers his services as a writing coach. As he explains, “I work one-on-one with writers to help them identify their goals, develop plans for achieving those objectives, and then provide support and accountability as they work towards them. Writing a novel is a long, lonely process and having a coach in your corner to cheer you on, providing tips on the craft of writing, and monitoring progress can be enormously valuable. I find it endlessly rewarding to work with aspiring authors and help them improve their writing, reach their goals, and achieve the success they deserve.”

Johns developed the skills that he parlayed into a career during his studies at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´. He still recalls with appreciation the breadth of the literature courses he took as an undergraduate at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´. Indeed, Johns was so pleased with his undergraduate experience in the English program that he ignored the common wisdom that one ought to earn one’s degrees at different institutions and decided to remain at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ for his MA degree. Johns also speaks highly of the faculty members he encountered during his time at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´: “Instructors such as Professors Jodie Medd, Arnd Bohm, and Brian Johnson were all fantastic teachers and mentors throughout my academic career.” One of the most important beliefs that Johns says he took away from his studies at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ is that literature matters. “Art isn’t just a part of culture,” he elaborates, “but rather the very substance from which culture is formed. Literary scholars take their work very seriously, and that is as it should be. The respect and rigour with which art is studied in the English program at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ inspired me to follow my own artist pursuits and gave me confidence that a writing career is a worthy one.”

Like Johns, completed both his undergraduate and graduate degrees at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´. The former, completed between 2005 and 2009, was in English Literature; the latter, completed between 2010 and 2012, was in . Ladouceur has published a series of poetry chapbooks and a critically acclaimed poetry collection titled . Published by the Toronto publishing firm Coach House Books, the collection was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Ladouceur traces his decision to become a poet to his experience at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´. Recalling “The Poetry of Witness” course taught by Professor Brenda Vellino and “The Montreal Modernists” seminar taught by Professor Collett Tracey, he notes that “those classes seemed like the only places in the world where I could find human beings who had substantial respect for poetry as a medium.” Ladouceur notes further that Professor Tracey has had a meaningful impact on his life as a writer: “She taught me (and so many others) not to study literature from a distance, but to consider myself an aspiring member of the Canadian literary continuum. I learned from her that a poem might be best responded to not with an essay but with another poem.”

During his time at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, Ladouceur served as an editor of In/Words magazine and participated regularly in the English Literary Society’s Monday night writers’ circles. When the Monday night group grew too crowded, he personally hosted a second writers’ circle on Wednesday evenings. “I enjoyed all of it,” he recalls, “and many of my dearest friends come from that world.” The poetry he produced during this time was shortlisted twice for the English Department’s George Johnston Prize. But the most important lesson Ladouceur claims to have learned during his time at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ is the notion that writers are simply people who write. As he explains, “There’s no specific appearance or personality or temperament that writers have in common. The only thing they all do is write. So if you want to be one, you have to do that.”

Another ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ graduate who is passionate about poetry is . Clarke completed her with a Major in English between 2004 and 2008, and like Ladouceur, she considers Professor Brenda Vellino’s poetry courses as having played a key role in her development as a writer. As Clarke recalls, “I was taking a Bachelor of Humanities concurrently, and though I loved learning about Aristotle, Heidegger, and the Bhagavad Gita, I felt an electric pull towards the poetry taught in Professor Vellino’s poetry course. This poetry was modern, diverse and closely engaged with current social and political issues. Professor Vellino not only exposed me to new ideas, but also encouraged me to pursue my own particular interests within the scope of the class.” She felt similarly about Professor Dana Dragunoiu’s fourth-year seminar on Nabokov; she likes to joke that “Her inspiring teaching and breadth of knowledge actually fooled me into thinking for a while that I might also want to be an academic!” ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ her general experience as an English student at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, Clarke commented, “I was already in love with reading, writing and poetry in particular well before I went to ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, but my time there solidified and reshaped that love. I was introduced to so many texts that still resonate with me today and shape the subject matter of my poetry.” Since graduating from ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, Clarke has earned a Master’s in English and Creative Writing from the University of Toronto and has made her publishing debut with a collection of poems titled . Published by ECW Press, the collection provides (to quote a review from The National Post) “nuanced examinations of the relationships between people and animals, domesticity and the wild.” More recently, Clarke has spent time in Texas and Alabama doing research and finding inspiration for her second collection of poems.

Another alumnus of ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s English Department who has done a significant amount of travel for his creative-writing projects is . After graduating from ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ in 2006, Thom attended a clown school in Vancouver. His education in a wide range of creative media—literature, music, and the performing arts—provided him with a unique skillset that he has placed into the service of a career as a performance artist.

When studying English Literature at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, Thom enjoyed especially reading and learning about Victorian authors who also specialized in children’s writing, such as Oscar Wilde and Lewis Carroll, and more recent children’s writers such as Shel Silverstein. The whimsical nature of these writers’ works appealed to Thom and served as inspiration for the characters at the heart of Thom’s work as musician, storyteller and puppeteer. In addition to being the founder of Beat Creatures (furry drums for kids), Thom writes children’s books that are at once light-hearted and educational. His most recent endeavours include the heartwarming children’s book and a debut seven-song album titled Snowdragons. Thom speaks fondly of his time at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´; he recalls with affection the warmth and encouragement of faculty and peers he met not only in his courses, but also in poetry clubs and late-night music sessions hosted by ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s Music Department.

Like Thom, is no stranger to branching out creatively. Hanson-Finger completed his BA with a Combined Honours in English and Communications in 2009 and an MA in English a year later. One of his favourite aspects of his English degree is the wide range of critical and theoretical approaches he encountered in his courses. At the time, he admits, he was under the impression that most programs offered such a breadth of perspectives, but after speaking with students at other universities he discovered otherwise. He recalls being intellectually invigorated by the theory courses he took with Professors Brian Johnson and Rob Holton as well as the creative-writing workshops he took with Professor Armand Ruffo and ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s 2007 Writer-in-Residence Ivan Coyote. He remembers with special vividness an insight shared with the class by Coyote: paraphrasing an unknown author, Coyote told the class that “in the same manner as leaving your tap running to flush out rusty water, you should write until it runs clear.”

During his time at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, Hanson-Finger won the George Johnston Prize in 2009. This led to the inclusion of his prize-winning poem in Susan McMaster’s anthology Pith & Wry: Canadian Poetry, a collection of poetry that also featured the work of Margaret Atwood. Since completing his studies, Hanson-Finger has written two long essays for the online journal Puritan and a short story titled “Microcosm” for the online magazine Joyland. He also served as co-editor of the online literary magazine Dragnet. As a technical writer at Shopify, he considers the writing and editing skills he acquired at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ as key assets. He is also in the process of putting the final touches on a novel provisionally titled Death and the Intern. Scheduled to be released by Invisible Press in the spring of 2017, the novel takes place in Ottawa and is in equal parts hospital drama and hardboiled fiction.

Though only in her fourth year of study as an English major at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, is already an accomplished writer. Her novella Psychomachia has been shortlisted for the 2015 Ken Klonsky novella prize and is under contract with Quattro Books. Additionally, she has a short story forthcoming in The Antigonish Review and has published a poem in The Steel Chisel. Fejzić describes her time at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ enthusiastically: “I have grown, I have blossomed and I can smell the perfume of literary success,” she observes optimistically. A member of the newly established Creative Writing Concentration, Fejzić has taken all of the creative writing workshops offered by the English department and found them to be very instructive: “The workshops were a place for exploration, experimentation and personal development.” She has high praise for the workshops led by writers Nadia Bozak, Mark Frutkin and Rick Taylor especially, noting that each of these instructors created a unique classroom atmosphere and rich learning trajectory.

Like Ladouceur before her, Fejzić serves as co-editor of In/Words magazine, where she says she has learned a lot about publishing. Together with her co-editors Jenny Greenberg, Geoff Bates, and Drew Douglas, Fejzić has launched a number of chapbooks and will also be launching In/Words’ first-ever themed edition in collaboration with Lisa Rochefort, editor of Arc Poetry magazine. Fejzić takes a very practical approach to writing, explaining that for her writing has to be worked at on a daily basis and is not a process to be romanticized to the point of allowing for writer’s block to slow down one’s productivity. “Finding the right words is supposed to be a struggle, but this can be experienced in a positive light,” she explains, “I suppose that what I’m trying to say is that writing must become a habit before it can become art.”

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Professor continued his practice of selling “Coffee and Philosophy” at this year’s Great Glebe Garage sale, on the 28th of May.

Sitting on his front porch, he charged passersby $1 for a shot of espresso, and 50¢ for a supplement of . Customers could choose from a menu featuring topics such as, “Why you should not kill me and take all my stuff,” “I think therefore I am,” and “Language is the House of Being,” or they could choose a mystery box random thought from Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, or HeidEgger.

Sales were not brisk, but Prof. MacIsaac described them as “low volume, high impact.” Aside from his own students who happened by, MacIsaac reports having a series of good conversations with curious members of the community. He plans to continue his brand of caffeinated outreach, so plan to stop by Fifth Avenue during the next Great Glebe Garage Sale in 2017 for your shot of coffee and philosophy!

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Recent graduate of the , Leonor Vulpe Albari, has just received some very exciting news.

Albari, who graduated from ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ in 2014 and is now in the midst of wrapping up a Master’s of Law (LLM) at , has just learned that she has been accepted to a variety of prominent law schools all across the globe, including admittance to the .

Albari’s story is an inspirational example of what can be accomplished through the liberal arts. This spring, she generously took time out of her busy schedule to discuss life and learning in the Bachelor of Humanities program and what it takes to achieve academic excellence.

Why did you choose ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University’s Bachelor of Humanities program? 

When I was finishing high school, I really didn’t know what to do next.

I knew that I probably wanted to go into the general arts, rather than the maths and sciences, but I wasn’t even sure about that! It was my dad who first told me about the HUMS program. I looked into it, and I thought the courses were interesting. I was also very interested in doing a year abroad, which the HUMS program encourages students to do.

Since I wasn’t sure about what career I wanted, I decided to study something that I liked, and in a program where I could develop skills that would be useful to me later. The HUMS was perfect for me since I could study a mix of philosophy, history, religion, political science, ancient civilizations, and so on, and it was a small program where I could learn to write essays properly, read interesting texts and –well– just think about the world.

Could you describe your general experience of the HUMS program?

I think one of the best aspects of the HUMS program is that in every core class there are two professors and only about 50 students. The professors attend all your discussion groups so they are able to give students a lot of help and guidance. I took a political science class in first-year and there were a couple hundred students for one professor; in those situations, it’s simply not possible to get much help from a professor. Though I know some students do well in big classes, I personally enjoyed the smaller class sizes in HUMS. Most professors were also very willing to meet outside class time with students to discuss the readings, assignments, etc. I took advantage of that a lot, and before I would start writing an essay I would often discuss the outline with my professor and make sure I was on the right track.

As well, in first-year you spend the year slowly learning how to write essays. You start with one-page papers, then two-page papers, and by the end of the year you are finally writing six-page papers, but they are (hopefully!) excellent six-page papers. This first year taught me how to write essays and to organize my ideas, and that skill has been extremely useful for me since I left HUMS.

How did your personality click with the College of the Humanities?

In first-year, I really enjoyed my HUMS classes, but I didn’t attend many HUMS events and my social circle revolved mostly around the varsity water polo team I was playing on. It was not until the middle of second-year that I think I really ‘clicked’ with the program. I loved the texts we were studying, and I started to spend more time in the HUMS lounge and meet more people in the program. I also started attending HUMS events, and even non-HUMS events in Ottawa about philosophy or politics.

Could you discuss some of the “great books” that helped to form your personal perspectives and which may have lead you to study law?

Though of course there were some texts that I preferred over others, I think every book we read has somehow shaped my world view. I don’t think there was one text in particular that pushed me to do law. Rather, I learned a lot from the program as a whole, and after HUMS I wanted to apply that knowledge to the present, and in a more practical way—which I thought I could do with law. You read such a variety of texts in HUMS, from the Old Testament and Plato’s Republic, to Shelley’s Frankenstein and Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, that you end the program with a well-rounded view of the world.

One text that I would recommend and which has perhaps influenced me the most is the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is an ancient Mesopotamian epic poem about the king of Uruk, Gilgamesh. For me, Gilgamesh is a man who, through a series of events and realizations, comes to the understanding that there is an insurmountable difference between him and the gods: mortality. This text showed me that despite the fact that people and society have changed drastically throughout time, ultimately we are all human. Gilgamesh, a king from thousands of years B.C. must face the simple fact that he will die, just as we must today.

Did you participate in the mentorship program?

I participated in the mentorship program during my fourth year in HUMS. I needed help deciding what to do next; I had applied to some programs in Canada, including NIPSIA at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, and to programs in the Netherlands. The mentorship program coordinator, Barbara Garner, put me in touch with a graduate of  (NPSIA). Though I ended up choosing the Master’s of Law (LLM) at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, it was helpful to talk to my mentor about his experience at NPSIA. My mentor also gave me information about how a degree from abroad would be received in Canada.

You have some serious decision making and planning to do. Can you speculate on your next steps?

I have decided to go to law school and I am currently trying to decide between McGill and Oxford. At the moment, I’m switching back and forth between these two options, so I am not quite sure what I will do next year. What I do know is that I hope to become a lawyer, and to work in the area of international law.

I think it is in large part thanks to HUMS that I have the luxury of this choice. One of the reasons I did so well during my LLM in the Netherlands is that I have learned to write clearly and precisely, to read, and to think (to put it simply), which my years in HUMS taught me. As well, I know HUMS, and now the LLM, have prepared me well for whichever university I decide on.

Any parting words of wisdom?

I would like to thank my professors! Some of them met with me countless times to help me with my essays, or just to discuss questions I had, and I will always be grateful to them.

If you don’t know what you want to study in university, chose something you enjoy and that will give you tools you can use in many settings. Though the HUMS program did not give me a ‘predestined job’ after graduating, I think it was the best program I could have chosen because I enjoyed it and because I developed important skills, which I am now using in law. I learned to write a proper essay, think critically, analyze and summarize texts, and, more importantly, I learned about the world around me—its past and its present. I carry what I learned in the HUMS program with me, and I don’t think I would have as many opportunities today if I did not have the foundation that the HUMS program gave me.

Read Albari’s classmate Roy Sepgunta’s interview.  Much like Albari, Sepgunta was recently offered admission to an array of prestigious graduate school opportunities, including admittance to Harvard Law School.

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