Oscar-nominated screenwriter and accomplished American playwright Bruce Jay Friedman has a new collection of selected works coming out, and it’s being published by York University’s Leaping Lion Books, which is run by students in the Professional Writing Program. The launch of 3.1 Plays will take place Thursday, March 1, from noon to 3pm, at the […]
Haints: American Ghosts, Millennial Passions, and Contemporary Gothic Fictions, a new book by the chair of York’s Department of English, Art Redding, will launch next Wednesday. Published by the University of Alabama Press, Haints (see YFile, Sept. 14) examines the work of contemporary American authors who draw on the gothic tradition in their fiction, not […]
As part of the Studio Speaker Series, former York English professor, acclaimed writer, raconteur and provocateur Barry Callaghan will speak about his life as a literary journalist and read from newly published book Raise You Twenty: Essays and Encounters 1964 - 2011, Volume Three.. The reading will take place Wednesday, Sept. 21, from noon to 2pm, […]
Professor Emerita Barbara Godard, the Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian Literature at the time of her death just over a year ago, was one of Canada’s pre-eminent literary scholars who taught in the departments of English, French, social & political thought and women’s studies, and whose influence was felt far and wide. In commemoration of […]
Scrawled underneath or to one side of the photographs in a new book by artist Daniel Ehrenworth and York English Professor Priscila Uppal – Curse. Sleep. (That’s the Thing About Trouble) – are bits of an ongoing conversation. Things like: “Protect your heels,” printed in capitals under a photo of a backyard with a swing […]
The National Post’s Popcorn Panel March 18 on the film Red Riding Hood included Alison Halsall, adjunct professor of English literature at York University [Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies]. She has published articles on “South Park” and Harry Potter, and is working on a study of the Victorian legacy in graphic novels: “Red […]
The long list of finalists for the 2010 CBC Literary Awards has been announced, and York English and education Professor Rishma Dunlop and alumna Kilby Smith-McGregor (BA Hons. ’09) are among them. Dunlop’s Home, Roses, Hauntings and Smith-McGregor’s The Infinity Pool are both vying for top spot in the non-fiction category, along with 24 other […]
York English Professor Priscila Uppal is busily dog-earing one literary journal after another, scratching notes in margins, bending page corners. The smell of ink fills her Toronto home. She is a poet on a quest as the recently announced guest editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English anthology, sifting through thousands of poems published in 2010 […]
The 31st International Festival of Authors (IFOA) has started and several York professors and alumni are on the bill. York alumnus Jian Ghomeshi (right) (BA ’95) of CBC Radio will host and moderate “Celebrating 40 Years of the Juno Awards”, which will launch the new book Music from Far and Wide: Celebrating 40 Years of […]
The Victorian Studies Network at York (VSNY) will delve into New Directions in Victorian Research at its third annual symposium this Friday. Faculty and students from English, history, political science, science & technology, and the Scott Library will discuss their current scholarship during the symposium, which will take place Oct. 22, from 10am to 2:45pm, […]
Sports and poetry aren’t usually thought of as intertwining, but York English Professor Priscila Uppal is almost as much a sports fan as she is a poet. Given that she was the Canadian Athletes Now Fund (CANFund) poet-in-residence during the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and Paralympic Games, it’s not surprising that her poems have made their way […]
A new book by a York University professor argues that the act of copying, much maligned in our culture, is fundamentally necessary to our evolution. In Praise of Copying, which was officially launched last night in Toronto, explores different aspects of copying and looks at everything from quilting and cooking to gang warfare and martial […]
York English Professor Michael Helm is up for yet another literary prize for his novel Cities of Refuge. Last week he was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize; this week he’s been selected as one of five finalists for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize announced by the Writers’ Trust of Canada yesterday. Along with […]
Described as a landmark in the history of medieval, Renaissance and Reformation scholarship, York English Professor James Carley’s new book, John Leland: De uiris illustribus – On Famous Men, will launch at the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. Assisted by Caroline Brett, Carley has edited and translated Leland’s original work De uiris illustribus, […]
York English Professor Priscila Uppal (BA Hons. ’97, PhD ’04) has a thing for dreams, sometimes dreaming fragments of poems. She adores the odd dialogue that can only happen in that surreal state of being. So when artist Daniel Ehrenworth, a former fine arts cultural studies student at York, asked her to collaborate with him for his […]
Following the wars of the 20th century, how does cultural memory strengthen or undermine social and political cohesion in a time of global migrations? That question will be discussed at the upcoming round table, Memory Studies and the Identity Problem: A Cross Reading of European and Canadian Cultural Traditions. The round table will take place […]
Six York students have won five awards for their research on Asia or Asian diaspora this year from the York Centre for Asian Research (YCAR). Vanessa Lamb (right), a second-year doctoral candidate in geography, is the 2010 Vivienne Poy Asian Research Award recipient. Her research interests include the politics of the environment and development, feminist political ecology […]
York English Professor Emerita Barbara Godard, who died May 16, has received the 2009 Gabrielle Roy Prize (English Section) posthumously for her most recent book, Wider Boundaries of Daring: The Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women's Poetry, co-edited with poet Di Brandt. The award is given annually by the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures (ACQL) […]
Professor Emerita Barbara Godard, the Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian Literature, died Sunday, May 16, from complications related to her illness, at Toronto Western Hospital surrounded by family. Funeral arrangements for Friday are noted at the bottom of this page. Here, York humanities Professor Jody Berland, English Professor Julia Creet and PhD student Elena Basile […]
York English Professor Michael Helm likens writing novels to driving bumper to bumper at 120 kilometres an hour for half a day, and being emotionally and physically spent by the end. That’s on good days. “You have to concentrate so hard, but when you get out of the car, you’re just so exhausted. I always […]