Graduate Research

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A critical introduction to Ashes Come With, a novel and Ashes Come With, or Walter Benjamin is Stuck in a Tuna Can, a novel
(University of New Brunswick, 2023-12) Vernon, Thomas R.; Sinclair, Sue; Crawford, Lucas
This research-based dissertation comprises a novel, Ashes Come With, and its critical introduction. The novel is inspired by the exile of German-Jewish literary philosopher Walter Benjamin (1933-1940) and that of his imagined queer, HIV+ great-great-grandson, Pear, in the 2000s. The critical introduction shares some of my lived experiences informing the novel and its composition, and it demonstrates how the meanings applied to my life and body for purposes of power (the biopolitical) fuel the novel’s composition and narrative. One principal question motivates this work: How might biopolitical forces, so significant in my lived experience, activate characterological decisions and narrative advancement? The novel activates the connections between the circumstances of Benjamin’s actual exile (displacement, poverty, antisemitism) and key Benjaminian insights vital to contemporary critical discourse (material dialectics, constellation, montage). In spite of Benjamin’s relatively well-documented life, the novel finds its story within the gaps of the historical record. Walter’s 1930s fight to survive, do his work, and get that work out of France is embedded in and informs Pear’s struggle to get out of the U.S. eighty years later. As sentient ash in the 2000s, Walter’s ontological cohesion depends upon the care and attention he brings to Pear. Similarly, Pear “reaches out” to Walter in his imagination as he faces bewildering obstacles. The existential stakes faced by the characters in one storyline ignite story advancement in the other despite temporal divides. The critical introduction challenges its readers to queer the biopolitical constitutive ingredients of failure as it operates in the characters’ lives. Throughout the dissertation, these “ingredients” become sites of story generation and critique. Research for the novel included on-site research visits, close study of historical testimony, ephemera, and Benjamin’s oeuvre while attending to its omissions, such as the immediate circumstances from which several Benjamininan principles emerge. The dissertation demonstrates that the deployment of the biopolitical rooted in characterological, historical, and geo-political collapses of intention opens opportunities for creative or critical engagement.
A procession of eyes: seven stories and a novella
(University of New Brunswick, 2012) Jenkin, Kit; Jarman, Mark Anthony
A Procession of Eyes: Seven Stories and a Novella is a series of interrelated stories that deal with the relationship between humans and their virtual technologies. Today, virtual technologies are ubiquitous. Everyday reality now has a virtual component. These stories explore this dichotomous relationship between virtuality and reality, often showing one collapsing into the other. They explore the emotional investments we give to our technologies, their effect on identity, and what it means to be an embodied human with a virtual alter-reality. Virtual technology, for the characters in these stories, is, at once, a safe place and oppressive force which must be escaped. These characters are depressed, self-deluded, stuck in certain areas of life that do not show any way out. They turn to the wonders of technology as a haven from the mental stresses of modern life, but turn away from technology in order to assert their sense of identity.
A real boy: masculinity, Northwestern Ontario, and Pinocchio
(University of New Brunswick, 2020) Boeckner, McKenna James; Falkenstein, Len
In 2006, the longstanding economic prosperity generated by the natural resource sector in Northwestern Ontario abruptly collapsed. Male dominance over the natural world, a key paradigm shaping socioeconomic ideologies of the region, now had to be reframed in terms of a more passive state of reliance. My research creation project wonders what it means to be masculine in Northwestern Ontario when the everyday requirements of this identity are in a rapid flux. By way of an answer, I turn to the emerging field of academic criticism known as the ecoGothic to reread and rewrite the classic fairy tale of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, placing the didactic tale of what it means to become a real boy in Thunder Bay, Ontario, a hinterland setting in which natural resources have become inhospitable to the men that cultivate them.
"After Ez stirred up that hornets['] nest": Ezra Pound's politics of "open" poetry
(University of New Brunswick, 2020) Ehtee, Svetlana; Tryphonopoulos, Demetres
Ezra Pound was a literary activist who devoted his life to educating those willing to be initiated to radically new, “open” modernist writing. He was also a poet of megalomaniacal ideas, who believed that he could change the world by teaching his readers. Seeking a solution for contemporary socio-political issues, Pound turned to equating usury with Jewish people, blaming them for the world’s ills. These beliefs resulted in the poet’s endorsement of Mussolini’s and Hitler’s causes. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how Pound’s mission to educate readers became an effort to indoctrinate them by exposing them to his fascist, racist, and anti-Semitic views. I will demonstrate how The Cantos, which Pound sets up to be aesthetically and semantically “open,” evolves into a “closed” manifesto, that mirrors Pound’s political agenda. In what follows, I begin in Chapter One by developing this argument through the analysis of biographies devoted to the poet. Highlighting the works which exculpated or elided Pound’s extreme right-wing politics and efforts, this chapter will trace the apologetic stream of Pound’s biographers. Chapter Two will cross-examine his published correspondence with Olivia Rosetti Agresti (1937–59), and his unpublished exchange with Graham Seton Hutchison (1934–36) to determine whether Pound censored himself in print to hide the extent of his biases and pro-Nazi leanings. The subsequent analysis of Pound’s unpublished correspondence with Archibald MacLeish (1926–58) follows in Chapter Three, continuing the discussion of Pound’s support for Mussolini, even after the dictator’s confinement in the Nazi-backed Salò Republic (1943–45). Chapter Four will focus on the poet’s unpublished correspondence, in the 1950s, with John Kasper who, under Pound’s guidance, fought against de-segregation in the United States. Finally, in Chapter Five I will draw chronological connections between selections from The Cantos and Pound’s correspondences to show the effects of Pound’s socio-political beliefs on his epic. I will cross-examine my findings with selections from “The First Thirty Cantos” (I–XXX), “The Fifth Decad” (XLII–LI), the “Italian Cantos” (LXXII–LXXIII), and the “Pisan Cantos” (LXXIV–LXXXIV) to argue that Pound’s anti-Semitic, fascist, and racist views inform the text of the poem, and ultimately cause its structural “closure.”
Antibody // Traumatic Entanglement, Eco-Poethics, and Speculative Horror as Survivor Futurisms
(University of New Brunswick, 2021-08) Salazar, Rebecca; Finlay, Triny; Martin, Randall
The speculative horror poems collected in Antibody trace the ecological and personal entanglements of sexual trauma and its myriad intersecting oppressions. The introductory section brings polyvocal queer attention to entanglement ontology, an ecocritical expansion of intersectional feminist theory. This approach roots all human and social issues in the urgent ecological crises of the Anthropocene; in a very literal sense, every social interaction is “always 100 percent nature and 100 percent nurture” (Fausto-Sterling qtd in Sullivan 24). The subsequent sections of poetry chart the dissolution of a sexually violated speaker entangled in the hegemonies that perpetuate the parallel harms of rape culture and ecological destruction. The essays accompanying each section of poems expand this narrative by interrogating three particular horrors of various traumatized ecosystems: INVASION, on the imbrication of sexual violence in literary communities and the silencing that countered the #MeToo movement in CanLit; HAUNTING, on the biologically interlocked oppressions that make the current world unsurvivable for sick and survivor bodies; and KINSICKNESS, on the disrupted relationality that characterizes both sexual and ecological traumas, and the rituals which may offer ways to heal broken relations. By attending to trauma on multiple scales through poetry, hybrid non-fiction, and feminist horror, Antibody proposes horror as a mode that radically refuses to erase the atrocities of the Anthropocene, while also acting as a form of speculative futurism that imagines alternate futures in which traumatized people and ecosystems can survive.
Atlantic Canada's poetic menagerie :: animal presence in the poetry of John Thompson, Don Domanski, John Steffler, and Harry Thurston
(University of New Brunswick, 2014) Armstrong, Tammy; Leckie, Ross; Tremblay, Tony
This dissertation examines the place of the animal in Atlantic Canadian poetry. Focusing on four poets—John Thompson, Don Domanski, John Steffler, and Harry Thurston—whose careers began in the 1960s, this study analyzes not only various ways these writers live with and use animals, but also how they think with and through animals, both in their experiences and their poetry. The similarities within this group of writers exemplify how animal presence can no longer be read as a marginal consideration in Atlantic Canadian poetry. Each poet in his own way creates a zoopoetics that shows how the act of composition in the poem itself might be read as an animal that the poet struggles to tame, even as the real animal disrupts the poem by its subversive presence in the composition. In an effort to bridge contemporary efforts to redefine the critical importance of the animal, and to apply those shared concerns to Atlantic Canada, this study draws primarily on three areas of scholarly discussions: the “question of the animal” in continental philosophy; regionalism in Atlantic Canadian studies; and recent critical perspectives in Animal Studies. There is also an interdisciplinary use of ecocriticism, phenomenology, zoosemiotics, and literary studies. The interdisciplinary nature of to this study also exemplifies how relevant critical approaches across the disciplines are to the animal. Though the focus of this study is on Atlantic Canada, these four poets have been extremely influential in Canadian poetry of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, particularly in the ways they link ecopoetics to the animal. John Thompson’s work suggests the possibilities and limitations in moving away from language, the ego, and the domestic space toward the uncontrollable animal realm. Don Domanski expands this idea of zoopoetics by rejecting concepts of the ego. Drawing on spirituality and science in tandem with the metaphoric nature of language, he investigates mysteries imbedded in the physical world. Steffler’s landscape imagines itself as animality that defies the poet’s observations and definitions. Steffler constructs ideas of modern, masculine selfhood by animalizing the natural world. In equally important ways, Thurston’s poetry engages the animal primarily from his personal perspectives of farming, science, and an eco-poetic lens. Thurston’s work eventually embraces a feral or animalized script, grounded in present-day realism, ecology, and his extensive understanding of Atlantic Canada. By bringing these poets together through their investigations of the animal encounter, the dissertation argues for a specific need for Animal Studies in Atlantic Canadian poetry.
Baptized in Fire: Trauma, Storytelling, and Survival
(University of New Brunswick, 2021-04) St. Peters, Joel; Gray, Robert W.
On the afternoon of September 13, 1977, my grandfather was burned on more than two-thirds of his body while working as a lineman for Nova Scotia Power. Despite a less than 10 per cent chance of survival, he is alive today thanks to the support of his wife and two children. My creative research project analyzes the benefits of model stage theories of healing following such a traumatic event. The research focuses on how trauma impacts families, how families can navigate recovery, and how storytelling is a crucial aspect of the healing process. The therapeutic potential of the screenplay emerges by establishing the connection between contemporary screenplay structure and models of healing used in psychology. This culminates in my creative piece, a screenplay based in part on the first four months of my grandfather’s recovery—a survival narrative seeking to help trauma victims become trauma survivors.
Booty & Cheeba
(University of New Brunswick, 2017) Gaio, Ryan; Jarman, Mark Anthony
Booty & Cheeba is a creative writing thesis consisting of six interconnected chapters focused on a small-town high school. The set is framed by an adult narrator reflecting on his teenaged past and his relationship to the school in discussion. These reflections on the past are used to emphasize the importance of embracing the present. Through its exploration of high school years, the text investigates the “naïve ambition of youth;” this attitude, characteristic of this stage of adolescence, is one that the thesis ultimately defends and even praises.
Breaking things apart and putting them back together: ekphrastic poetry
(University of New Brunswick, 2020) Dawson, Benjamin Jeromy; Finlay, Triny
“Breaking Things Apart and Putting Them Back Together” is an ekphrastic poetry collection composed of forty-nine poems, as well as a critical introduction. It deals with paintings from artists on the East Coast of Canada such as Mary Pratt, Harold Cromwell, Maud Lewis, and Molly Lamb Bobak; these fours artists are discussed at length in the critical introduction that explores the creative and theoretical framework of ekphrasis. I reimagine ekphrasis as a collaborative art, through which I try to understand life on the East Coast, finding within the range of artists I examined thematic and technical similarities, as well as a general folk sensibility; many artists illustrated landscapes suggesting a consistent creative connection with the land they lived on. While the images gesture outward to viewers, the poems I wrote about them are often introspective, dealing with issues of home, community, culture, and mental health.
Brut Elegies
(University of New Brunswick, 2023-03) Bonfiglio, William; Sinclair, Sue; Finlay, Triny
In 1922, German art critic and doctor Hans Prinzhorn published his landmark text Bildnerei der Geisteskranken. In this work, he presented groundbreaking analyses of visual art composed by the institutionalized and so-called mentally ill, raising provocative questions about the innate creative tendencies of humans and the correlation between neurodivergence and creativity. While Prinzhorn’s text represents a formative treatise in human cognition and psychology, its importance to the art world cannot be overstated. Prinzhorn’s analysis established the foundation for what French artist and critic Jean Dubuffet would later designate as art brut, loosely defined as works by untrained individuals isolated from the stultifying influences of popular culture and the mainstream art world. In Dubuffet’s estimation, such works comprise the closest humankind can come to pure expression: an art uncorrupted by social norms, peer pressure, and the artist’s own self-consciousness. In the following collection of poetry, titled Brut Elegies, I reflect upon and respond to the visual works of institutionalized artists whose pieces were collected and studied by Prinzhorn and which formed the foundation of Dubuffet’s analysis. The poems incorporate biography, traditional poetic forms, and ekphrasis to engage with the subject matter on multiple fronts and deliver a diverse representation of the works and their creators. This collection is accompanied by a critical introduction to art brut and my poetic process, as well as an essay that delves into the ekphrastic act, offering a close reading of three ekphrastic poems and exploring how ekphrasis lends itself especially well to the consideration of themes of marginalization, fetishization, and spectatorship.
chronic
(University of New Brunswick, 2017) Annear, Grace; Finlay, Tatrina; Jarman, Mark
Framed by the physical language of elite athletics, Chronic depicts the experiences of a young collegiate woman as she navigates a chronic pain condition known as vulvodynia. Despite the literary tradition of women in pain, women suffering, and women with illness, this particular condition lacks much in the way of a literary cannon. Set on the grey shores of BC’s west coast, the narrative follows Kit and her fellow athletes over the course of a competitive year, their inter-‐twined exchanges forming a narrative that muddles and globalizes the concept of pain. Through its depiction of sexual relationships and athletic endeavours, the novel strives to challenge traditional models of physicality, identity, mental health, and female sexuality. By couching a story of vulvodynia in the physical language of an athlete, Chronic conveys that one of the primary struggles of chronic pain is the perception of, and the relationship with, one’s body.
Cid and the Raiders
(University of New Brunswick, 2024-04) Duggan, Thomas; Schryer, Stephen; Creelman, David
Cid and the Raiders is a short story collection about how changing economic conditions and cultural upheaval caused by the decimation of the rural economy, increased oil work, and reactionary politics challenge working- and middle-class identities. As corollaries to class identities, the collection also addresses masculinities, which are frequently tied up to working- and middle-class identities, and nostalgia, which is an understandable symptom of radical economic and cultural change. Themes explored include the fluidity and contestation of working-class identities; the effects of work and environment on ideology creation; the constructions of masculinity; and nostalgia. The stories map ‘class’ through engagement with previous depictions of the post-cod moratorium and post-oil boom NL in Maritime fiction and art. While sites of migratory work and oil extraction remain a conspicuous absence, images of these sites remain in echoes, symptoms, and hauntings.
Colonel Alzheimer
(University of New Brunswick, 2017) Mojib, Erfan; Ball, John
Colonel Alzheimer is a collection of short stories about the ordinary life of a small fictional community in the heart of Iran. Set in a desert town fabled for its heat and sandstorms, the collection presents a society that is trapped between past and present, reality and dreams, modernity and tradition. Although the stories deal with universal subjects, they come to life through small-scale events, and local miracles that have a tremendous influence on the lives of ordinary people. Colonel Alzheimer is also a window into a culture that, in recent years, has been misrepresented by the media and by diasporic writers and memoirists who contribute to prevalent stereotypes about their own people. Although the collection is in some sense a personal tribute, it strives to draw readers’ attention away from ideological, cultural, and political differences and remind us that there are more things that unite people than divide them.
Contemporary North American poetry as postsecular prayer
(University of New Brunswick, 2019) Reimer, Perry; Schryer, Stephen; Sinclair, Sue
My thesis explores contemporary North American poetry as a form of postsecular prayer. I discuss works by Mary Szybist, Louise Glück, and bpNichol. These authors blend conventions of prayer from disparate religions with secular discourses to write poetic prayers that straddle the sacred and the secular. I explore Szybist’s fascination with personal prayer; I read Glück as a writer of communal prayer that finds common ground across religious and non-religious boundaries; finally, my chapter on Nichol examines what role form and language play in postsecular prayer. These three authors liberate prayer language from its religious roots and re-appropriate religious forms for secular self-discovery, healing, and the establishment of communities that transgress religious and secular boundaries. I track how these poets produce postsecular prayer, which is in many ways analogous to religious prayer in its objectives – to find meaning within and navigate an immense and uncontrollable world. I use postsecularism, which resists the dogmatism of both religious and secular doctrine to allow for contestability and pluralism, as my theoretical focus. This framework allows for the deconstruction of the religious, opening up possibilities for prayer as a means of spiritual growth for the individual. Through postsecular prayer, individuals and communities can find comfort despite the unknown and achieve collective understanding in the absence of an authoritative, religious divine.
Familial Hungers
(University of New Brunswick, 2022-08) Wu, Christine; Sinclair, Sue
Many immigrant families experience intergenerational trauma resulting from migration, racism, and colonialism. This trauma can manifest as gaps—silences and shadow histories—in one’s family history and familial relationships. As a second-generation Chinese-Canadian, I examine and reconfigure these gaps using poetry focused on food. This creative research project pieces together food memories as a way to explore and discuss identity, race, and fractured relationships. As food is often discussed in the same breath as culture, history, and identity, this thesis uses food to unpack painful memories, histories, and realities. By writing and sharing poetry centered on food memories, both recollected and imagined, this thesis addresses the following questions: What has contributed to the fractures in my familial relationships? How is food an intrinsic part of my identity and family history? For what do I hunger? For what does my family hunger?
“How People Move” – Coming-of-age in North Shore New Brunswick
(University of New Brunswick, 2022-04) Calver, Carlee Jeanne; Snook, Edith; Jarman, Mark
Acadian people and the North Shore region of New Brunswick, where a large majority of the French-speaking population of New Brunswick live, have long existed in the margins socially, politically, economically, and geographically. As a bilingual region, northern New Brunswick and its mixed culture are not widely depicted in media outside of tourism, and little of the daily goings-on of the region’s peoples or of their continued traumas from early acts of colonialism against the Acadian and Mi’kmaq are discussed in modern film narratives. By tracing the history of colonialism in the Maritimes to modern-day North Shore New Brunswick through research, Acadian cinema, and my own experiences growing up in Bathurst, and using screenwriting and the tools of Slow Cinema, I endeavor to portray what it means to come of age in the North Shore today.
I didn’t understand love like that
(University of New Brunswick, 2023-04) Henbest, Rosemary; Sinclair, Sue
I Didn’t Understand Love Like That was inspired by my friend Louise. I wanted to think about why I was so surprised when she admitted to me that she was lonely. I wanted to think about why I had never said it myself. My big question was how can I find language for loneliness by challenging myself to write about my own? In response I wrote an autobiographical triptych, a long poem that includes 1) a series of grateful and awkward first-encounter sketches, 2) a list poem of the lonely moments of my childhood, and 3) an exploration of the loneliness of various Biblical women. In my introductory essay, I explore the different shapes and shadows of loneliness and ask how loneliness might be different for Christians than it is for those with a secular worldview. Throughout my work I try to learn from Louise and bravely say, “oh, I’m lonely.”
Is there room for us, St. Lawrence Seaway?
(University of New Brunswick, 2022-12) Jessome, Michael Patrick; Sinclair, Sue
The essays of Is There Room for Us, St. Lawrence Seaway? examine how the socioeconomic marginalization of Cape Breton Island and Atlantic Canada has influenced the production and study of its literature, while the poems of the dissertation, The Great Lakes Flow to the East, complement that examination by conveying an experience of Cape Breton from the perspective of one who grew up there. The title, Is There Room for Us, St. Lawrence Seaway? asks readers to imagine how matters might improve for Cape Breton if it were relocated to Central Canada, while the title of the poetry section, The Great Lakes Flow to the East, suggests that not all "great" matters flow westward across Canada. The poetry of the dissertation plays with adverse national perspectives of Cape Breton, repositions canonical figures, explores the island's significant history, and celebrates Cape Breton without losing sight ofits hardships. The first critical essay of the introduction examines Ray Smith's short story, "Cape Breton is the Thought-Control Centre of Canada" as a means of prefiguring the aesthetics behind the poems of the dissertation, while the second critical essay engages with three book-length studies of Maritime/ Atlantic-Canadian literature that have attempted to define this literature as a unique genre. Smith's story reveals a version of a Cape Bretoner who is caught between provincial and federal identities, while the book-length studies, by varying degrees, use the socioeconomic issues of Atlantic Canada to organize and define the region's literature. This organizational method, while well-meaning, has favoured content over aesthetic analysis and has produced monographs focused on fiction, with other genres, such as poetry and drama, receiving little attention. As a whole, this dissertation hopes to underscore Canada's aversive divisions from an Atlantic-Canadian perspective, illuminate Ray Smith's creation of a polarized Cape Bretoner, broaden the discussion of what Atlantic-Canadian literature is, and create a poetic summary of the author's personal experiences with Cape Breton Island.
Island: Decolonizing Newfoundland history to understand current Qalipu Mi’kmaq realities
(University of New Brunswick, 2023-09) Walbourne-Gough, Douglas; Sinclair, Sue; Snook, Edith
This poetry manuscript, Island, and its accompanying critical introduction articulate specific difficulties and circumstances surrounding my struggle with identity and Indigeneity in Southwestern Newfoundland in the wake of the Qalipu First Nation enrolment process. The critical introduction re-examines Ktaqmkuk, or Newfoundland, history through a decolonizing lens to understand why the concept of Newfoundland Indigeneity, outside of the Beothuk, is often met with question or contempt. Concerns around Qalipu First Nation are understandable. The national narrative surrounding Newfoundland and Indigenous peoples has been, since 1949, that the Beothuk are the only population Indigenous to Newfoundland. When Newfoundland and Canada entered into Confederation, the Indian Act was not applied in Newfoundland as it was in other provinces. This lack of federal recognition virtually erased Newfoundland Mi’kmaq from Canadian narratives of Indigenous history. This, combined with the Mi’kmaq mercenary myth and the fact that Qalipu First Nation was created without consultation with the Mi’kmaq Grand Council, fuels mistrust and intense scrutiny. How does an island supposedly without Indigenous people suddenly have the second-largest seat at the Assembly of First Nations? The critical introduction and poetry work to ensure that Qalipu voices are heard and legitimized in academic contexts; they act as a counternarrative to misinformation concerning the Qalipu First Nation. Island contains distinct yet interwoven narrative threads: poems that instigate and redefine my understanding of my family history; poems that articulate childhood and teenage traumas that still affect me in adulthood; and poems that ask what an Indigenous Newfoundland identity is. The title is a nod to Newfoundland as a physical island, as well as a historically and socially islanded (that is to say, isolated and distinct) site. The writing process culminates in the realization that an island is only truly isolated on the surface. Though not all the poems are Mi’kmaq-specific in content, they all interrogate, reflect, and reposition, while working toward necessary healing. Island is a deep lean into my past to better inform who and where I am. I know I am not the only one wrestling with these issues. Island is my best attempt at healing, and at helping others.
Melting road: happiness in the age of climate change
(University of New Brunswick, 2021) Hayward, Benjamin Bruce; Jarman, Mark Anthony
A heat wave in Europe kills over a thousand a week and melts the sticky, black asphalt of the highway reststops. Neoliberal austerity and growing inequality beneath the banking towers of London signal the depths of late capitalism. This creative thesis is a travel novel narrated by an unemployed Canadian looking for direction in life after the economic recession. He visits the UK during the hottest summer on record in order to reconnect with his half-brother, who is squatting in empty investment properties in London. As they party on a low-budget and hitchhike across Europe, the narrator is exposed to political and ethical anti-establishment arguments and faces the question of whether or not willing participants in neoliberalism are culpable for its failures. Blocked at the UK border, the narrator retreats from injustice to a beach commune in Spain. In the end, he must reconcile the freedom of escaping neoliberalism with the responsibility of opposing it and decide for himself how to find happiness in the age of climate change.

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