English Alumns Pursuing Grad Degrees
Fri. Dec. 11, 2015
Graduates of the University of Winnipeg’s English programs go on to do exciting research in various graduate programs at both the M.A. and Ph.D. levels. Here are a few examples:
Eileen Holowka (BA Hon. 2015)
Eileen is at Concordia University in Montreal, pursuing an M.A. in Creative Writing. Her creative thesis, entitled “Circuits,” explores narratives of sexual trauma in the digital age. Another of her creative projects is Sunflower, an interactive fictional game about a girl exploring a retirement home. Attesting to her talent for creative writing, Eileen is not only an editorial assistant for the Winnipeg poetry magazine CV2, but she has just recently been featured in the Fall/Autumn issue of that magazine. A sample of her work can be found here: http://www.contemporaryverse2.ca/en/. Eileen’s poetry has also been published in Lemonhound and Little Fiction.
In addition to online testimonies of sexual trauma, Eileen is interested in feminism, sad girl theory, and digital media generally. She tweets regularly and writes music @elmaka.
Vanessa Nunes (MA in Cultural Studies 2015)
Vanessa is pursuing a Ph.D. in English, Film, and Theatre at the University of Manitoba, where she is also a Research Assistant in the Centre for Globalization and Cultural Studies.
Vanessa’s current research interests include cultural and postcolonial studies, the politics of representation, slum narratives, tourism studies, Brazil-Canada relations, Canadian literature about Brazil, and Latin American film and literature. Funded by a University of Manitoba Graduate Fellowship, her doctoral work examines the representational misconceptions often circulating about Brazilian and Canadian landscapes in media and culture.
Giannis Tsouras (BA Hon. 2014)
Giannis is currently pursuing an M.A. in English at York University, where he is preparing a major research project on the political uses of voice and song in HIV/AIDS theatre. He is also participating in a number of courses on topics as various as performance studies; psychoanalysis; memory and trauma studies; queer theory; and twentieth-century American detective fiction.
In addition to his studies, Giannis works as a graduate assistant for Dr. R. Darren Gobert, editor of the journal Modern Drama. His responsibilities include proofreading forthcoming issues of the journal and assisting with research, oftentimes in Giannis’ second language, French.
Joshua Whitehead (BA Hon. 2014, MA in Cultural Studies 2015)
Joshua is pursuing a Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of Calgary, where he hopes to produce a critical/creative hybrid thesis. His research interests cut across the fields of critical race studies; Native studies; postcolonial studies; and studies in affect, gender, and sexuality.
Joshua’s academic research draws heavily on the themes of comparative race, disease, and horror, whereas his creative research has led him to focus more on revisionism and two-spirit/queer Indigeneity. One of his projects involves indigenizing A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, a re-occurring terror that can be recruited to the current decolonial struggles of Indigneous peoples in North America.
Joshua has also been busy with the completion of a volume of poetry. He strongly believes that activism toward decolonization can and should be done through syntheses of critical and creative forms. Poetry, he argues, is an ample medium for the dissemination of theoretical knowledge(s) in a language that all can understand. One of his goals is to reshape the cultural imagin(nation) through imagi(native) interventions. Joshua’s work as a poet was recognized recently in the Fall/Autumn issue of the Winnipeg poetry magazine CV2, alongside Eileen Mary Holowka. A sample of his work can be found here: http://www.contemporaryverse2.ca/en/. Joshua also maintains an active Twitter account @concrete_poet.