bios
In order of appearance in the Program:
Yiwen Liu: Graduated from the MPhil Program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Yiwen LIU is now a first-year Ph.D. student in the English Department at Simon Fraser University. Her current research interests include postcolonial studies and Marxist feminism.
Leah Tench is in the final semester of her master’s degree in the English department at Simon Fraser University. She is currently interested in indigenous studies, media studies, and cultural memory.
Elisia Snyder is a MA candidate at the University of Alberta. She graduated top-of-class from MacEwan University in 2016, and currently holds a SSHRC CGS-M award. Elisia's research interests include Canadian literature, creative nonfiction, and the poetics of affect.
Michael Wilkinson : I am currently finishing an MA in English Literature at Simon Fraser University in B.C. My past work focused on the presence of medical rhetoric in The Sherlock Holmes stories, specifically the way in which medical bodies become the site of persuasion between the detective and his clients. Currently, my work is moving towards a consideration of Doyle’s belief in Spiritualism, which includes an investigation of rhetorical and literary strategies, concepts of Empire and Colonialism, and scientific tactics that Doyle employs to elucidate the “Unseen World” within material documents.
Alois Sieben is a second-year PhD student at Simon Fraser University. His research interests include computers, Marxist and Lacanian theory and contemporary poetry. Specifically, he looks into the political and linguistic potentials of a future organized by the algorithmic.
Nathan TeBokkel is pursuing his PhD in English at UBC, where he studies poet-farmers from Robert Burns to Wendell Berry. Drawing on his background in genetics, melon farming, food safety audits, and poetics, he examines the aesthetic motivations behind biotechnological research, agricultural practice, and government legislation.
Katie Gillespie is a first year MA student at SFU, who hopes the digital humanities will prove a satisfying intersection of English and Communication approaches.
Holly Vestad is a M.A. student at Simon Fraser University. Her current research examines representations of time and space in modern and contemporary literature.
Olivia Ingram is a first-year English MA whose research is concerned with cultural studies, 20th-century avant-garde poetics, urbanism, and ephemera. Her SSHRC-funded graduate project examines the tension between urban and rural spaces, as well as the tension between historical forms and avant-garde modalities, in Frank O'Hara'sOranges: 12 Pastorals.
Abdul Zahir : I am a graduate student in the Department of English at Simon Fraser University, currently working towards my MA. My SSHRC-funded research project focuses on 19th-century American literature, and the (not especially velvety) print culture in which that literature was ensconced. The antebellum American publishing trade, bereft of international copyright, was the scene of a debate around reprinting: the practice of printing and selling foreign works, gratis – often at the expense of American writers, shielded by copyright. My graduate work hones in on Emily Dickinson – The Belle of Amherst – who, in writing some punch-in-the-gut poetry, may have made some implicit comments on this state of American publishing.
Leah Sharzer is a Vancouver poet and translator. She got interested in translation while studying at Université Paris 8, where she learned about theories of translation as a creative practice rather than at an attempt to duplicate the original text. She is currently doing an M.A. in English, where she is researching French translations of Emily Dickinson, of which there are quite a few. She is a member of the Meschonnic reading group.
Josh Trichilo is a Ph.D. student at York University in the Humanities department. His research is fundamentally comparative as it explores a recent western development in new materialist and critical posthumanist theory called “vibratory materialism” in a nonwestern, specifically Japanese context. Josh sees a congruent but different lineage of such a theory in particular Japanese literary and aesthetic histories that continue on today, a lineage Josh believes is underrepresented and can contribute to the important and ongoing discussions in these fields. His guiding methodological question is: how does one translates what look like vibratory materialisms coming out of non-western traditions and their modern variants? He hopes to unpack this Japan-based vibratory materialism, paying specific attention to its socio-cultural specificities, in an analysis of certain Japanese literary texts.
Yujin Kim :
Elmira Asghari is a second-year Ph.D. student at Université de Montréal. She holds an undergraduate degree in English Language and literature and a Master’s degree in Translation Studies. She has worked as a teacher assistant, freelance translator, and English teacher. Her papers have been accepted in the 13th and 14th Annual Université de Montréal English Graduate Conference. Her research interests include translation process and adaptation studies in Early Modern English literature and translation sociology.
Ryan Fitzpatrick is a (nearly finished) PhD candidate at SFU. His dissertation "What is Here Now: Assembling Canadian Poetry After the Spatial Turn" reads contemporary Canadian poetry alongside and through debates emerging from Deleuzian spatial theory. He is the author of two books of poetry - Fortified Castles (Talon, 2014) and Fake Math (Snare, 2007) - and with Jonathan Ball edited Why Poetry Sucks: An Anthology of Humorous Experimental Canadian Poetry (Insomniac, 2014). He has recent critical work in Public and in the collection Robert Kroetsch: Essays on His Works (Guernica, 2017) edited by Nicole Markotic.
Dylan Bateman is a Master’s student at the University of Alberta. He is hoping to begin PhD program next year, with a dissertation that focuses on 21st-century Noah’s Ark narratives, analyzing how they retell the Biblical story to reflect feminist concerns and ecological shifts caused by global warming.