OUR TEAM 

 

Shamina Kallu

Hi friends! My name is Shamina, as you may know by now! I am of South Asian descent, born in India but raised right here in Canada. I am currently finishing up my Sociology degree (I will be done in June) and will be pursuing two years of Social Work at the University of Victoria come September!

My experience as an Indo-Canadian has been full of questions about “home”. I have struggled with my identity, mostly as a result of external social pressures that have led me to question what my identity really is and where I truly belong. This has been a difficult (and incomplete) process, and I hope to continue navigating this difficult terrain. I am, of course, not doing this alone; I have met many along the way with the same identity crises (if you will) and courses such as ENGL 470A have taught me to question so many of the underlying assumptions I have adopted growing up in Canada, which govern both my own identity and the identities and stories of so many of Canada’s diverse cultural groups.

These questions are what have, ultimately, sparked my own interest in the research question our group has come up with. I am fascinated in the platforms being used to reflect the diversity in “Canadian” voices, and to what extent this diversity has been reflected. The concept of Canada as a cultural mosaic has been contested time and time again, and I’d love to see how this is being mediated within Canadian literature. How do we, and can we, get around this “Us” versus “Them” dichotomy that seems to permeate the everyday lives and realities of Canadians both historically and in the present day?

 

Devon Smith

Hello everyone! As I’m sure the majority of you know by now, my name is Devon.  I am currently finishing up my final term at UBC, majoring in Sociology, and am quite excited to be finished and find out what the future holds for me.

With literature in general being a subject I knew little to nothing about, I thought indulging on a course centred solely around Canadian literature would be an excellent place for me to start – and my learning does not have me disappointed.  I believe most of us previously knew at least a small amount of information about the colonization of Canada, but it is really the ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ dichotomy created through the literature telling of the colonization that has really had an impact on my learning. I feel that we must understand that there is clearly a wide variety of diversity within Canada today, which means there is a large collection of Canadian literature which is equally diverse, that will allow us to explore the topic of the ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ dichotomy we are interested in.

Through reviewing more contemporary Canadian literature I hope to expand my knowledge of the dichotomy at hand, help portray this dichotomy to others, and most importantly create dialogue between all of us!  Through this dialogue, I hope that together, we can help bring this dichotomy of ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them’ into a more merged definition of Canadian identity.

 

Christie Smith

Hello everyone! I’m Christie and I am in my final year at UBC, pursuing a major in History, with a focus on Canadian History.

With this in mind, the material of English 470A very much appealed to me. One of the biggest issues that stuck out to me throughout our various readings and topics of the course was the commonality of a so-called ‘us vs. them’ mentality. This is by no means an issue specific to Canada, or Canadian literature, but instead something that many other areas have struggled with in the past. I have been discussing this mentality for several years, on and off through various courses, which has led me to identify it more and more easily within my own life. In doing so I’ve come to the conclusion that there is not ‘quick fix’ for such a problem, instead a solution needs to be more of a long term goal, where not only actions and words are changed, but thinking as well.

Having a diverse population is excellent, it allows for a richness in culture and society that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Having a divided population, however, is not.

With that in mind, we need to search for ways to bridge divides that exist, and find solutions to allow every Canadian to be one of “us”.

 

 

Charlotte Hodgson 

 

 

Hi everyone! I’m Charlotte and I am in my (almost) final semester at UBC. I am in the Interdisciplinary Studies program, with a primary focus in Literature and a secondary focus in Physics.

The topic of the dichotomy between “Us” and “Them” came up multiple times throughout this course, and it was one of the running themes that stuck with me, and with all of us as a group. We know the brutal history of colonization, as well as much of the more recent history of the Canadian government to define the meaning of a “Canadian” to match the image of the classic European. A great part of this course is that it focuses on the literature aspect of this bias definition, and the effect that it has on our current understanding of Canadian identity as a whole.

By looking at contemporary Canadian literature I hope to find an upward trend towards a more diverse definition of identity.