Welcome!
My name is Eva Dvorak and I am a third-year English major. I have a love for literature and its ability to incite change and elicit emotion in readers. Recently I have especially enjoyed studying Canadian speculative fiction and discussing what Grace Dillion, an Anishinaabe scholar, calls “Indigenous Futurisms“. That being said, my ultimate passion is, and always has been animals. Therefore, I am pursuing admission to veterinary school after my undergraduate degree and am completing science prerequisites along with my English degree (a daunting but certainly worthwhile task).
I am excited to take advantage of technology’s ability to connect learners in order to thoroughly analyze Canadian literature in this course. In English 372 we will examine works of literature that address the presence of settler-colonial structures in Canada’s past and present. I expect that we will also consider the future of Canadian literature by looking at the decolonization and diversification of Canadian narratives. I hope that having the ability to collaborate through blog posts and comments will allow for significant and thought-provoking conversation, although, like many of my peers, I am not entirely confident in my technological abilities.
I am especially interested in the ways in which this course’s use of technology will allow for the consideration of many mediums of storytelling. Conversations about Canadian identity and settler-colonialism can be shared in many ways. Literature is certainly one medium that has the power to consider such topics. However, I am fascinated by the ways in which video games, art installations, virtual reality, and even music all have the ability to make significant contributions to scholarly discourse. Creating connections between the literature we will study in this course and other types of Canadian narratives will be an exciting way to utilize our access to technology and the internet.
I look forward to exploring Canadian literature with you!