{"id":1,"date":"2014-01-07T03:50:08","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T03:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/keelyhammond\/?p=1"},"modified":"2014-01-16T21:11:23","modified_gmt":"2014-01-17T04:11:23","slug":"assignment1_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/keelyhammond\/2014\/01\/07\/assignment1_1\/","title":{"rendered":"1:1\u2014 Welcome and hello!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to my course blog for UBC’s online version of ENGL 470A<\/a> Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres, or “Oh Canada… Our home and native land?” as it is described by our instructor, Dr. Erika Paterson<\/a>. I am a fourth year student studying Biophysics at the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver campus. Some of my interests include triathlon, knitting, and cross-country skiing. At times I also like to knit objects related to my coursework, such as this sea monkey (BIOL 140) and dissected frog (for a biology prof).
\n

\"Sea<\/a>
Some knitting from previous UBC courses: a sea monkey and a dissected frog<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nLast year I took ENGL 222 Literature in Canada with Duffy Roberts<\/a>, where we focused on the stories of Vancouver. ENGL 470A is my first experience with an online course, and I hope that it will be an enriching and fulfilling one.<\/p>\n

We will be listening to many storytelling voices throughout the course, from Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water\u00a0<\/em>and The Truth About Stories<\/em> to Edward Chamberlin’s If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?<\/em> and many more. Drawing from readings and other media presented in the course, we will identify aspects of storytelling and relate them to the identity of the storyteller, as well as the role storytelling plays in literature. Class storytelling will take place in individual blog postings by class members and in comments on those postings and will culminate in an online conference to be held near the end of the course (Paterson “Course Syllabus”).<\/p>\n

When I imagine my “native” land, I picture the Canadian West Coast, full of scenic and stormy oceanfront and lush with rainforest biodiversity. This is the setting where I grew up and where I feel most at home. Of course, I didn’t really grow up in the forest \u2014 I attended a city high school in Victoria, BC, rode my bike through trafficky streets, and enjoyed all the urban conveniences from microwave ovens to Gore-tex. But beyond the picturesque backdrop that the coastline of the Straits of Georgia and Juan de Fuca, or Salish Sea as it has recently been renamed, provides us, I have long been fascinated by the minutiae of the living environment, from birds to plants to echinoderms. In fact, recognizing and understanding so many of the organisms that live on the coast comforts me, as I am familiar with and can imagine my part in each of their stories. Victoria is the homeland of several Coast Salish groups, who traditionally shared my preoccupation with the living environment, as this was their medicine cabinet, hardware and grocery store rolled into one (Turner 28). Going further than I in their storytelling, however, they spoke words of blessing to the living materials they collected, physically imbuing them with stories and thereby increasing their value and significance (Turner 8). <\/p>\n

During this course, I would like to become more aware of the many layers of story a single object can hold. In particular, I am interested to hear about how applying different stories to the same place or object affect how “useful” we consider it to be.<\/p>\n

\"Camas<\/a>
Blue Camas in a Garry Oak meadow, Victoria, BC. This was an essential food plant for Coast Salish people before other starchy foods became available (Turner 118).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Works Cited:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Paterson, Erika. “Course Syllabus.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. Web. 08 January 2014.<\/p>\n

Paterson, Erika. “Instructor’s Bio.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. Web. 08 January 2014.<\/p>\n

“Duffy Roberts.” Department of English. University of British Columbia, 28 July 2011. Web. 08 January 2014. <\/p>\n

Turner, Nancy J. Saanich Ethnobotany: Culturally Important Plants of the WS\u00c1NEC People<\/em>. Victoria, BC: Royal BC Museum, 2012. Print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to my course blog for UBC’s online version of ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres, or “Oh Canada… Our home and native land?” as it is described by our instructor, Dr. Erika Paterson. I am a fourth year student studying Biophysics at the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver campus. Some of my interests […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22351,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[311821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/keelyhammond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/keelyhammond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/keelyhammond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/keelyhammond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22351"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/keelyhammond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/keelyhammond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/keelyhammond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/54"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/keelyhammond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/keelyhammond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/keelyhammond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}