Hello everyone, welcome to the blog that I will be posting on throughout the semester as we tackle this course together. My name is Kyle Olsen, and I am a fourth-year student at UBC majoring in Human Geography while minoring in English Literature.
I am very excited to be taking ENGL 372 because I have studied a lot of literature from various countries across the world. However, I have not focused too much on studying literature in the Canadian context. By the end of this course, I hope I will have a better idea of what it truly means to be Canadian based on the different perspectives that we will approach throughout the semester. As a human geography student, I have learned quite a bit already about how colonialism has made Canada the way it is today; however, I have minimally studied these processes through a literary lens. For that reason, I come into this course, hoping that I can learn the perspectives of what it’s like for different groups of people to live in Canada. To be well-educated on a topic like colonialism in Canada, it is important to hear these perspectives of different people to get a true idea of how these processes affected their livelihoods.
In the previous semester, I took an Indigenous Literature course. We mainly focused on Louise Erdrich’s texts, Four Souls and Tracks. These novels were my first experience of learning about colonialism in North America through a literary approach. I found these books fascinating because the novels didn’t only share the perspective of one character’s narration but also through multiple characters. All the characters narrated in these stories came from different backgrounds as some of the characters were a part of the Ojibwe community while other characters were European settlers. I enjoyed this type of narrative throughout the story because it allowed me to experience how Indigenous people faced colonialism’s hardships and how their culture was affected permanently. Throughout this course, I hope to make similar connections with those two previous novels I have read.
This is a photo of my Dog! Her name is Callie and she just turned 2 years old!
Hi Kyle!
I must have taken the same Indigenous Studies course with you last semester. Dr. Dory Nason, right? I’m excited for you to be taking this course on Canadian Literature, and admire your plan to learn of Canadian peoples through its authors. As an English Literature major, I cannot help but feel you have picked a perfect course of action to get into the hearts and minds of people you may not understand. It’s one of the reasons I love literature and reading so much!
Glad to have you on this journey and I look forward to reading more posts from you in the future 🙂
Hi Cayla!
Yes we took the same course last semester because I was with Dr. Nason as well! I really appreciate your comment and totally agree on your point! I think as Canadians it is important we take into all the perspectives of our surrounding communities and I think this course can help with that! I look forward to working with you this semester and reading your posts as well!
Hello Kyle,
Thank you for your introduction, it is a pleasure to learn a little about your interests and thank you for the links. I have yet to read Tracks by Louise Erdrich, I hope I can find some time this semester. I am looking forward to working and learning together this semester.
Hello Erika,
It is great to hear from you and I am looking forward to learning more from your course this semester! Tracks is a novel I would highly recommend you reading for sure.
Hi Kyle,
As Cayla mentioned in her comment, I feel as though you have landed in a great spot with this course in regards to your Major and Minor at UBC! Having a wealth of knowledge on literature from all around the globe, developing a richer understanding of Canadian Literature will prove to be quite interesting.
If you haven’t read it already, I recommend checking out “Therapeutic Nations: Healing in an Age of Indigenous Human Rights.” Written by Dian Million, this text looks into and unpacks various elements of Canada’s colonial history and the hardships of Indigenous Peoples throughout. One part of this reading that I found especially interesting is something Million calls “Felt Theory.” This section of the reading, it dives into the stories and experiences through a lens of the Indigenous female population and details the “racialized, gendered, and sexual nature of their colonialization” (Million, 56.) It is a very worthwhile read.
Here is a link – https://tinyurl.com/yxhclf3x
Looking forward to future discussions as we take on this course together!