Marie Loughlin
Marie Loughlin is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies. Marie Loughlin was born in Hamilton, Ontario and attended McMaster University (BA, ENGL Hons.) before doing her graduate degrees in English, with a specialization in early modern drama, at Queen’s University, Kingston. She taught briefly at the University of Calgary before returning to the Okanagan; she has taught at UBCO since its inception in 2005.
What brought you to UBCO?
After graduating with my PhD’s in the early 1990s, I was lucky enough to land a sessional position at Okanagan University College (OUC), the precursor of the Okanagan campus of UBC. After 2 years of working with exceptional colleagues, I left for the University of Calgary. Returning to Kelowna in 1998, I took up a permanent position as a college professor at OUC. I was privileged to be here when OUC became UBCO, and I have watched our campus grow and develop in ways that I would never have imagined possible.
Tell us about your research interests.
My research interests have tended to remain, until fairly recently, in the area of early modern English literature. Both of the anthologies I have edited deal with literature between 1550 and 1735. My two monographs are also on early modern literature. My most recent monograph, Early Modern Women Writers Engendering Descent: Mary Sidney Herbert, Mary Sidney Wroth and their Genealogical Communities (Routledge, 2022), concerns how two central women writers of the famous Sidney family employed and occasionally subverted the power of family, ancestry, and descent to write original works of poetry and prose at the very beginning of the women’s literary tradition. Recently, however, I have begun to teach and publish in the area of popular literature, focusing particularly on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, and that modern mythic figure: the superhero.
What most excites you about your field of work?
As I move into studying, teaching, and researching popular literature, I find that I am returning to the genres that were so important to me as a child: fantasy fiction, science fiction, myth, and detective fiction. I find it exciting to share my enthusiasm for these kinds of stories with students who are not English majors, but for whom Frodo Baggins, Iron Man, and Sherlock Holmes are figures that they are often passionately invested in. I developed ENGL 395 Popular Literature in order to allow non-English majors to explore those characters and narratives that have been, and in many cases remain, deeply resonant for them. Teaching this course has been a very rewarding experience, as has supervising Dana Mateline Penney, who will soon be officially awarded her MA ENGL with a titled “The Woman Warrior and Her Bodymind in Action: An Analysis of Bodies, Minds, Gender, and Movement in Wonder Woman, 1941 – 2017.” Working with new scholars like Dana has been a real joy!
Tell us about your work.
I’ve talked a great deal about my research and teaching in the field of English literature, but recently I have become very involved in the faculty’s new communications programming. In January 2023, I will teach CORH 216 Communication and Media for the second time, with a focus on the LEGO® Building System and its multi-media ‘reach.’ In this course, we will examine the LEGO® building system as a material medium of communication and rhetoric that has moved into other popular culture media—audio, visual, textual, and digital. I am very excited to discuss with my students how audience and message are inter-related for the LEGO® building system’s diverse audiences.
What do you enjoy about living here and working at UBC Okanagan?
Having grown up in an older Eastern city with enormous urban sprawl, I have most enjoyed living in such a beautiful place. I remember being driven to my BNB when I arrived first in Kelowna with my host apologizing for the ugliness of Highway 97’s feedlot, pawnshops, and strip malls. I only had eyes for the mountains. I walk here in nature frequently and feel grateful that I have been able to live and work here. UBC Okanagan specifically has been a wonderful place to work, open to innovation and the development of new areas of instruction and focus.
