Masters of Arts in English Students

Our students and graduates of our programs are our best ambassadors. View the student profiles for you to discover more about them and their research.

Alumni

Olivia Abram

M.A. English Literature and Place Theme

Olivia Abram is a high school English teacher and sports enthusiast from Edmonton, Alberta. After teaching for three years, a new strand of Indigenous-based foundational requirements were added for teachers through Alberta Education. This sprouted her MA project focus, to explore a framework for settler-situated reading of Indigenous texts, specifically the works of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a Mississauga Nishnaabeg writer. The title of her presentation at the USask Honours Colloquium was “Instead of Dismantling the Settler’s House, Building a New One”. She completed her Bachelor of Education at the University of Alberta and her Bachelor of Arts equivalency at University of Saskatchewan. Olivia was a nominee for the Edwin Parr Teaching Award, was named a three-time CCAA Academic All-Canadian, and is the recipient of the UBCO Graduate Dean’s Entrance Scholarship.

Jessica Beaudin

M.A. English Literature and Place Theme

Jess completed her undergraduate degree in English Literature in her hometown at the University of Lethbridge, with a focus on Modernist and Contemporary literature. Post-graduation, she spent three years delaying the inevitability of graduate school, living in Edmonton, and working a bank job where people complimented her emails. In her spare time, she enjoys making bad kitschy pottery, being in the same room as her mutt, and sometimes small runs. Also reading. In summation of ever-growing research interests, Jess has a big crush on the world of posthuman and critical animal studies, as well as interests in transhumanism and biomedical ethics. The conversation with animal studies often necessarily extends to environmental ethics so, that too. She is a lover of dystopian, sci-fi, mostly contemporary, some Modernist, some PoMo. Offside, she digs feminist legal theory and Holocaust theory.

Brianne Christensen

M.A. English Literature and Place Theme

Brianne completed her BA in English (Hons) at UBCO before joining the MA in English graduate program in 2021. Her SSHRC-funded thesis project––“Hospitality in Crisis: New Sincerity and Receiving the Stranger in Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet”––explores, with specific consideration of post-Brexit immigration discourse and literary mood, how thinking migration, hospitality, and sincerity in very concrete ways structures Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet as a literary project. Brianne received the Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement, allowing her to complete site research abroad hosted by the University of Exeter. She presented work at the FCCS Research Series in 2022 and 2023, and at an event organized by the Routes Network at the University of Exeter. She presented papers at the ACCUTE Annual Conference 2022 and the Critical Relations Symposium 2023. Brianne’s research interests include hospitality studies, law and literature, migration, New Sincerity, narratology, and women’s writing.

Zach DeWitt

M.A. English Literature and Place Theme

Zach DeWitt was raised in Washington State before moving to Canada to complete his undergraduate degree. He received a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences from Quest University Canada, focusing on the intersection of philosophy, history, and literature. In his undergraduate thesis, Zach explored how metaphors of haunting offer students a new way to critically approach texts, particularly by rooting novels in their real-world histories and geographies. Both his thesis project and degree informed his lasting passion for interdisciplinary learning and teaching. At UBCO, Zach plans to write more about haunted theory, critical and decolonial pedagogy, and Indigenous Canadian literatures. In his free time, Zach likes writing about films, reading, going for lengthy walks, and listening to music.

Karis Dimas Lehndorf

M.A. English Literature and Place Theme

Karis (she/her/hers) graduated from MacEwan University in 2021 with a B.A. in English, with minors in Gender Studies and Philosophy. During her undergrad, Karis has enjoyed studying authors like Nella Larsen, Virginia Woolf, and John Milton. This past year she has been particularly drawn to children’s literature like Lewis’s The Magicians Nephew and Alcott’s Little Women. She is fascinated by looking at the ways women and girls are represented in these texts. Karis is eager to refine her understanding of critical literary theories such as Feminism, Queer theory, Postcolonialism, and Marxism to experience texts in new ways and contribute to a more diverse understanding of them. Karis has spent the majority of her life in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton) on Treaty Six Territory and is excited to be in a slightly warmer climate here in the Syilx Okanagan Nation Territory (Kelowna).

Dravida Anjuman Huda

M.A. English Coursework Option

As part of the MA program at UBC Okanagan, I aim to undertake my independent research mainly on the topic of trauma and memory studies in context of the contemporary postcolonial literature in English. A significant part of my research interest is to put literary texts that embody the issue of displacement in the tapestry of trauma and memory, and critically analyze how the study of the latter has gradually turned to become one of the most significant motifs of the former. Coming from the South-East Asian region of the world that has long been pinned with issues related to different variants of displacement (partition of India and Pakistan or formation of diaspora in American and European countries, for example), I intend to focus on South Asian literature in English that addresses the issue to a large extent.