Jannik Eikenaar

Jannik Haruo Eikenaar is a son, nephew, cousin, brother, husband, father, and uncle who lives and works on the ancestral, traditional, and unceded territory of the syilx Okanagan people. He is the child of Dutch and Japanese settlers to this part of the world, and he is strongly committed to principles of inclusive excellence in both his professional and personal lives. As an academic, he is an Associate Professor of Teaching in the School of Engineering, the Bauder Professor (Okanagan) of Experiential Learning and Leadership, and the inaugural Associate Provost (Okanagan) of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Antiracism.

Dr. Eikenaar completed both his Masters of Arts in English and his PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies in our English and Cultural Studies department. We talked to Dr. Eikenaar about his time earning his degrees here at UBCO.

Tell us about the road to earning your UBC degrees.

I grew up in the Okanagan and, like a lot of people who grew up in smaller towns, I couldn’t wait to get out. So that’s what I did when I graduated high school. I went to Montreal, completed my BA and thought I would never come back here. And then my partner and I started thinking about a family and where we would like to be connected, so we came back here. Originally, I considered pursuing a career in K-12 teaching but I quickly changed my focus to academia. I completed both my MA and my PhD here at UBC’s Okanagan campus.

What are the highlights of your UBC experience?

The Okanagan campus is a size that makes it really collegial. I’ve collaborated with people in every Faculty on campus and that’s been tremendously rewarding.

Is there a professor that stands out as someone who made a difference and helped you along the way? 

Drs. Jennifer Gustar and George Grinnell were both pivotal in my degree program. They gave me opportunities, pushed me, and challenged me to think differently. But in addition to that they also modelled how to be a good academic and how to be a good colleague. They’re both tremendously committed to the university as a place. I really value what I learned from them about bringing a positive approach and clearly modelling what you want the academy to be.

What advice would you have for a student who is contemplating currently pursuing their graduate degree at UBCO?

When you’re doing graduate work, it’s a unique opportunity and intellectual exercise. There are elements of risk and vulnerability to this work. I think it’s important to recognize that and try to be conscious of it, and then to embrace it in a way that allows you to manage your work and not feel overwhelmed. Connecting with others is huge, especially in the humanities. Given the nature of humanities scholarship it can be really isolating. Connecting and engaging with others is just so, so important in these fields of study and in doing this kind of work. And it really is shaping you as an academic. My advice is: embrace that vulnerability, take that risk, and connect with others.

Graduate students in our Masters of Arts and Masters of Fine Arts programs are currently organizing a graduate student conference, Critical Relations Symposium, that will be held at UBC Okanagan in April of this year. The organizing is being done by the It’s Lit! Club, founded by a group of masters students excited to bring more conversation and community to the literary community on campus.

It’s Lit! Club at UBCO encourages humanities students to connect, discuss, and expand the study of cultural texts, be they literature, art, music, media, or critical theory. To do this, It’s Lit! holds space for students to share developing research in conference events and community-building events, ultimately contributing to the development of informal and formal publications.

The Critical Relations Symposium is a two-day academic conference hosted on UBC Okanagan campus through the It’s Lit! Club, offering undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to share their research with the wider campus academic community. This year’s theme is encounters, and will take place in-person on April 28th and 29th, 2023. The Critical Relations Symposium is organized by Liam Fraser (MA), Karis Dimas-Lehndorf (MA), Zachary Dewitt (MA), Jessica Beaudin (MA), and Annie Furman (MFA). This event seeks to model the value of academic discussion and collaboration in and across the humanities disciplines, with emphasis and consideration for the expanding role of academic interdisciplinarity.”

Call for Papers

The Critical Relations Symposium is invested in encounters: in thinking across differences, in how we come together (whosoever that ‘we’ may be), and what possibilities or consequences encounters hold. We wonder about interdisciplinarity as both method and subject, and thus welcome submissions from across humanities and fine arts disciplines as individual presenters or panel discussions.

Please submit abstracts, didactic texts, exhibition proposals, panel proposals, and any questions to club.its.lit@gmail.com by March 17, 2023.

Abstracts should be no more than 300 words, submitted in .doc or .docx formats. Individual presentations will be 15-20 minutes, with Q&A periods to follow.

View the full CFP

Patrick Lundeen teaching a drawing class, 2023

The 2021-22 recipient of the FCCS Teaching Excellence and Innovation Award is Patrick Lundeen who received this award on the basis of students support and teaching evaluations. Lundeen teaches in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program, offering courses in two-dimensional art practices, drawing and sculpture.

This award is designed to recognize faculty members for teaching approaches that develop experiential learning, interdisciplinarity, internationalization, undergraduate research and scholarship.

Lundeen’s students say that he is very encouraging to everyone in class, and is always there if anyone needs a hand. He prompts them to dig deeper by asking questions about their ideas, and gives genuine feedback.

Lundeen says that his basic teaching philosophy is that he there to guide students to cultivate their own creativity, interests/ideas and working discipline.  “In many of my classes I am called to teach technical skills – yet I feel that even as I am teaching skills, I am mostly concerned with trying to help students figure out what they have that is interesting to communicate and how to best communicate it.”

This is what being an artist is about – a good artist is a person that has interesting ideas, their ideas work or are relevant within the time in history that they are being presented and they can effectively use a medium to communicate these ideas. He also works to introduce students to the local art community and develop a working discipline which are both necessary elements to continue to make art once they leave school.

Lundeen feels that often as one teaches it can seem that what you are doing goes mostly unnoticed, especially in fine arts which is a slow process where one’s development and growth happens incrementally over time and is not easily quantified through tests scores and other evaluations.

“When I think back to my own studies, sometimes the most important things that I learned from instructors was not obvious at the time,” he says. “It can take years for ideas to sink in and you may not even get the chance to apply what you learned until after you leave school.  At some point, you will be working in your studio, and it will dawn on you – this is what they were talking about.”

When asked why he wanted to teach at a university, Lundeen says that he didn’t set out to enter academia, he simply wanted to be an artist – which he still is – yet teaching has enabled him to obtain the resources he needs to keep making work while earning a living talking about what interests him the most.

“Working at the university nourishes my own creativity and represents an opportunity to give back to the community through helping other artists grow.”

He has a thriving art practice which is evident with a number of recent exhibitions and projects including CHEAP! at the Kelowna Art Gallery, and as the 2022 City of Kelowna Artist in Residence with his project, HAPPY DAY FREE GIFT TRUCK.

“My artworks are an attempt to deal with the horrors of everyday life in a humorous, and hopefully, entertaining way.  I try to create art objects that are surprising and original and that cause a viewer to rethink what they already know,” he says.

He likes to push the envelope of what can be accepted in a gallery space and to make art that tests people and takes them out of their comfort zone.

“My artworks can be loud, overly bright, busy and move. Often they will make a viewer laugh – and feel uncomfortable at the same time.”

Patrick in his HAPPY DAY FREE GIFT TRUCK project

HAPPY DAY FREE GIFT TRUCK

Installation, CHEAP! at the Kelowna Art Gallery

What: Hearts Together
Who: Cool Arts
When: February 6 to 16, 2023; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday
Where: FINA Gallery, CCS Building, UBC’s Okanagan Campus, Kelowna

The Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies is please to host the work of artist from Cool Arts Society FINA Gallery from February 6 to 16. Together with art educators during the weekly programs held in the Cool Arts Studio in the RCA, artists worked on the concept HEART, digging into the question – what does HEART mean? Artists discussed their feelings, thoughts, and ideas; then began their step-by-step big picture planning. These pieces are all representations of these collaborative ideas.

Each piece was created with a group of six to eight artists working together. This process encouraged and affected constructive communication and sharing ideas; including skill-building, listening, problem-solving, and planning.  The exhibition includes the work of 40 artists working together on art of all kinds that includes painting and collage.

The concepts that were shared covered a broad variety. Heart symbolism often conjures up a wide range of emotions, from joy to pain, love and devotion to moral courage and physical strength. The shape is securely embedded in western culture. Represented by an anatomically inaccurate shape, the heart is often used to represent the center of emotion, including affection and love, explains Amy Bradshaw, Arts Educator for Cool Arts.

“Cool Arts looks forward to our annual partnership with the FINA Gallery at UBCO where artists get the opportunity to professionally exhibit their art,” says Amy. “Creating these important opportunities in the arts for people with disabilities, neuro-diversabilities, and other exceptionalities aids in broadening connections and creating relationships with other artists on campus and beyond.”

She adds that it is important to have this recognized and well-funded FINA space to share the work done by people in our community who are seriously passionate about art and who want more public opportunities.

This exhibition is organized by Cool Arts Society and supported by the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies.

~ Submitted by Amy Bradshaw, Cool Arts Art Educator & Volunteer Coordinator

More on the Cool Arts Studio

The Cool Arts studio is a safe, inclusive art studio that offers programs and artistic mentorship with a variety of professional artists who share their skills and lead classes. Cool Arts is a registered not for profit charitable organization managed by a volunteer Board of Directors and others who share their time in many ways; as classroom assistants, event supports, exhibition installations, and so much more.  Cool Arts relies heavily on sponsorships and donors; we welcome your support. To learn more about how you can get involved with Cool Arts, please visit coolarts.ca.

Shirley at the UofC Law book launch, 2017

Shirley McDonald is a lecturer in the Department of English and Cultural Studies, teaching classes in English with a focus on the teaching of academic writing. Dr. McDonald moved to the Okanagan with her family in 1994, and completed her BA in 1999 at Okanagan university College (now UBCO). She went on to finish her graduate degrees in Alberta, and returned to UBCO in 2008 when she was hired to create the first online course for the English Department. She continues to teach English courses in the department, drawing on her own research to provide students with meaningful topics on which to write.

Dr. McDonald has published articles in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, ARIEL, Prairie Forum, and several Canadian studies journals. She has an essay in Gary Geddes: Essays on His Works, and two chapters and accompanying material in Farm Workers in Western Canada: Injustices and Activism, co-edited with Bob Barnetson (U of Alberta Press 2016).

Dr. McDonald shared some insights on her research and teaching practices here at UBC Okanagan.

How did you know you wanted to be a professor?

That realization came to me as a surprise when I was in my forties. I had planned to become a professional writer. I’d always been a writer. I won an award for a short story when I was in grade six. Writing was the one discipline that stuck with me over the many years of my assorted studies in liberal arts, fine arts, and music (voice). I dropped out of college to head out on the road with my band, but I kept writing even then, and even moreso as I settled down to raise a family. When my children were all in school, I returned to university. I went to SFU where I had the good fortune of studying poetry with Roy Miki and publishing the essay I wrote for Roy’s course. I still had a long way to go, however, to complete my BA.

The professor who inspired me to join the ranks of academia is John Lent. John is one of my favourite people on the planet. When I met him, I was writing a lot of poetry and a handful of poems earned a spot for me as a literary delegate at the BC Festival of the Arts. Two of the them, “The Turning” and “Pears”, are published in The New Quarterly. I also wrote a short story, “Out of Time”, which earned my spot as a literary delegate a second time. The story is published in Chasing Halley’s Comet: Winners of the Federation of BC Writers’ Festival Competition. John celebrated with me at a launch at Red Dog Books in Vernon. I also wrote a novel, which I workshopped in his fiction class. John’s generous and kind support helped my confidence grow. John encourage me to further my development as a writer and editor, but also as a teacher. To that end, I focused on writing-intensive courses during my doctoral program.

What is your own process in writing?

Like singing, writing is a performance and a prolonged embodied experience. I can be lost for hours in the alternate reality of my imagination. When a story begins to form, my surroundings fade and, as if I were merely a medium, the words seem to will themselves into existence. Later, I edit and restructure and cut and revise. The thing is that writing requires emotional and cognitive energy and lately, because teaching uses up my reserves, I have nothing left for the creative process. I take comfort in believing that I will have that energy again in my retirement and will resume my daily writing practice.

What kind of learning experiences do offer your students?

The creation of academic essays requires research before the writing process begins. Research yields evidence that requires documentation. Many students arrive at university with little awareness of how to or even the need to document that evidence. Thus, I developed a contextual method (models based on course readings) to teach students how to document their sources as they learn to write. Although I designed this practice-based approach for use in the classroom, I have found it to be equally successful in online learning. Teaching online is not the kind of performance that it is in the classroom where I have a presence. Online delivery requires my skills as a course designer to build the learning tools, as a technician to build the platform, then as a teacher and an editor to monitor and lead students through the learning process. The editing part, which takes place during the running of the course, requires hours of intense focus as I respond one by one to students’ exercises and essays, and provide each student with encouragement and with individual attention and guidance according to their writing strengths and weaknesses.

Join us on Wednesdays throughout the term for the Immersive Technologies Seminar Series.

Each week, artists and researchers from the Okanagan School of Engineering and the Faculty of Creative and Critical studies will offer presentations that look at immersive technologies in multidisciplinary and multi modal ways in the  Visualization and Emerging Media Studio (VEMS) here on campus.

Each talk will be held in the VEMS (COM 107) from 1 to 2 pm. Light refreshments will be served.

These talks are free and open to all. Registration is not required. See below for the list of speakers and dates:

Wednesday, January 25

• All the Stars we Cannot See | Dr. Megan Smith, Yujie Gao

Wednesday, February 1

• WaterWays | Dr. Aleksandra Dulic, Dr. Miles Thorogood

Wednesday, February 8

• Expanding Social Realities through Abstract Embodiment | John Desnoyers-Stewart

Wednesday, February 15

• Locus Amoenus: Place of Delight | John Power

Wednesday, March 1

• INTER/her | Camille Baker

Wednesday, March 8 (note time, 12:30-1:30)

• Awful Splendour | Andreas Rutkauskas

Wednesday, March 15 (note time, 12:00-1:00)

• Photorealistic visualization of nanoengineered materials | Kenneth Chau

Wednesday, March 22

• Virtual Reality | Annie Wan

Wednesday, April 12

• IMTC 507 Sympoium | Immersive Technology Design Studio Showcase

The Immersive Technologies Seminar Series is a collaboration between CITech and the Media Studies program, and is organized by NSERC CREATE in Immersive Technologies (CITech), a highly multidisciplinary graduate training program at UBC focusing on skills development and collaborative research to design immersive solutions for various real-world applications. Find out more about CITech.

Nathalie Hager

The 2020-21 recipient of the FCCS Teaching Excellence and Innovation Award is Nathalie Hager. Dr. Hager received this award on the basis of students support and teaching evaluations. She teaches in the Art History and Visual Culture program, offering courses in art and visual cultures of the world, History of the 20th Century Art, contemporary art history, art in Canada and in public art.

This award is designed to recognize faculty members for teaching approaches that develop experiential learning, interdisciplinarity, internationalization, undergraduate research and scholarship.

Hager’s students note that her lectures are engaging, and that she makes art history very interesting and fun to learn about, she presents the content of her classes in a clear and concise manner, she invites her students to offer their own perspective and creativity to projects, and even in the larger classes, students were given individualized treatment and she makes the effort to get to know each of her students.

Dr. Hager says that she believes in offering all students learning freedoms on par with their learning level and abilities. “My students are encouraged in their group or individual projects to research areas of the course that interest them the most, and to blend new learning with personal creativity for an empowering effect.”

She works to engage students by engaging listening and responding to them. “I learn from students how best to offer a transformative learning experience that will share with them my love for art and its history.”

One example of this is a project that Dr. Hager offered her students for bonus marks in 2020. The students in one of her first-year classes were invited to submit a Getty Challenge, to pick a favourite museum artwork, and find three things lying around the house and use them to recreate the artwork. The results were outstanding. The students were able to use what they had learned in the class and be truly creative with this project. View the results here.

She adds that when expectations are made clear and explicit, and when opportunities for practice and feedback are provided often, students gain confidence and take learning risks. “It is imperative to me that students walk away from the classroom and the course not only with a mastery of content but with a positive learning experience.”

In a 4^th year Public Art course, students get an overview of the field of public art and social practice and the role that public art plays in communities. To do this, Nathalie takes the students on a tour of public art in our local community. The images below show site visits to murals painted by visual arts students alongside instructor David Doody; a bee house created as part of the Pollinator Pasture project by creative writing prof, Nancy Holmes; and works around the UBC Okanagan campus that are part of the Public Art Collection.

Art history students visiting the mural site on Pandosay, summer 2022

Art history students doing a tour of public art at UBCO, pictured here with sn̓ilíʔtn (Story Poles) outside of the administration building

Art history students visiting the Pollinator Pasture project at the Grist Mill location near Dilworth mountain

Instructors from multiple sections of a first-year English course have participated in a community of practice (CoP) since 2020 as a space to support, mentor and collaborate with one another to address educational disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on shared experiences in regular bi-weekly instructional meetings, the team collectively developed teaching and learning approaches to engage students.

The team initially started with faculty members in the Department of English and Cultural Studies who were all teaching a section of ENGL 109, a course designed for both international and domestic students who wish to develop their university-level communication skills through extended practice.

“Understanding the differences in our teaching approaches were valuable because they offered good input in terms of our pedagogical practice, and newer ways of looking and thinking about the course,” says Anita Chaudhuri, Assistant Professor of Teaching in English and Cultural Studies. “We hoped that the conversations would inform our practice, scholarship of teaching and learning, and that students would feel better engaged and motivated to participate in the new online environment.

The idea of a community of practice was first initiated by Jordan Stouck in 2017 as the first year English Coordinator, and the tradition continues with Anita Chaudhuri as the Chair of the ENGL 109 CoP.

The CoP addressed some of the changes that became apparent and were important to deal with during this time, such as, shifting unexpectedly to remote teaching, accommodating the needs of diverse students who were undergoing their own challenges, and addressing mental well-being.

Saeed Sabzian, a lecturer in the department says that the CoP has been a really productive experience for him during the pandemic. “The meetings helped me to navigate what I needed to do. When our team got together, specifically when the COVID lockdown started, this community has been a source of support for me in many ways, from deciding on what exactly we should do with teaching, what methods work best in the context of the lockdowns, designing assignments how to mark them, and all the difficulties that the students were having and how best to communicate with them.” he notes.

For Jing Li “this was a highly collaborative community where each member cares for each other, particularly during those challenging times. It was important to have this teaching community that supported me through these challenging times.” Li joined the team in 2020 while teaching ENGL 109 and now teaches technical communication in the School of Engineering.

She adds that the team talked a lot about student mental health struggles and issues, and at the same time being a support for faulty members who were experiencing their own struggles. “Together we have worked to create a community culture where we supported and collaborated with each other to help our students, and also to become better educators.”

The group grew over the last two years to include faculty members from other areas of instruction and includes Anita Chaudhuri, Aisha Ravindran, Jordan Stouck and Saeed Sabzian, Jing Li, Sherry Breshears, Bridget Trainor, and Rina Garcia-Chua.

“In the fall of 2020, we were all struggling with isolation and technology. Through the meetings, even though they were online, we began to get to know each other and, with that, developed trust,” says sessional lecturer Bridget Trainor. “This feeling of trust led to a desire to do our best for our students and for each other.”

Even though times and teaching conditions have changed, the CoP has benefited from the bi-weekly conversations and continues to sustain what they have developed in terms of support for each other.

Members of the Community of Practice presented at the International Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) conference that was held at UBC Okanagan on November 4^th, sharing thematic outcomes of their participation in the group.

‘As agents of change, we consider the learning transformations that we will carry forward to new situations’

The presentation at the ISSOTL conference was titled, Using community of practice to inform SoTL transformation and growth: Five university instructors’ reflections (2022). At the intersections of SoTL: Transfer and Transformation, Diversity and Inclusivity.

View the ISSOTL 2022 Presentation

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council announced the recipients for the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship in the fall of 2022. We are proud to share that three of our doctoral students have received the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowships, which provides financial support for high-calibre students engaged in doctoral programs in the social sciences and humanities.

Below are the PhD recipients supervised in FCCS in the IGS programs, with a summary of their research.

Tara Nicholson is an artist and PhD student (IGS Digital Arts and Humanities) where her more-than-human research is documenting Arctic extinction and the erosion of permafrost ecosystems at a time when the Arctic is warming at a rate of 2-3 times faster than other landmasses. She is co-supervised by Jodey Castricano (FCCS) and Samuel Roy-Bois (FCCS) with committee members Astrida Neimanis (FCCS/CCGS) and Aleksandra Dulic (FCCS).

Her dissertation situates the Arctic as a harbinger of rapid change that is interlocked to the rising significance of the ‘frozen’ within scientific study and cultural narratives. Expanding permafrost studies, rewilding, cryo-preservation, species resurrection and the ability to ‘freeze’ the impacts of climate crisis are now interwoven into definitions of the North. Through storytelling, field research, studio production and literary review her research will culminate into a large-scale exhibition and artist publication. Recently, she presented at the “Animals & Landscapes Symposium” (Liverpool) and will be part of “Wicked Problems: The Humanities in an Age of Planetary Agenda-Setting” a catalyst grant collaboration between UBC Okanagan and Exeter University (UK).

Madeline Donald is a PhD student in the IGS Sustainability theme working with co-supervisors Greg Garrard (FCCS), Natalie Forssman (CCGS), and committee members John Wagner (CCGS), and Tess Lea (CCGS).

The title of her research proposal is: Investigating Brandt’s Creek’s fringe nature. Madeline’s research is an investigation into Brandt’s Creek, in Kelowna, British Columbia, unceded and occupied syilx territory, and the riparian beings it supports. Kelowna’s early colonial industrialization was a process that partitioned and paved over the expansive and ecologically complex floodplain that preceded the city, setting specific courses for water to flow through; this is how Brandt’s Creek came to be where it is today. Presently, the city’s waterways do not have the capacity to accommodate for current, let alone expected flows. Madeline is therefore asking the question, ‘What does Brandt’s Creek need in order to be(come) its most bountiful and vibrant self given the past histories, current policy ecology, and future needs of its diverse riparian communities?’

Eve Kaspryzycka is a PhD candidate in the Power, Conflict and Ideas theme having reached candidacy in the summer of 2022. Her CGS-D supported research bridges theoretical and intersectional perspectives on violence, governance and animals. Eve is supervised by Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics Fellow Dr. Jodey Castricano (FCCS), with committee members: Canadian Research Chair Dr. Astrida Neimanis (FCCS/CCGS), Lansdowne Chair in Law Dr. Maneesha Deckha (University of Victoria), Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics Fellow Dr. Kendra Coulter (Western University) and Dr. Kelly Struthers Montford (Toronto Metropolitan University).

The production of animal-based products contributes to a climate crisis that exasperates disparate levels of inequality among humans, other species and ecologies. Eve’s research examines how biotechnologies and their tangential apparats of commercial and governmental legitimization are successful in representing these destructive and oppressive “externalities” of economic growth as tantamount to progress, justice, and democracy. This dissertation maps the development of patenting laws, the advances in CRISPR and the intensification of value extraction between the genetic modification of nonhuman animals in xenotransplantation, species revival and industrial agriculture. Eve presented her initial findings at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics’ “Public Policy and Institutionalising Animal Ethics Symposium” in August, 2022.

Dave Laird with podcast co-host, Matt Bucher

Dave Laird received an MA in English from UBCO in 2016, with a thesis on David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Dave was co-supervised by Dr. Daniel Keyes and Dr. Paul Milton, with committee member Dr. George Grinnell. His thesis titled, “Saying God with a Straight Face”: Towards an Understanding of Christian Soteriology in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, looks at the theological resonances throughout Wallace’s 1996 doorstop novel Infinite Jest, as they relate to Christian doctrine and character redemption arcs, noting salvation states in the protagonists Hal Incandenza, Don Gately, and Mario Incandenza.

Dave says about the thesis:

This dialogue is considered through the lens of postmodernism and the New Sincerity movement in contemporary U.S. fiction, and offers that the novel urges readers to consider what it means to be human between the tensions of sin and salvation, reinvigorating a traditional understanding of grace and redemption in a modern context. The essay discovers that Jest is a highly soteriological novel, greatly attuned to salvation states reflected in the New Testament, particularly in the Pauline epistles.

We asked Dave to discuss his experience at UBCO as a master’s student.

Tell us about the road to earning your UBC degree.

After having been a high school classroom teacher, I felt it was time to go back to school. I’d had a burning desire to do something big on Infinite Jest since completing it in early 2008. Living in Kelowna at the time, UBCO’s proximity allowed me to avoid uprooting my life and family, and I’d had two wonderful English profs in my undergrad, Paul Milton and Dan Keyes, who were instrumental in my falling in love with contemporary U.S. fiction, so I knew I wanted to work with them for my MA.

Major challenges during my MA were finding a balance between coursework, thesis writing, podcasting, part-time online high school teaching, first-year English TA’ing for three semesters, living in Tel Aviv for six months, and being reminded of my overwhelming capacity for procrastination when it comes to academic writing.

What are the highlights of your UBC experience?

Highlights of the experience were working with my three great supervisors, and doing directed studies courses tuned to my interests in contemporary U.S. fiction. One course I took was on DIY Hardcore and Punk Subcultures, with George Grinnell, and that was one of the coolest courses I’ve ever taken.

TA’ing was fantastic as well. I also attended three academic conferences on Wallace during my MA. The connections I made from those conferences have resulted in some of the best friendships and led to the podcast, so I’m thankful for all the outworkings of my MA degree.

Tell us more about your podcast, Concavity Show.

I met my co-host, Matt Bucher at a Wallace conference in 2015, and having complained to my wife Rachel about how there wasn’t a specific podcast dedicated to DFW, she said, “Well why don’t you start one?” Matt and I’d randomly bumped into each other in O’Hare Airport on the way home after the conference, and I thought to reach out to him about doing a show, and he agreed.

After 5 and a half years of talking pretty exclusively about Wallace, we did a soft reset in 2021, changing the name to Concavity Show, and have been focusing more on contemporary fiction. As a result of the show, I’ve been interviewed by several literary podcasts and media outlets, had a blurb about Infinite Jest in The New York Times, was asked to be a weekly guide for an online community read of Jest in 2016 called “Infinite Winter,” was commissioned by Academia.edu to make an instructional video series on how to make an academic podcast, and have received dozens of free books from publishers and listeners, so that’s all been amazing.

What advice would you give to current or future graduate students?

My advice would be to find a laser-focused area of interest that you’re obsessed with to do your thesis project on and find supervisors who are with it regarding your topic. You’re going to be spending hundreds and hundreds of hours of research and writing on your topic, so make sure you’re incredibly interested and compelled by it. I’d also say that you should prepare to be intellectually humbled, both by your peers and profs. There’s no better way to realize how little you know than by doing grad school.

About Dave Laird

He has two published essays in volumes of Wallace scholarship, and is a founding board member of the International David Foster Wallace Society. In 2015 he started a podcast on Wallace with Matt Bucher, in which they interviewed a host of Wallace enthusiasts on a range of topics.  He is also the co-host of Concavity Show, a literary podcast about contemporary fiction and the world of books, and a senior-high humanities teacher in the Saanich School District on Vancouver Island. He is a highly-ranked competitive Android: Netrunner player, and a video game, board game, music, film, television, and Sweden enthusiast.