Mihai Covaser in his podcast studio

Mihai Covaser has worked for a number of years with a variety of Canadian organizations related to inclusion and accessibility for youths with disabilities. In the summer of 2021, he received a grant through the #RisingYouth Initiative, presented by the not-for-profit group Every Canadian Counts, to promote social change in his local community.

With this grant, Covaser started a podcast talking to people about the limitations in public schools for people with varying disabilities. Covaser has cerebral palsy, and with this project, his goal is to raise awareness on how schools can be more inclusive and accessible to people with disabilities, using his own lived experience as the basis.

The podcast, entitled Help Teach, brings forward the lived experiences of interviewees, concrete action items for educators, and additional resources in hopes of supporting teachers in their efforts to make their classes more accessible.

Covaser is currently a second-year student working on his Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in French and Economics, Political Science and Philosophy. In his first year, he took a Digital Humanities (DIHU 220) course that was based around digital audio media and podcasting.

“In that class, we did a podcasting assignment, and after seeing this grant opportunity, I decided, ‘Why not run a podcast on my own’?”

He was able to use the grant money to purchase professional equipment and support for recording, editing, and production. Then in a third year Communications and Rhetoric course (CORH 321), Covaser decided to continue to produce his podcast and use that as his final project, which was to be centered around community service learning.

He explains that the podcast is a collaboration between the grant, the initial project idea, and the class expectations that ended up being really beneficial for him.

“I am able to use skills from the class that I was learning and implement them in the project.” He adds that the podcast is interview based. “My stories and the stories of my interviewees are sort of the evidence and the lived experience that comes forward to drive home the messages.”

Covaser says that the communication and rhetoric class was very interesting to him, being about interpersonal communication and professional and personal identity. The focus was about how we communicate with others, the tools we use to communicate, and how that influences the comprehension of the information that ultimately gets out to people.

“Being part of the class gave me a really unique opportunity to explore a variety of media. It helped me to solidify my choices in the podcast, giving me an opportunity to use my voice exclusively, showing how we can be conscious of the experiences of others when we are communicating.”

He points out that the difficult part about advocating for change like this is that many people work from the bottom up, with individual teachers or students making changes in the classroom for inclusivity. While that may trickle out to other classrooms, his ultimate vision is to work from the top down.

“My ultimate vision is to get the curriculum of educators changed to include more information about accessibility and a variety of disabilities so that teachers come into the classroom already more prepared to accommodate a variety of disabilities.”

The podcast aims to have a variety of perspectives come together to identify the obstacles or the challenges that are most present, and most problematic, and then provide ways of working together towards some solutions. The pilot episodes of Help Teach featured youth leaders from the Rick Hansen Foundation, with whom Covaser works closely to produce this project and others

In an episode released this October, Covaser spoke with a specialist educator, who works with gifted students and students with emotional, mental, and academic challenges.

“Our discussion was fantastic. She talks about being authentic and being intentional.”

He adds that if he could leave one message about this podcast, it would be for educators to think about how they’re being authentic, and how they’re being intentional in their approach to inclusiveness.

Each episode of the podcast ends with a “key takeaway”, which is a concrete action item that an educator could implement in the classroom immediately to help make it more accessible and inclusive for people that may be facing a variety of obstacles to their educational journey.

So far, Covaser has released 10 episodes, with his intended audience being educators in Canadian primary and secondary schools. The education system is under provincial jurisdiction so he has focused the first episodes on his experience in BC, but says he is hoping to generate tools that are useful to all educators.

Listen to the “Help Teach” Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Transistor.

Jim Tanner at his retirement party, December 2013

By Carolyn MacHardy, Professor Emerita (Art History), UBC Okanagan

Jim Tanner, who died on September 18, 2022, was a highly respected teacher, colleague and friend. He taught painting and drawing at OUC, and then at UBCO from 1983 to 2014, when he retired. He is survived by his wife, Dianne, and their children Aria and Mark.

Jim’s years at OUC and UBCO involved teaching, a lot of committee work, and administration, including serving as Department Chair of Fine Arts from 1998 to 2001.  He was a sought-after adviser for the intensive fourth year B.F.A studio course, and both students and colleagues valued his astute comments and his ability to encourage students to push through on their ideas.

Jim had a broad range of interests: in his paintings he drew from Romantic poetry as in his Keatsian On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer, and from the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio in Interruption. He read widely, often sharing favourite books with others:  Sid Marty’s Men for the Mountains and Tim Cope’s On the Trail of Ghenghis Khan open windows onto Jim’s love for all things to do with mountains and traveling. Jim’s passion for the mountains was apparent in everything he did: they appear in many of his paintings and they prompted many extended hikes throughout BC and beyond with friends and family. Jim’s knowledge of alpinism in Canada was both personal and professional, and he was a life time member of the Alpine Club of Canada.

Jim was a sincere and gentle man who had great integrity.  I always thought that his creative space was the wider world beyond the confines of his studio: it was the mountains, the seacoast, and his own backyard where he delighted in being a “watcher of the skies”.

Carolyn MacHardy
Professor Emerita (Art History)

Jim Tanner (right), along with his wife, Dianne Tanner (left), and BFA alumnus Kyle Miller (centre) at Jim’s retirement party, December 2013.

Dr. Kelly Doyle

Dr. Kelly Doyle earned an Interdisciplinary PhD from UBCO in 2015. She is a member of the International Gothic Association, the Popular Culture Association of the South, and The Society for Cinema and Media Studies. A faculty member in Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU)’s English department, she teaches horror fiction and film, critical theory, and university writing, and she chairs the search committee. She is an advisory board member, reviewer, author, and lead copyeditor for KPU’s official film studies publication, Mise-en-scène: The Journal of Film & Visual Narration. In her spare time, she can be found weightlifting, practicing calisthenics, or watching horror films!

We met up with Kelly to talk to her about her time here at UBC Okanagan and what she is doing now.

Tell us a bit about your dissertation.

Shortly after 9/11, there was a zombie renaissance in film and I became interested in understanding why. Using posthuman philosophy I explored how the figure of the zombie in horror films from 2001 to 2012 exposes and challenges the discursive formulation of what it means to be human in the context of historical events like 9/11: who can be othered, and to what end. I argued that exploring the limits of the human prompts a consideration of the human capacity for ethics and social justice since if boundaries do not hold between races, sexes, and species, it becomes impossible to justify sexism, speciesism, and racism in the world outside the screen. In films from 28 Days Later to Resident Evil to World War Z, there are mediations on American Exceptionalism, 9/11, genocide, and other touchstone societal anxieties that deserve close critical scrutiny.

Tell us about the road to earning your UBC degree and some highlights of your time here.

I chose to come because of Jodey Castricano. There was simply nobody else I wanted to work with who I felt could help me do my project justice. Tempering expectations living in a smaller place was difficult at first, but I wouldn’t trade the experience. I overcame challenges by seeking support from my supervisor and my new grad school friends. Nobody has the mental fortitude to get through grad studies alone! Highlights would be the long hours with friends in the grad student office, alternating serious work with serious silliness. Organizing the graduate student conference. The day I won a teaching award, and the day I successfully defended my dissertation with the support of my committee. FCCS faculty and friends in the defense room and outside of it. Social events with classmates and professors, and interesting but challenging classes.

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

My supervisor, Dr. Castricano was pivotal to my success. They believed in my project from the first email I sent and modelled professionalism, confidence, and success. Working with Dr. Stouck was also key to getting me where I am today. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Dr. Grinnell, as well as Dr. Francisco Pena. Dr. Daniel Keyes helped me to refine my approach to film and forwarded me conferences and calls for papers that might be of interest.

It’s been seven years since you completed your dissertation, what are you doing now and what are your future plans?

As a faculty member in KPU, I’ve developed four courses that center around horror film, fiction, and transmedia, with another upper-level course on horror film in development. I am also working with the Vancouver Horror Show Film Festival as a guest judge for their Table Read series, a horror film script competition. One of my film studies assignments offers the option to make a short horror film to the VHS. In the future, I have some exciting ideas for collaboration with other institutions and departments at KPU, field trips for film students, more publishing, research, and conferences in my areas of interest, and a revising of my film course on the evolution of the zombie in horror film.

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

First, take care of yourself. I struggled mentally and physically near the end of my degree as I packed on weight and sustained back and wrist issues. If I could go back, I would insist on treating my nutrition and fitness as a priority. Second, you are going to struggle. Make friends with your classmates; you’ll need to laugh and commiserate. Third, advocate for yourself. Apply to conferences and scholarships, and if your relationship with your committee or supervisor isn’t working, change it. Fourth, plan for the future: keep your CV updated throughout your program and seek out advice about job interviews and how to be a successful candidate. Finally, when you convocated, take some time to enjoy what you’ve accomplished instead of worrying about what comes next.

Hummingbird flag installed in the courtyard at UBC Okanagan

Students and faculty from UBCO came together for a series of workshops to carve a hummingbird relief print in honour of the children (little spirits) who never came home and to remember the unmarked graves at residential schools across Canada. Offered by Indigenous Faculty Tania Willard (Secwepemc and settler), Assistant Professor in Visual Arts, the project featuring hundreds of flags installed in the courtyard at UBCO the installation, with dozens of uniquely carved hummingbird images, will grow each year as we gather and take action to as we continue to demand justice for Indigenous communities and realise the impact on all of us.

Special thanks to all of the contributing artists:

• Alex Basaraba
• Autumn  Beehley
• Renay Egami
• Tessa Gough
• Liz Hilliard
• Mei Henderson
• Asahna (Casey) Hughes
• Tess Lea
• Astrida Neimanis
• Dante Nieuwold
• Shauna Oddieifson
• Julia Pearson
• Katherine Pickering
• Nasim Pirhadi
• Alisha Salim
• Madison Tardif
• Carrie Terbrasket
• Odelle Walthers
• Tania Willard
• Holly Anne Yacynuk

The flags were installed at UBC Okanagan in the courtyard from September 29 to Oct. 3, 2022. See photos of the process of creating, printing and installing the flags.

Katherine Pickering and Liz Hillard creating their humming bird images on the lino blocks

Carrie Terbrasket, Tess Lea and Astrida Neimanis creating their hummingbird designs on the lino blocks

Some of the completed lino blocks

Students Dante Nieuwold and Nasim Pirhadi printing the lino blocks onto the orange fabric

Some of the completed printed flags

Installing the flags in the courtyard

Tania Willard with the installed flags

Dr. Nikhita Obeegadoo

Nikhita Obeegadoo joined UBC Okanagan in July 2022 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages and World Literatures. She is originally from Mauritius, an African archipelago in the Indian Ocean. Nikhita holds a PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, as well as undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Comparative Literature from Stanford University. Her research focuses on oceans and archipelagoes as spaces of intertwined cultural and ecological legacies.

At UBCO, she currently teaches courses on the environmental and medical humanities, as well as on francophone women’s writings. As part of her commitment to decolonizing knowledge, Nikhita’s courses foreground texts and theories emerging from various regions of Africa, South Asia and Latin America, as well as from archipelagic spaces across the world.

Dr. Obeegadoo shared some insights on her teaching and research practices.

What brought you to UBCO?

When I first saw the job posting for an Assistant Professorship in Francophone and Transcultural African Studies at UBCO, I was immediately compelled: While most of the world, including elite academic institutions, continues to view Africa as a monolith, here was a job that had the transcultural aspects of Africa embedded in its very title! It was impossible for me not to apply. Although I had never heard of the Okanagan or UBCO before, I was excited to move to a completely new part of the world, and to contribute to a young university that is still very much growing and defining itself. So, here I am!

Tell us about your research interests

My research explores how contemporary writers from the Indian Ocean and Caribbean (re)imagine the ocean as a space of simultaneously threatened cultural memory and multispecies ecology. In many literary texts, the ocean functions as an archive, that holds within itself traces of intergenerational trauma from the Middle Passage, the Kala Pani crossing, and clandestine migrations. At the same time, it is a space of rising tides and plastic pollution, that chokes out the bodies of dead dolphins on beaches only accessible to tourists. How can literature help us work through the complex ways in which past colonial violence and present environmental challenges are linked? How can it help us give shape to the various feelings, from climate anxiety to survivor’s guilt, that one might associate with the sea? And finally, how can it better equip us to respond to pressing intertwined challenges of our time, including climate change and calls for reparations?

What kind of learning experiences do offer your students?

My courses are highly interactive: We read lots of great contemporary literature about topics that are very hard to deal with, such as enslavement and incurable diseases, and we talk about and engage with these themes in a variety of ways. If students are to take away one skill from my courses, it is the ability to hold conversations about difficult and interlinked topics such as race, colonialism, gender, climate change and global health in a highly rigorous and yet deeply culturally sensitive and respectful manner. Imagine what a different place the world might be, if we did not tiptoe uncomfortably around these topics or brush them under the carpet, but instead were equipped with the tools to engage them in intellectually and ethically productive ways!

What most excites you about your field of work? 

At this particular moment in history, conversations about past injustices are gaining momentum both within and beyond academia, and I am excited by literature’s potential to help us explore important questions around identity and our relationship to others. One question that frequently comes up in both my teaching and research is the following: What does it mean to “compare” experiences across different cultures? For example, multiple literary texts attempt to foster empathy for enslaved subjects by comparing their trauma to that encountered by WWII prisoners in concentration camps. How can that kind of comparison be problematic, even if it is borne from the best intentions? The classroom is a great safe space to foster these kinds of discussions, which then find their way into the real world.

Tell us about any recent awards

Last year, I was awarded a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, which allowed me the time and freedom to conduct essential fieldwork and finish writing my dissertation. One of the most precious experiences of that time was the ability to travel to San Basilio de Palenque in northern Colombia. The Palenque began as a settlement of maroon slaves during the seventeenth century, and continues to preserve its distinct cultural and linguistic heritage, including palenquero, a Spanish-based creole. Visiting the Palenque reframed my research in an important way, from legacies of colonialism (which can be depressing to focus on) to more empowering legacies of resilience, creativity and joie de vivre in the face of all odds that enslaved peoples have bequeathed our generation. At the same time, the visit reminded me of the need to keep fighting for history to be preserved: one of the community members explained that palenquero is slowly vanishing, as people move away from the Palenque to big cities for work.

What: Workshop: Indigenizing the Japanese Language Curriculum: Lessons and Perspectives from Indigenous Voices
Location: Online via Zoom
When: Friday, October 14 from 12:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m (PDT)

Many foreign language instructors are undertaking the important work of indigenizing the language learning curriculum, and are looking for theoretical frameworks and real-life examples of how Indigenization can be applied in our field. This workshop will borrow the case of the Ainu, the Indigenous peoples of Japan, as the example for indigenizing a foreign language course of study, but teachers of any foreign languages related to colonized peoples will benefit from the discussions of theory, pedagogy, and practical applications. The workshop will be conducted in English with translation provided where necessary. The first half of the workshop will address theoretical questions regarding Indigenization, Decolonization and the particular case of the Ainu. The second half will focus on hearing the experience and methodologies of instructors involved in teaching Indigenous languages both within formal academic institutions and in community settings.

Schedule

12:30 Welcome

12:45  What does it Mean to be Ainu in the 21^st Century?

Dr. Kanako Uzawa, Artist, Activist and Affiliated Researcher at Hokkaido University

1:15  What Does it Mean to “Indigenize” the Curriculum?

Dr. Kerrie Charnley, English and Cultural Studies, UBC Okanagan

20 minute presentation followed by 5 minute Q&A

 1:45  What Does it Mean to “Decolonize” the Language-Learning Curriculum?

Dr. Ryuko Kubota, Professor, University of British Columbia Vancouver

Group discussions of speaker-suggested and related questions

3:15  Syilx Language House Model

Dr. Michele Johnson, Executive Director, and Instructor, Okanagan College

3:40  Sito Channel, Nibutani Ainu Language School and Te Ataarangi Model

Ms. Maya Sekine and Mr. Kenji Sekine

4:05   Other Indigenous Language Models – Mayan

Dr. Monica Good, University of British Columbia Okanagan

4:30  Demonstration of Sample Open Educational Resource

Ms. Nina Langton, University of British Columbia Okanagan

4:40  Group discussions about potential lesson plans, learning objects, applications of the theory and models

The workshop is free and open to all secondary and post-secondary foreign language instructors.

Indigenizing Curriculum presentations

The workshop is generously supported by the Japan Foundation Toronto, the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, and the Department of Languages and World Literatures.

Please contact Nina Langton at nina.langton@ubc.ca for more information.

Jon Vickery

Dr. Vickery joined UBCO in 2006 as a sessional instructor, and is now a full time Lecturer in the Department of English and Cultural studies. He is currently teaching first-year courses in literary genre, second year courses in historical literature, and a popular literature course in science fiction.

Dr. Vickery shared some insights on his research and teaching practices here at UBC Okanagan.

What brought you to UBCO?

My wife and I were living in downtown Toronto when we felt a strong tug to exchange the big city for big mountain views. Once I had completed the residency for my doctoral program at the University of Toronto, we moved to Kelowna where I wrote my dissertation while working as a sessional instructor (starting in 2006) at the newly minted UBC Okanagan. It was an important move for us and one that we’ve never regretted. Being part of UBCO since its early days, watching it grow and develop, has been a rich experience and I’m excited for good things to come.

Tell us about your research interests.

My research focuses on religious text in sixteenth and seventeenth century England, a period when Europe changed profoundly through the seismic activity of multiple reformations, both Protestant and Roman Catholic. These religious renewal movements affected society at every level and the literature of the period reflects the deep spirituality and the theological energies of the time. My own research looks to the complex phenomenon of English Puritanism which had a profound influence on such momentous literary figures as John Milton and John Bunyan. My writing considers Puritanism as an intellectual movement, looking to its sources and demonstrating, among other things, its dependence upon the philosophical wealth of medieval scholasticism. While some influential studies have characterized the Puritans as largely distrustful of and hostile to the larger Catholic tradition, I seek to situate some notable Puritan writers in a more intellectually generous and ecumenical stream.

How did you know you wanted to be a professor?

Not long before entering my BA program, I purchased a volume by the Oxford scholar, CS Lewis: his Preface to Paradise Lost. At the time, I was out of my depth, but Lewis’ influence upon me was and continues to be incalculable. When I entered the university as an undergraduate, I knew that I wanted, in some small way at least, to be like this Oxford writer. Happily, my first English professor turned out to be an admirer of Lewis as well, which mutual appreciation has been profoundly formative in its own way.

In the fourth year of my undergrad, I presented a paper to my fellow students on Hamlet and the Kierkegaardian concept of dread. The next day my Shakespeare professor stopped me in the hall and strongly recommended that I dedicate my life to this kind of teaching. It was a striking moment, and it underscores for me the significance of a professor’s influence outside the classroom. I’ve carried her words (and Kierkegaard’s concept) with me ever since.

What is your own process in writing?

I’ve learned over time to expect relatively little from myself in my first draft. It took a wise professor to persuade me that my first draft will usually be poor indeed (he used a scatological term) and that it’s the editorial process that transforms base elements into richer metals. Without the pressure of creating a brilliant first draft, writing is a much more enjoyable and far more fruitful enterprise. Martin Luther in the sixteenth century famously encouraged his readers to “sin boldly.” He has since been widely misunderstood, but, if I might apply his dictum in a literary direction, I think it’s good advice for the writer. Sin boldly in the draft. Get it out, with all its faults and defects. Editing takes what is weak and makes it strong.

Saeed Sabzian

Saeed Sabzian is a Lecturer in the Department of English and Cultural Studies. He specializes in the theory of rhetoric in an interdisciplinary scope, using multimodal frameworks in the analysis of language, literature, cinema and culture in general. Saeed has taught courses in rhetoric, composition, literature, and communication in the sciences and engineering. He has translated several literary theory and fictional books from English to Farsi and has published a book on disability studies.

Dr. Sabzian shared some insights on his research and teaching practices here at UBC Okanagan.

What brought you to UBCO

The wide spectrum of programs and courses at UBCO is a great fit for my interdisciplinary interests, where I see opportunities for research and teaching rhetorical theory in most of the programs that FCCS offers such as Visual Culture, Aural Culture, Creative Writing, Cultural Studies, English, and Media Studies, Science Communication, and more.

Tell us about your research/teaching interests and what excites you about your field of work

I am interested in bringing rhetorical theory into an interdisciplinary framework to explain cultural artefacts, literary texts, film. I engage in these by combining classical concepts in rhetoric with more modern fields of study, such as cognitive science, sound studies, visual theory, and narratology to draw meanings hidden to non-interdisciplinary methods of study. I have utilized these hybrid regimes of analysis to explain anxiety in American culture as signaled in novels and films. I’m excited about the abundance of interdisciplinary activities in the realm of rhetoric. With the transition of universities toward interdisciplinary research in social and cultural phenomena, I see exciting opportunities to explore my favorite topics in culture, language, philosophy, science and technology.

How did you know you wanted to be a professor

Years ago, while I was a high school English teacher, I used to teach translation, literature, and literary theory. This experience brought my two passions together: I could teach and publish the same ideas, expanding my reach in the two realms. I think the desire to become a professor was incepted there.

What kind of learning experiences do you offer your students

Experiences that would equip students with life-long skills by internalizing these experiences through practice. Among these is “critical thinking”, which is vital to students “flourishing” in life, a skill that I foster through broadening students’ perspectives by exposure to conflicting perspectives. Th experience of adopting an enlarged perspective on the world (science, technology, and people) enhances students’ reasoning, argumentation, and cooperation with others.

What is your process in writing

My most recent publication began with several books in translation, basically fiction, literary theory, and literary dictionaries. Following a co-authored literary lexicon in 2009, I shifted to multimodal rhetoric, researching how rhetoric can be used to explain the psyche and motives of a culture through its manifestation in language, sounds, and images, for example anxiety in American culture in postapocalyptic films. Post-2015, I published a book in Farsi on Disability Studies, from the perspective of interdisciplinary rhetoric. Currently, I am re-shaping my research for publication, while I am also exploring the real of “rhetoric of science”.

What do you enjoy about living here and working at UBC Okanagan

I like UBCO both for its positive and diversified environment, and for its location on the landscape of Okanagan, which draws me to daily connection with nature. I was born in a mountainous small town, so I am endlessly interested in and grateful for the Okanagan mountains, lakes, and woods, where I enjoy hiking, walking, swimming, and paddling in the Okanagan. UBCO’s campus is a place of positivity, cooperation, and connectedness.

Kanako Uzawa demonstrating a traditional mouth harp

Local residents and members of the Indigenous community in Vernon enjoyed an introduction to the culture of the Ainu, the Indigenous people of Japan, in an outdoor event sponsored by FCCS on July 31. The event was entitled, Reframing Ainu Indigeneity.

Ainu scholar, artist and activist, Kanako Uzawa, discussed traditional and contemporary cultural and political issues, then demonstrated a traditional mouth harp and presented an original dance composition.

The audience also participated enthusiastically in singing an Upopo, a traditional song in the round, followed by a question-and-answer session. Dr. Uzawa was in transit between Banff, where she participated in a 3-week Indigenous choreographers and dancers lab at the Banff Centre, and Vancouver, where she spoke and performed at Haida House at the UBC Vancouver Museum of Anthropology.

More information about Dr. Uzawa and contemporary Ainu culture can be found on the Ainu Today website that she administers.

Photo credit: Wayne Emde Photography

FCCS prof, Nina Langton introducing Kanako Uzawa at the event

Kanako Uzawa presenting an original dance composition

Kanako Uzawa

Dr. Michael Treschow

Dr. Michael Treschow is the Head of the Department of English and Cultural Studies, and a researcher and teacher in early English Literature, both Old and Middle English. He was born in Calgary to parents who had immigrated from Denmark after World War II, and grew up in a quiet neighbourhood close to the Elbow River, which in those days was a wonderful playground. After graduating with a BA from the University of Calgary, Treschow began graduate work at Regent College in Old Testament Studies, but after a couple of years, he left Regent to do a Masters and PhD in Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. He has lived in Kelowna since 1990.

Dr. Treschow shared some insights on his research and teaching practices here at UBC Okanagan.

Tell us about your research interests. 

As a medievalist and Anglo-Saxonist, my scholarship is grounded in the early European tradition. My attention goes primarily to the Anglo-Saxon period (the time of Beowulf), secondarily to the later Middle English period (the time of Chaucer and the Pearl poet), and after that reverts to late antiquity. My large concern is with the transmission and transformation of classical and biblical literature into early English cultural forms. Lately, I have become particularly interested in early expressions of English mysticism in the Anglo-Saxon period. For some years, I have had an eye on the late medieval development of English mystical writing in the fourteenth century, when, for instance, an anonymous writer composed The Cloud of Unknowing (a wondrous invitation into apophaticism), and when Julian of Norwich wrote her beautiful and now celebrated Shewings. But I have begun to perceive expressions of the contemplative and mystical in some Old English writings from several centuries earlier. I am looking to understand how those texts function, how they affect the reader, but also how they developed, what their relationship might be to Carolingian writings in Francia, especially those of John Scottus Eriugena, another eloquent voice of apophaticism.

On another note, I have been working slowly for many years on a digital edition of the Old English Soliloquies (which I call the Soliloquiorum), a translation and adaptation of Augustine’s Soliloquia. Very recently, I have begun to collaborate with a couple of Digital Humanists at the University of Exeter, who are much more expert in XML encoding than I am. It looks like this project may finally have a chance to come to light. This edition intersects with my interest in Old English mysticism, since this text is one of those in which I have begun to discern the contemplative and mystical.

How did you know you wanted to be a professor? 

Strangely enough, when I began university, I intended to study Math or Chemistry. On a whim though, I took a course in Ancient Greek which in turn led me to a course on Biblical Hebrew. These old dead languages captivated me. As a result, my undergraduate degree ended up focussing on classical and biblical studies. After I had finished my BA, I took a course on medieval biblical exegesis. It led me to my first encounter with St. Augustine, my first reading of his Confessions and de Doctrina Christiana. With him, I discovered a new way to read that came to me as something entirely refreshing. At the same time, I was taking a side interest in my own Danish heritage, especially the heroic age of the North. I read Beowulf and some Old Norse Sagas, and began looking more closely at Tolkien and his scholarship on things northern. Thus, I found my way into the Anglo-Saxon period, especially the time of Alfred the Great, when both Augustine’s salutary writings and the brutal invasions of the Vikings were in play. That period caught my attention entirely, with the wealth of understanding that it offers. I started into it and just kept going. The clearest path was into the professoriate.

What kind of learning experiences do you offer your students? 

Formative ones, I hope. In the classroom, I rely on Aristotle’s insight that stories have a kinship with philosophy. A good story has both intellectual and emotional power. It brings about a sense of wonder, which, as Socrates said, is the beginning of philosophy. The academic investigation of the literary text is a way of taking care to notice its wonders and investigate them. It takes a bit of work, though, to develop the philological skills for that investigation: grammatical, linguistic, historical, and conceptual. One of my favourite books to teach is The Hobbit, though I haven’t taught it for a very long time. It is wonderful when we come to consider Gandalf’s concluding words: “My dear Bilbo! Something is the matter with you! You are not the hobbit that you were.” We as a class, a small scholarly community, have journeyed with Bilbo “there and back again.” Gandalf invites Bilbo, and us, into a profound moment, a reflection on the getting of virtue and wisdom.

What most excites you about your field of work?  

Editing an early text from an old and damaged manuscript is painstaking, but it can be extremely satisfying work. The puzzles and problems that a manuscript presents bring challenges, sometimes insoluble ones. Working through them as best one can is what brings the text into the light, even with gaps, flaws, deficiencies. Preparing a digital edition adds further layers of complication, but with valuable analytic possibilities.

What I most appreciate in my work is the adventure of reading old, outdated books in old, outdated languages. That may seem escapist, and it may well be sometimes. But it can be a good thing to escape, as Tolkien says in “On Fairy Stories.” My reading is also often difficult and painstaking work, but when I pay attention, I sometimes find the task becomes more about the text reading me than me reading it.  Much as that may feel discomforting, it can also be like a dip in the ocean, that refreshes and renews for the drudgery of other things.