Department of English and Cultural Studies

This interdisciplinary department offers the opportunity to study literature and culture.

What we do

In our English program, students can study English literature, not only in its historical unfolding, but also in contemporary Canadian and global contexts. Our English programs include the BA Major and Minor, the BA Honours, and the MA. The Cultural Studies program combines its core courses with cross-listed courses from a variety of disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Students shape their degrees by choosing courses from three broad themes: Media and Popular Cultures, Global Cultural Studies, and Critical and Cultural Theory.

Our programs allow students to engage in research projects that range from literary studies, indigenous studies, cultural activism, community research, cultural heritage, digital production, and digitized cultural history. Our department will continue evolving, to meet the needs and interests of students and to conduct leading research in our disciplines. Watch for our growth in the Digital Humanities.

Programs & Study Options

Cultural Studies (BA)

Gain a unique grounding in questions of identity, power, diversity and justice from global perspectives.

Digital Humanities (BA)

Learn how to conceptualize, produce, and communicate humanities research with digital tools and media, and how technology shapes the world around us.

English Honours

English Honours (BA)

An intensive course of study for English Majors who have demonstrated exceptional creative, critical, and communicative abilities in their second-year coursework in English.

IGS – Digital Arts and Humanities

Masters and PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies using digital technologies to explore questions central to the arts and humanities; applying arts and humanities frameworks to digital tools and technologies.

English (BA)

Explore literature and how it imparts meaning in multiple contexts and eras, including the contemporary globalized world.

Communications and Rhetoric (BA)

Combine communication skills with discipline-specific content, and broader interdisciplinary and professional applicability in real-world contexts.

Masters of Arts in English

Focus on literary and cultural analysis with expert scholars who proved individualized and inspiring mentorship that enables you to conduct dynamic research.

INTERDISCIPLINARY GRADUATE STUDIES

Masters and PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies, work closely with faculty across a diverse set of disciplines.

Medieval and Renaissance Studies (minor)

Interdisciplinary and intensive concentration on a single period stretching from the twilight of antiquity to the dawn of the Enlightenment.

Research

Faculty members in our department are nationally recognized researchers and authors, and have success with research grants as well as publishing book and articles. View our Porch Sessions Series to find out a bit more about some of our research and publications.

Faculty

Faculty

Kerrie Charnley | Communicating Indigeneity

Anita Chaudhuri | Communication; Rhetoric and Composition; Second language writing; Critical Discourse Analysis.

Marie Loughlin | Communication and Media

Jordan Stouck | Communication in the Social Sciences

Faculty

Anita Girvan | Cultural Studies; Environmental Humanities; Political Ecology and Environmental Justice; Black and Indigenous Feminist Ecological Thought; Stories, Metaphor; Critical Canadian Studies

David Jefferess | Colonialism and Decolonization, Human Rights Discourse, Heritage and Public Memory

Daniel Keyes | Film, Television, Critical Whiteness Studies

Ruthann Lee | Media and Social Activism, Anti-Colonial Feminisms, Queer Theory

Astrida Neimanis | Feminist studies (with a focus on embodiment, ecofeminisms, material feminisms and intersectionality), environmental studies (with a focus on cultural studies of water, weather and climate change, and multispecies justice), everyday militarisms, interdisciplinarity, epistemologies and non-traditional research methodologies.

Kyong won Yoon | New Media, Youth Culture, East Asian Cinema

Term Faculty

Maria Alexopoulos | Cultural Studies Practices; Modern Critical Theory

Cameron Crookston | Drag, LGBTQ2+ history, Queer Popular Culture, Transgender Studies

Faculty

Emily Murphy | Digital Humanities, text encoding, digital editing

Term Faculty

James Phelan |  Digital Humanities

Faculty

Sakiru Adebayo | African and African Diaspora Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Trauma and Memory Studies

Anderson Araujo | Transnational Modernism, First World War Poetry, Twentieth-Century British and Irish Literature

Jodey Castricano | 19th century studies (Gothic Studies, Psychoanalysis (Freud/Jung)) Critical Animal Studies, Ecofeminism, Critical Theory

Anita Chaudhuri | Writing studies, Rhetoric and Communications

Kerrie Charnley | Indigenous Epistemologies, Indigenous Literacies, Indigenous Land/Ocean-Based Pedagogies and Praxis, Indigenous Storywork, Indigenous Literatures, Indigenous Oral Traditions, Indigenous Languages, Coast/Salish Epistemologies, Multimodal and Multi-sensory Literacies, Cognitive Maps and Geography, Rhetoric, Discourse Analysis, A/r/tography and Arts-Based Research, Writing Education, Autoethnography and Memoir, Mixed Genre Writing, Critical and Transformative Literacy Education.

Alison Conway | Literary and cultural history of the long eighteenth-century in Britain, narrative studies, and gender and sexuality theory

Robert Eggleston | Restoration and 18th-century theatre; ideological instability in the comedies and farces of Edward Ravenscroft; theories of comedy during the late 17th century; political satire and censorship of the stage during the 1720s and 1730s.

Greg Garrard | Ecocriticism, contemporary environmental writing, critical animal studies

Lisa Grekul | Canadian literatures, diaspora literatures and theory

George Grinnell | Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Romanticism, punk culture

Jennifer Gustar |Contemporary British Literature, UK Transculturalism, Gender and Contemporary Literature, Literature of South Asia and the Diaspora

Allison Hargreaves | Indigenous Literature & Theory, Indigenous Feminisms, Settler Studies

Melissa Jacques | Literary Studies and Practices

David Jefferess | Postcolonial Studies, Globalization, Anti-Oppression

Daniel Keyes | Film, Television, Critical Whiteness Studies

Sean Lawrence | Shakespeare, canonical literature and twentieth-century French philosophy

Marie Loughlin | Sixteenth-century poetry and prose, early modern women’s writing, early modern drama

Oliver Lovesey | Victorian & 18th-Cen. Novel, Postcolonial Studies

Paul Milton | 20th-century American and Canadian fiction; literature and space; fictional treatments of suburban life; Canadian poets and literature; African-American literature.

Emily Murphy | Digital Humanities, text encoding, digital editing

Margaret Reeves | Early Modern Women’s Writing, Children’s Literary Cultures, Early Modern Childhood and Youth, Milton and Early Modern Political Theory, Satiric Fiction

Karis Shearer | Canadian poetry and fiction, critical pedagogy, gender theory, American poetry, cultural studies

Jordan Stouck | Composition studies, Canadian and Caribbean literature

Bryce Traister | American Literature, religious studies, American Cultural Studies, science fiction

Michael Treschow | Old and Middle English Literature

Term Faculty

Sherry Breshears | First-year English

Joanne Cockerline | Management communications, science and engineering communications, contemporary Canadian fiction

Rina Garcia Chua | Introduction to Academic Writing

Ethan Guagliardo | First-year English

Claire Halston | Didactic literature, composition and rhetoric studies, intersections of power, politics, and literature.

Shona Harrison | English Literature and Composition

Shirley McDonald | Canadian literature and history, life writing, prairie settler narratives, ecocriticism, Scholarship on Teaching & Learning

Jenn Payson | English Composition

James Phelan |  Digital Humanities, English

Daryl Ritchot | First year English

Saeed Sabzian | Studies in Composition for English Language Learners

Cathi Shaw | English Composition

Todd Statham | The Bible in English Literature

Bridget Trainor | First year English

Jon Vickery | English Literature and Composition

Administrative Office

Michael Treschow
Department Head, English & Cultural Studies
Associate Professor, English
Email: michael.treschow@ubc.ca
Tel: 250.807.9356
Office: CCS 345

Jodi Lord

Jodi Lord
Assistant to the Department Head
Email: jodi.lord@ubc.ca
Tel: 250.807.9659
Office: CCS 323