Department of English

McGill University

Annual Report

1 January 2012 - 31 December 2012

Submitted by Prof. Allan Hepburn, Chair Department of English / 1

RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS In the calendar year 2012, three members of the Department of English published monographs. Seven other faculty members edited or co-edited scholarly books. Information about published articles, book chapters, and edited journals is, exceptionally, not included in this Annual Report because Activity Reports were not required for 2012.

Author Title of Monograph Publisher Maggie Kilgour Milton and The Metamorphosis of Ovid Oxford UP Eli MacLaren Dominion and Agency: Copyright and U of Toronto P the Structuring of the Canadian Book Trade, 1867-1918 Michael Van Dussen From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Cambridge UP Communication in the Later Middle Ages

Editor Title of Edited Volume Publisher Jamie Fumo et al Vehicles of Transmission, Translation, Brepols Publishers and Transformation in Medieval Textual Culture Yael Halevi-Wise Sephardism: Spanish Jewish History Stanford UP and the Modern Literary Imagination Miranda Hickman et al Rereading the New Criticism Ohio State UP Martin Krieswirth et al Contemporary Literary and Cultural Johns Hopkins UP Theory Fiona Ritchie and Peter Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century Cambridge UP Sabor Marianne Stenbaek et al Voices and Images of Nunamimmuit: IPI Press Vol. 3 Health

In 2012, four faculty members won SSHRC Insight Grants: Tom Mole, Ara Osterweil, Monica Popescu, and Peter Sabor. Marianne Stenbaek was the recipient of a SSHRC Public Outreach Grant for her research on aboriginal issues.

TEACHING AND LEARNING (UNDERGRADUATE) The Department of English has programs in three areas: Literature, Drama and Theatre, and Cultural Studies. Within each area, there are Honours, Joint Honours, majors, and minors. Department of English / 2

Courses in the Department of English are cross-listed with any number of programs, including Canadian Studies, Quebec Studies, Sexual Diversity Studies, Women’s Studies, North American Studies, World Cinema, and IPLAI, among others. In fall 2012, there were 1,037 undergraduates enrolled in the three streams of the BA program in the department.

Program Literature Drama and Theatre Cultural Studies Honours 32 1 12 Joint Honours 10 2 2 Majors 381 65 180 Minors 219 75 58 Total 642 143 252

Enrollment in all undergraduate programs in English has remained relatively consistent over the past ten years, with a slight dip in 2006-08. All figures are taken from fall registration: 1023 (2003), 1037 (2004), 995 (2005), 924 (2006), 896 (2007), 929 (2008), 1000 (2009), 1077 (2010), 1045 (2011), 1037 (2012).

TEACHING AND LEARNING (GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL) In 2012, there were 42 MAs and 37 PhDs registered. The following PhD students successfully defended their theses and convocated: • Amanda Cockburn: 9 January 2012 (graduated May 2012) • Paula Derdiger: 6 December 2012 (graduated May 2013) • Emily Essert: 4 September 2012 (graduated May 2013) • Hilary Havens: 6 November 2012 (graduated May 2013) • Natalie Huffels: 7 December 2012 (graduated February 2013) • Caroline Krzakowski: 20 September 2011 (graduated February 2012) • Karen Oberer: 20 December 2011 (graduated February 2012) • Michèle Rackham: 1 February 2012 (graduated May 2012)

A recent graduate from the PhD program, Meredith Donaldson, won a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship, which she took up at the University of Toronto. The following students, incoming and in program, also won SSHRC awards: • Stephanie Berrington, MA • Jason Grand, MA • Anna Lewton-Brain, PhD (1 year) • Bronwyn Malloy, MA • Sunita Nigam, PhD CGS (3 years) • Chelsea Pratt, MA • Mary Towers, PhD CGS (3 years) Department of English / 3

• Amanda Young, MA

Ten doctoral students won travel money from the Faculty of Arts: Danielle Barkley, Ben Barootes, Ariel Buckley, Laura Cameron, Claudine Gélinas-Faucher, Hilary Havens, Anna Lewton-Brain, Brad MacDonald, Justin Pfefferle, and Anna Sigg.

Several postdoctoral fellows were present in the department. Kelly MacPail, funded by FQRSC, was supervised by Miranda Hickman. Noémie Solomon, on a Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship 2012-14, was supervised jointly by Erin Hurley and Alanna Thain. Zhao Jinghui, a PBEEE postdoctoral fellow from China, worked under the supervision of Allan Hepburn. Laurence Williams, on a Commonwealth Postdoctoral Fellowship, was associated with the Burney Centre and supervised by Peter Sabor. Antje Ziethen, funded by the SSHRC postdoctoral program, worked under the supervision of Monica Popescu.

INVOLVEMENT IN THE COMMUNITY In keeping with tradition, two Department of English theatre productions were mounted in Moyse Hall. In Winter 2012, the Theatre Lab—a year-long course that results in a production—presented A Dream Play, directed by Myrna Wyatt-Selkirk. In the fall semester 2012, Patrick Neilson directed The Revenger’s Tragedy.

Peter Sabor organized the 67th meeting of the Johnsonians on 21 September 2012. The society focuses on the works of Samuel Johnson. Fifty members attended the meeting, and the keynote speaker was James Baker of Barnard College. Although the society has met regularly since 1947, this was the first occasion that members gathered outside the US.

Erin Hurley, in collaboration with Patrick Leroux at Concordia University, organized a two-day, SSHRC-funded international workshop on “The State of Quebec Circus Research.” It ran from 21-22 September 2012. See details at http://resonance.hexagram.ca/circus/events.html#schedule.

Ara Osterweil organized a symposium at the Musée des Beaux Arts in October 2012. The subject of the symposium was “Carolee Schneemann: Then and Now.” Participants included Carolee Schneemann, Marielle Nitoslawska of Concordia University, Amelia Jones of McGill University, Stéphane Aquin from the Musée des Beaux Arts in Montreal, and Kenneth White of Stanford University.

MILESTONES: NEW HIRES, PROMOTIONS, AND RETIREMENTS Katie Zien joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor on 1 August 2012. She is a specialist in Drama and Theatre of the Americas and will teach courses in the Drama and Theatre stream.

Allan Hepburn became the James McGill Professor in Twentieth-Century Literature in May 2012. This is the first McGill Chair in the Department of English. Department of English / 4

The Department selected its first Fulbright Visiting Professor, Professor Tru Leverette, who teaches at the University of North Florida at Tallahassee. Although chosen in 2012, she arrived in Montreal in winter 2013 to teach a course on “Black American Writing and the Question of Mixed-Race Literature.”

Paula Derdiger worked as a Part-Time Faculty Lecturer for 2012-13. She taught courses on twentieth-century fiction and film, including a course on Billy Wilder.

The inaugural Richler Writer-in-Residence was Kathleen Winter. She gave a course on fiction writing in the winter term 2012. Steven Heighton, a renowned poet, essayist, and novelist who resides in Kingston, Ontario, was selected as the Mordecai Richler Writer-in-Residence for 2012-13. He participated in a year-opening event by reading from his fiction and poetry in Moyse Hall on 13 September 2012.

HONOURS, AWARDS, AND PRIZES In June 2012, the QS rankings positioned the McGill Department of English nineteenth in the world among all English departments. Although this ranking is slightly down over 2011, it nevertheless indicates the high regard in which the department is held internationally.

Robert Lecker was elected as a fellow to the Royal Society of Canada. After Peter Sabor, Prof. Lecker is the second FRSC in the Department. In addition to this distinction, Prof. Lecker received the Association of Canadian Studies Award of Merit for 2012.

Erin Hurley’s book, National Performance, published in 2011, was awarded the Pierre Savard Prize for a monograph on a Canadian subject, in either French or English on a Canadian topic. This award is made by the International Council for Canadian Studies. In June 2012, Erin Hurley also held a one-month visiting professorship at the Queen Mary University in London.

Fiona Ritchie and PhD4 student Tom Fish won an ASECS award for Innovative Course Design. The course, entitled “Popular Entertainment in the Long Eighteenth Century,” was praised by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies for its “singular conceptual clarity” and its prompting of students to look beyond canonical and anthologized texts.

Monica Popescu received the 2012 Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities for her book, South African Literature Beyond the Cold War. This award, made by the Council of Graduate Schools, was handed out at the CGS conference in December 2012. The award recognizes a book of scholarly importance published by someone teaching in North America with a doctorate earned within seven years prior to publication of the book.

Dorothy Bray and Berkeley Kaite both received twenty-year pins for their service to McGill.

Alumnus Leonard Cohen was awarded the Denise Pelletier Prix du Québec for performing arts. Department of English / 5

FUNDRAISING

The department was pleased to be the beneficiary of an endowed fund, the Lang Family Text in Performance Award, designed to send students to see live theatre at the Stratford Festival, the Shaw Festival, and Soulpepper in Toronto. The first recipients of the Lang awards attended productions in summer 2012.

The Elizabeth and John B. Reynolds Atelier endowment received a donation of $5,000 from a donor connected to the Reynolds family. This generous gift will increase annual expenditure for the Reynolds Atelier.

With a view to fundraising in the short and long terms, the department launched an “alumni” page on its website. The page is organized around the theme of what alumni have done with their English degrees.