Honours Conference 2020

Cohort

Project Supervisor: Dr. Randy Schroeder

Panel Three: Land / Dream / Mindscapes

Shannon Barry

Shannon’s dreamscapes are often seen in both her creative writing and in her paintings. By using nightmares as creative inspiration, she transformed these nuisances into works of art, incidentally curing her insomnia. Shannon is graduating from Mount Royal University with a major in English (Hons.) and a double minor in Creative Writing and Film Studies. She is the former president of the Creative Writing Club, vice president of The Film and English Student Society, and was recently honoured as the official visual artist of the IGNITE! Festival of Emerging Artists. Strengths include admiring trees and talking to animals. Weaknesses include tendinitis and heights.

Her paper, “Dreams as Reality: Surrealism and Writing the Unconscious,” aims to identify the intentions and techniques behind the cultural movement of Surrealism in literature. By observing the lives and creations of Surrealists such as André Breton and Leonora Carrington, she will discuss the fine line between creativity and madness. Keeping with the surrealist tradition of automatic writing, her paper will accompany her research with her short story, “Meadow Dogs,” which uses the source material of a particularly vivid nightmare.

Photo Credit: Ashley-Rae Photography

Project Supervisor: Dr. Natalie Meisner

Panel Three: Land / Dream / Mindscapes

Ashley-Rae Carter-Wells

Ashley-Rae enjoys straying from the beaten path, curious to explore the weird. Her work, both artistic and academic, is similarly adventurous. In creative endeavours – poetry, short fiction, photography, and the occasional watercolour painting – she encourages moments of discomfort as moments of discovery and challenges patriarchal norms as often as possible. Areas of study which intrigue and delight her are ecofeminism and the occult. Some of her favourite books are Tom Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbevilles, Micheline Maylor’s Little Wildheart, and Mona Awad’s Bunny. She plans to graduate from MRU this spring with a degree in English (Hons.) and a minor in creative writing. She is wife to an inspiring husband and the mother of two lion-hearted, loving daughters. They live together on Alberta’s oldest working ranch.

Ashley-Rae’s project is centered on her collection of ecofeminist incantatory poems. The collection locates around feminism/s and the environment. The poems tilt on an axis between silence and sound, dive into eco-anxieties, and challenge patriarchal binaries that oppress and subjugate what she calls the “Divine Feminine”. The work is inspired by Tanya Tagaq’s Split Tooth and seeks to re-establish a necessary, intimate relationship between humanity and Earth. Her research thinks about the power of vocalization, sound, and language and seeks to justify incantatory poems as potent, peaceful activism in her paper “Generative Poetics: Vocalization, Magick Making, and Ecology”.

Project Supervisor: Dr. Yaw Asante, additional commentary provided by Dr. Richard Harrison

Panel Two: Mushrooms, Memes, and Meaning

Bradley Irwin

Bradley is a Calgary born author, musician, and student of English at Mount Royal University. Over the course of his studies, Bradley has developed, sometimes to his own dismay, a fascination with Modernist fiction and Existential philosophy: a fascination he hopes to continue to explore as a grad student. Some of his favourite books include Albert Camus’ The Stranger, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. When he isn’t writing, Bradley makes “jazz” to annoy his friends. See less

His project “Veil, Unveil” combines creative and critical approaches to explore the means by which reality is constructed in texts as well as the ways in which our broader understanding of what constitutes reality are determined by language and representational systems. Bradley is interested in what it means to live in a reality veiled by language and representation and what it means to create within such a reality.

Photo Credit: Ashley-Rae Photography

Project Supervisor: Dr. Natalie Meisner

Panel One: Expanding the Literary Canon

Audrey Jamieson

As a reader and writer of science fiction, Audrey is fascinated by literary gap theory and the audience participation necessary for storyworld building. Some of her favourite novels include Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-five, and Peter Watts’ Starfish. Audrey plans on graduating this spring with a major in English Honours and a minor in Creative Writing, hoping to pursue graduate studies abroad with a Masters in Publishing and Creative Writing. She has several publications to her name, the most recent being an article in the Globe and Mail titled “Finding my true name (not the one my parents gave me).” She was also selected for the 2020 Writers Guild of Alberta Mentorship Program where she worked with Edmonton author Margaret Macpherson. Audrey hopes to have her first novel published by the time public book launches are a thing again.

Her paper “Recognizing The Alien: Science Fiction Storyworlds and the Reader’s Reality” explores how science fiction genre conventions provide a platform for recontextualizing human phenomenon, reimagining the familiar in light of the alien. This research informs a short story crafted from her forthcoming novel, Electric Lungs. Both the essay and creative portion aim to depict alien binaries between self/ Other, known/unknown, and power/powerless through the science fiction storyworld in order to deconstruct their human context.

Photo Credit: Ashley-Rae Photography

Project Supervisor: Dr. David Hyttenrauch

Panel One: Expanding the Literary Canon

Allie Mastin

Allie Mastin is passionate about all things related to fantasy and young adult literature. As an avid reader of both genres, she is fascinated by how authors create and develop their elaborate secondary worlds and the ways in which readers respond to them. Her favourite novels include Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows, Andrea Stewart’s The Bone Shard Daughter, and Victoria Schwab’s This Savage Song. She plans to graduate next spring with a major in English Honours and a minor in Film Studies. When she’s not reading, Allie loves to do embroidery and cross-stitch. After graduation, Allie hopes to pursue a Masters of Publishing with the goal of working primarily within the young adult genre.

Her project “Constructing Complex Fantasy Worlds: Character as a Form of Worldbuilding in Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree” explores how the novel’s characters, as well as the interactions between each character, are used to communicate necessary worldbuilding information to the reader in a way that advances both the depth and coherency of the crafted storyworld. Overall, Allie’s work aims to demonstrate that characters and character interactions are able to function as an integral part of the worldbuilding process within fantasy literature.

Photo Credit: Ashley-Rae Photography

Project Supervisor: Dr. Natalie Meisner

Panel Two: Mushrooms, Memes, and Meaning

Roger McCaig

Roger McCaig was born on the 30th of October, 1995. The Halloween adjacent baby grew up to be a man as sweet as candy. A late bloomer in almost every sense of the word, Roger found his love for writing during a grueling summer of working a student job as an accountant. Having only survived the summer months by secretly writing during work breaks, Roger said farewell to the MRU Bissett School of Business and found his academic home in the English department. In the final leg of his undergraduate degree, Roger confidently looks toward his authorial future with his famous sugary sweet smile on full display.

In his paper “Naturalism Part Two: The Fungal Boogaloo” expands and rejuvenates the past literary genre of American Naturalism. Blending the late-nineteenth-century cynical style with modern sensibilities and a dash of absurdist humour, the project aims to create a fresh narrative that attempts to bridge the long past Naturalist genre with the current zeitgeist.

Photo Credit: Ashley-Rae Photography

Project Supervisor: Dr. Randy Schroeder

Panel Four: Cultural Theory, Textual Visions

Scott McGregor

Scott is a double major at Mount Royal University, graduating this spring with degrees in English (Hons.) and Sociology, with a background in Creative Writing. He is the current President of the Creative Writing Club at MRU. After graduation, he plans to further pursue his English/Sociology studies through Grad school, continuing his research in predicting humanity’s future. Scott is also the author of 30 published short stories. You can find his fiction in Hellbound Books, Oddity Prodigy Productions, DBND Publishing, Black Hare Press, Schlock! Webzine, The Sirens Call, and many others. In the next few years, he hopes to release a collection of short stories. On his spare time, he likes to watch movies, drink too much tea, and play Settler’s of Catan. You can reach him at www.scottmcgregorwrites.com or on Twitter @ScottMSays.

His project “Dialectical Materialism & Science Fiction: Prefiguring the Next Stage of Capitalism” seeks to utilize literature as a means to hypothesize the future. By closely examining three science fiction stories - Orwell’s 1984, Gibson’s Neuromancer, and the HBO series Westworld - as well applying theories associated with Marxism, Scott attempts to illustrate several pressing concerns developing in the contemporary landscape which threatens the brink of human existence. These include the dangers of surveillance capitalism, the digital age, and the rise of singularity and artificial intelligence.

Photo Credit: Ashley-Rae Photography

Project Supervisor: Dr. Michael Truscello

Panel Two: Mushrooms, Memes, and Meaning

Mo 'Time' Taleb

Growing up in north-east Calgary, Mo coasted life in style with the internet and depression at his side every step of the way. In addition to pursuing his degree in English and studying memes in his downtime, Mo has also been pursuing his career as an actor, writer, and musician. While he writes and performs his independent work in multiple forms and genres of storytelling, Mo has always had a special passion for the melodramatic. From being loud in literally any public space to being loud on stage, Mo found the life of performing suits him well and that his booming voice might serve him better in places that are not his local grocery store.

His paper “Recognition and Representation: Memes, Identities, and Online Trauma” discusses how internet memes have been a representation of trauma for Millennials, Zillenials, and Generation Z. Through using trauma theory, Mo analyzes how memes were used to laugh off major disruptive events while also gaining recognition from a largely formed online space. Come through on December 4th to find out more as Mo discusses how behind every meme is another person’s suffering.

Photo Credit: Ashley-Rae Photography

Project Supervisor: Dr. Kenna Olsen

Panel One: Expanding the Literary Canon

James Welsh

James grew up in the magical countryside and castles of Derbyshire, England, and has always been fascinated with the history and legends of his home country. Thanks to an interesting familial history, he has a strong interest in various grimoires and magical texts, spending many years studying the occult. At Mount Royal University, James is a Student Representative on the Arts Faculty Council and Vice President of the Creative Writing Club. After obtaining his English Honours degree, with a double minor in Ancient and Medieval Studies and Creative Writing, James plans to pursue a Master’s Degree in Viking and Medieval Norse Studies at the University of Reykjavík.

His paper “A Study of Grimoires: A Literary Examination of the Content and History of Magical Texts” comments on many topics, including the value of various grimoires from different times and places. He will articulate their place in the Literary Canon, as well as dissect the secrets, hidden history, and cross-cultural implications that are present—primarily focusing on magical texts from Iceland. It is James’ hope that his paper will shed light on a part of literature that is often overlooked.

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