GRADUATE

2009: Sherry Doyle PhD "'Knotted Threads' of Ambivalence: Gender, Narrative, and the Cultural Poetics of Missionary Experience in English-Canadian Women's Writing, 1833-1914." Passed with Distinction.

• Taking an interdisciplinary approach to selected texts, Doyle analyzed how Canadian women missionaries "structured female community using discourses of sacrifice and kinship"; how they intertwined "heroic discourse with salvation history" and narratives of imperialism; and how the figure and voice of the female missionary conveyed messages about social reform, cultural practice, and nation-building. She incorporated canonical and non-canonical texts; consulted long-neglected archival materials such as the letters written by the first wave of Presentation Sisters in Newfoundland ; and positioned her work within an existing body of exemplary scholarship (Patrick O'Flaherty, Hans Rollmann and Ronald Rompkey). In her close and careful reading of missionary writers, Ms Doyle showed sensitivity, humor, insight and an amazing lack of bias and sentimentality.
• One reader described Ms Doyle's thesis as "an exceptionally fine piece of scholarship" and "a very impressive dissertation." It will, she writes, "make a lasting contribution to literary and gender studies." The reader prefaced her report with these comments: "This dissertation demonstrates an impressive range of reading and analysis. It is extremely well written...it has been a pleasure to read...and I have learned a great deal from it."
• Another reader described the dissertation as "an original and compelling work," and one which "leads the way in invigorating the literary study of unfamiliar texts," and "an excellent resource for a range of scholars working in the fields of literary, historical and cultural inquiry." The writer has "demonstrated a high level of scholarly knowledge, independent thought, and offered a compendious guide to other textual scholars."

In progress. Heather O'Brien PhD "Recovery of Early Newfoundland and Labrador Women's Creative Writing"

• This is a post colonial study of women's contributions to the literary history of Newfoundland and Labrador prior to Confederation with Canada . Heather has produced several innovative essays based on her research findings and these essays have been published in refereed journals: Culture and Tradition and Newfoundland and Labrador Studies. Heather has also presented her research on Newfoundland women writers at several local and national conferences.

1999-2001.  Amy Tompkins – M.A. – Investigating civilization: The City as Frontier in the Early Prairie Novels of Isabel Paterson 

 

EXCHANGE STUDENTS SPONSORED

From 2003-2004 I sponsored Sven Kube, one of Memorial University's first exchange students from Germany. Dresden, Germany. When Sven decided to return to Memorial to pursue his graduate studies in 2006, I supported his application for a Government of Canada Award for Research (which he was granted) and for admission to Memorial's School of Graduate Studies. I was a secondary reader for Sven's M.A. thesis on Canadian popular music; completed well ahead of schedule, his thesis was a very well-researched and accomplished piece of work. Attesting to its high academic quality, Sven's thesis received the highest possible mark (Passed with Distinction) from Professor Brigitte Georgi-Findlay (his supervisor) at his home university in Dresden, where it was evaluated. Sven is currently completing his PhD in popular music at Florida State University.

 

UNDERGRADUATE

Lindsay Boudreau – B.A. Honours' Thesis – Dismantling the Family in Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood – Winter 2011

Mandy Rowsell – B. A. Honours' Thesis – The Progress of Power – Resistance to Patriarchy in Sense and Sensibility and Cat's Eye. 2010

Kim Sword – B.A. Honours' Thesis – Fractured Identities: Deconstructing Female Roles in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and The Year of the Flood Using Contemporary Feminist Ideologies – Winter 2010

Chelsea Howard – B.A. Honours' Thesis – The Vision of Word Warriors: Language and Identity in Native Canadian Women's Literature – Winter 2010

Amiee Wall – B. A. Honours' Thesis – "Within it she feels herself a stranger": Women's Alienation from her Body in Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman and Margaret Laurence's The Fire Dwellers – Winter 2008

Ruth Jacobs – B. A. Honours' Thesis – Early Canadian Foresight: Nature Conservation and Animal Welfare in Ernest Thompson Seton's Biography of a Grizzly and Marshall Saunders' Beautiful Joe - Winter 2007

David Anderson – B.A. Honours' Thesis - Preserving and Losing the Homeland: Imagery and Paradox in Alistair MacLeod's No Great Mischief – Winter/Spring 2006

Erin Shea – B.A. Honours' Thesis – Perspective and Proportion in N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain – Fall 2005

Tom Crosbie – B.A. Honours' Thesis – Realism and Obscurity in Patrick White's Voss- Winter 2005

Beth Humber – B.A. Honours' Thesis – "What Shall the Minstrel Sing?" The Poetic Pathways of the Rerouted Pastoralist, Siegfried Sassoon – Fall 2004

Sheila Wadden – B. A. Honours' Thesis – Neither hapless victims nor avenging angels: a feminist analysis of the female characters in The Sculptress and The Shape of Snakes – Fall 2003

Frank Durnford – B.A. Honours' Thesis – "Alternative Landscapes": The Carnival Discourse of Jane Urqhart's The Stone Carvers – Winter 2003

Jennifer Chaulk – B.A. Honours' Thesis – Unearthing Anil's Ghost: The Role of Physical Anthropology within the Text – Winter 2002