Welcome to the University of Vermont’s Canadian Studies podcast series. Over the years, our program has brought many wonderful guest speakers to the University of Vermont, including some of the greatest names in Canadian literature, culture, and politics. Starting in the Fall of 2006, we began recording these lectures for broadcast online as part of this podcast series.
In October, we were able to bring the well-known First Nations writer Eden Robinson to campus for four days. Here, she met with students in six different classes who were all reading her novel Monkey Beach and then gave a wonderful public reading. Everyone who met Eden was taken by her ability to write so compellingly about the darkest subjects while at the same time having an incredible sense of humor and what might be the greatest, most infectious laugh anyone of us had ever heard.
Robinson's first collection of stories, Traplines, won the Winifred Holtby Prize for the best first work of fiction by a Commonwealth writer and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and Notable Book of the Year. Her first novel, Monkey Beach, won the B.C. Book Prize for Fiction, was a finalist for the 2000 Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award and was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her latest work of fiction, the Canadian best-seller Blood Sports (2006), has been described as “A gripping page-turner of a tale that should have Quentin Tarantino knocking down her door.”
Writes The National Post, “Eden Robinson writes with the violent beauty of a seasoned knifefighter…She writes with a cool economy, a parsed precision; no wasted words, no wasted motion. In her hands, language is a weapon that can leave you bleeding, unsure of just how you were cut.”
Eden Robinson's visit to the University of Vermont was co-sponsored by the University of Vermont's Department of English, Canadian Studies Program, Global Village Residential Learning Community, and The James and Mary Brigham Buckham Fund.
November’s visit to UVM by George Elliott Clarke was the other event in our very memorable fall reading series. His visit to UVM included spending time visiting Paul Martin’s Contemporary Canadian Fiction class, where the students were reading his recent novel George and Rue. In his public reading and classroom visits, George had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand with his wonderful words, his exuberant reading, and thoughtful answers to the questions he was asked. His public reading focused solely on his poetry and included a taste of his opera Québécité.
George Elliott Clarke is an award-winning poet, playwright and screenwriter. He is the author of six books of poetry, including Execution Poems, winner of the 2001 Governor General’s Award for Poetry, Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature (2002), and the novel George and Rue (2005).
Born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, near the black Loyalist community of Three Mile Plains, Clarke is a descendant of African Americans who relocated to Nova Scotia after the American Revolution. A former professor of English and Canadian Studies at Duke University, he now lives in Toronto where he is currently the E. J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto.
Clarke’s award-winning Execution Poems and George and Rue both explore the trial and hanging of George and Rufus Hamilton for the murder of a Fredericton cabdriver in 1949. The story of the two brothers, Clarke’s cousins, is a portrait of the racism, poverty, and abuse that eventually leads these men to their brutal crime and tragic end.
"George Elliott Clarke is . . . a treasure of world literature. In many ways he is the most fearless of writers; a true original. In his new novel, Clarke has written a stark, beautiful, disturbing symphony for the ages. George and Rufus are as vivid, unforgettable, haunting characters as I have ever met. Every page of this novel has heartbreaking genius."
- Howard Norman
George Elliott Clarke’s visit to the University of Vermont was sponsored by the University of Vermont's Canadian Studies Program.
The Canadian Studies program makes the news
Back in October, we had one of our most successful Canadian Studies Ottawa trips ever. Students from UVM have been visiting Ottawa on our annual field trip for over 50 years now. We visit Parliament, The National Gallery, the Museum of Civilisation and we also usually attend an Ottawa 67s hockey game.
This year, the CBC caught wind of our trip and had us in twice to chat on CBC Newsworld (Canada's main 24-hour news network) about our experiences in Ottawa and the Canadian Studies program back at UVM.
We all had a great experience at the CBC studios in Ottawa and it was exciting to be able to tell Canadians from coast to coast to coast about the UVM Canadian Studies program on live national television.
Student Podcasts from English 005 (Fall 2006): The Great White North: An Introduction to Canadian Culture.
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