“It’s not unusual to describe these gift economies in academia with the term service, or required labour and a necessary evil that supports our research, but service work in the context of a gift economy is an integral part of the intellectual project of knowledge production.”

Producing Canadian Literature

“[Z]ombi(e) becomes a layered term in the writing, doubling as a whitewashed, appropriated term at the same time bodies are turned ashen through zombification and their labour is appropriated for white prosperity and imperialism.”

“the suitcase in the closet”: Talking Zombi(e)s with Junie Désil (an Interview)

“Let’s start with a thought experiment. It’s 6 a.m. in the dead of winter on the Canadian prairies. There’s no wind, and everything is frozen. The rivers have turned to ice, and the sun won’t be up for a few hours. Without wind, water, or solar energy, how can we imagine a just transition away from fossil fuels?”

Refined Language: How the oil industry rebranded itself

“The glory Sarah trails becomes the female self untethered from romance. … Instead of a passive adjective, glory becomes a verb for Sarah, as she sees herself “glorying in repellent love” (88). Sarah comes to inhabit the gloriously ugly as a magnificent space of the female body in the somewhere else of womanhood.”

“The Gloriously Ugly in Marian Engel’s No Clouds of Glory (Sarah Bastard’s Notebook)”

“I am drawn most to the moments of her history where she talks about tarot cards and witchy ways or references her experience in the backwoods of Ontario and Quebec, then off to graduate school and grungy apartments. My hope is that we will see another one of these collections from our literary grand aunt Peggy and that she will be as coy and surly as she has always been, defending what she believes in most.”

Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004–2021 by Margaret Atwood (review)

“The dystopian world of The Handmaid’s Tale becomes a vital tool for decoding The Testaments, as Atwood’s sequel sparingly includes descriptions of the oppressive society in which birth rates have decreased and perverted religious zeal, in support of white cis-patriarchy, has taken power.”

Secrets, Deception, Celebrity

“Her work has often had its finger on the pulse of power. Her prescience is part imaginative projection and part attention to history and political trends.”

The Handmaid’s Tale Reflects Margaret Atwood’s Eerie Talent for Reading the Palm of Power

“Figuratively, to abort is to expel or to miscarry. To abort becomes entangled with our perceptions of how we shape the future.”

Fiction about Abortion Confronts the Complicated History of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Rights

“After my first co-op placement, I had a renewed sense of my desire to pursue a career in the professoriate, knowing full well that I’m not an ideal candidate – yet. But, we need faculty, advisers, administrators, and deans to stress the importance of graduate students gaining diverse learning experiences, as we are pushed toward ever-narrower areas of expertise, in order to become better candidates for the future professoriate.”

Why It’s Worth Considering a PhD Co-op