Queen's Statement of Purpose
Jan. 26th, 2003 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldAs in the title: It's a one-stage statement of my academic interests and plans.
Dr. Marta Straznicky,
Graduate Chair
Department of English,
Queen’s University
Kingston, ON, Canada
K7L 3N6
Dr. Straznicky:
My name is Randy McDonald, and I am currently a student at the University of Prince Edward Island. I am interested in pursuing a master's degree in English literature, and for a variety of reasons (including the excellent reputation of Queens), I would like to be considered for graduate studies at Queen’s University for the 2003-2004 academic year.
Over the course of my academic career, I have developed a wide variety of interests. I graduated in May of 2002 from the University of Prince Edward Island with a Bachelor of Arts, with majors in English and Anthropology. I returned to UPEI in the 2002-2003 academic year to complete my Honours English essay, so upgrading my English major to an Honours English major, and to acquire a History minor. Further, my innate curiosity has inspired me to acquire an excellent understanding of a wide variety of subjects unrelated to my majors, including economics, political science, and religious studies.
This broad spectrum of knowledge has inculcated in me a strong belief that literature has a wider context which must be explored, for literary works is written by authors who (whether consciously or unconsciously) often explore a wide variety of contemporary themes in their work. If one comes to understand this broader context, one’s understanding of the literatary work (or works) in question can advance accordingly. I have chosen to concentrate on examining the numerous interactions between Canadian and world sociological realities on the one hand and Canadian literatures on the other, in an effort to understand the impact that cultural, geographical, and economic realities bring to bear upon individual literary works and broader literary canons.
So far, I have found that this approach has produced numerous interesting results. I have applied this theory to my Honours English essay, which is a comparative study of representative works from different Canadian regional literatures, seen through the perspectives of Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory (which posits a threefold division of the world economy between a rich core, a poor periphery, and an intermediate semiperiphery) and Alexander Gershenkron's theory of economic development (which argues that societies somewhat less developed than the most advanced societies are innately well-positioned to quickly surpass their prototypes). My essay's thesis is that Canadian regional literatures, based in economically marginal societies and regions, are often characterized by attempts to try to establish their autonomous existence from the Canadian centre--for instance, in Ringuet's Thirty Acres Euchariste Moisan tries to make a living as a farmer in a still conservative and Roman Catholic rural French Canada. I have found that in the three novels examined in my essay, however, this effort fails; the most positive result from the marginal perspective is in Surfacing, where the surfacer leaves the northern forest with a few particular insights to share with the rest of Canada.
As a graduate student, I would be interested in expanding upon the insights that I have acquired in researching and writing my Honours Essay to other works of Canadian literature, particularly texts of novel and novella length. Frederick Philip Grove’s Settlers of the Marsh, Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, Antonine Maillet’s Pélagie, and Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief come to mind as texts which could benefit from this approach.
Sincerely,
Randy McDonald
Thoughts?
Dr. Marta Straznicky,
Graduate Chair
Department of English,
Queen’s University
Kingston, ON, Canada
K7L 3N6
Dr. Straznicky:
My name is Randy McDonald, and I am currently a student at the University of Prince Edward Island. I am interested in pursuing a master's degree in English literature, and for a variety of reasons (including the excellent reputation of Queens), I would like to be considered for graduate studies at Queen’s University for the 2003-2004 academic year.
Over the course of my academic career, I have developed a wide variety of interests. I graduated in May of 2002 from the University of Prince Edward Island with a Bachelor of Arts, with majors in English and Anthropology. I returned to UPEI in the 2002-2003 academic year to complete my Honours English essay, so upgrading my English major to an Honours English major, and to acquire a History minor. Further, my innate curiosity has inspired me to acquire an excellent understanding of a wide variety of subjects unrelated to my majors, including economics, political science, and religious studies.
This broad spectrum of knowledge has inculcated in me a strong belief that literature has a wider context which must be explored, for literary works is written by authors who (whether consciously or unconsciously) often explore a wide variety of contemporary themes in their work. If one comes to understand this broader context, one’s understanding of the literatary work (or works) in question can advance accordingly. I have chosen to concentrate on examining the numerous interactions between Canadian and world sociological realities on the one hand and Canadian literatures on the other, in an effort to understand the impact that cultural, geographical, and economic realities bring to bear upon individual literary works and broader literary canons.
So far, I have found that this approach has produced numerous interesting results. I have applied this theory to my Honours English essay, which is a comparative study of representative works from different Canadian regional literatures, seen through the perspectives of Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory (which posits a threefold division of the world economy between a rich core, a poor periphery, and an intermediate semiperiphery) and Alexander Gershenkron's theory of economic development (which argues that societies somewhat less developed than the most advanced societies are innately well-positioned to quickly surpass their prototypes). My essay's thesis is that Canadian regional literatures, based in economically marginal societies and regions, are often characterized by attempts to try to establish their autonomous existence from the Canadian centre--for instance, in Ringuet's Thirty Acres Euchariste Moisan tries to make a living as a farmer in a still conservative and Roman Catholic rural French Canada. I have found that in the three novels examined in my essay, however, this effort fails; the most positive result from the marginal perspective is in Surfacing, where the surfacer leaves the northern forest with a few particular insights to share with the rest of Canada.
As a graduate student, I would be interested in expanding upon the insights that I have acquired in researching and writing my Honours Essay to other works of Canadian literature, particularly texts of novel and novella length. Frederick Philip Grove’s Settlers of the Marsh, Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, Antonine Maillet’s Pélagie, and Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief come to mind as texts which could benefit from this approach.
Sincerely,
Randy McDonald
Thoughts?
