Et maintenant, McGill!
Jan. 26th, 2003 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldSame as below, same 750 to 800 words in length. I have to make specific mention of why I want to go to McGill, so there's that. Unfortunately, I've only got 630 words and I'm not sure where else to expand. So, help?
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 as a precursor to a career in academia. I would like to be considered for graduate studies at McGill University for the 2003-2004 academic year.
I am interested in McGill for a variety of reasons: its excellent Canadian and international reputation; the abundant store of primary and other materials in its library collections and those of associated universities; the strength of the Department of English's graduate faculty (particularly in the fields of Canadian and comparative literature); and McGill's location in the heart of the bilingual metropolis of Montreal. I believe that McGill would provide me with the sort of institutional setting necessary to make further substantial progress in my towards my goal of a productive, well-grounded academic career.
I have developed a wide variety of interests as an undergraduate student. 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, to upgrade 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 are 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 literary 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 demonstrate and explain 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 three-fold division of the world economy between a rich core, a poor periphery, and an intermediate semi-periphery) 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 thesis in my Honours essay is that those 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 applying the insights gleaned from writing and researching my Honours English 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 which I think would be fascinating to study using this approach.
Thoughts?
(Wilfrid Laurier [800 to 1000 words] will be later tonight.)
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 as a precursor to a career in academia. I would like to be considered for graduate studies at McGill University for the 2003-2004 academic year.
I am interested in McGill for a variety of reasons: its excellent Canadian and international reputation; the abundant store of primary and other materials in its library collections and those of associated universities; the strength of the Department of English's graduate faculty (particularly in the fields of Canadian and comparative literature); and McGill's location in the heart of the bilingual metropolis of Montreal. I believe that McGill would provide me with the sort of institutional setting necessary to make further substantial progress in my towards my goal of a productive, well-grounded academic career.
I have developed a wide variety of interests as an undergraduate student. 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, to upgrade 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 are 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 literary 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 demonstrate and explain 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 three-fold division of the world economy between a rich core, a poor periphery, and an intermediate semi-periphery) 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 thesis in my Honours essay is that those 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 applying the insights gleaned from writing and researching my Honours English 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 which I think would be fascinating to study using this approach.
Thoughts?
(Wilfrid Laurier [800 to 1000 words] will be later tonight.)
