• Announcements

    ESA 2023-24 Elections are Open!

    The academic year is coming to an end and so it’s time to start thinking about next year’s executive team. As an ESA executive, you will work with a team of like-minded students to find different ways of cultivating a community within the English department while also promoting English studies as an accessible and fun option available to anyone. From our annual ice cream social to outreach events such as the Poetry Collection, you will have the opportunity to hold big and small events and collaborate with the English department, or even other clubs! To be eligible for this election, you must be an official member of the ESA. This…

  • Blog

    I’m doing a BSc and a BA. Why?

    “We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.” -Cooper, Interstellar I was fourteen when my family and I went to see Christopher Nolan’s film Interstellar. Back then, my destiny was to be an actress. I was represented by outstanding agency and was skipping classes to attend auditions and call backs. My weekends were reserved for acting classes and filming demo reels. We went to watch this movie so we could support another kid at my acting school who was in the film. I remember seeing their face pop up…

  • Announcements,  Blog

    Come Write for the ESA’s Blog!

    Have you ever wanted to talk about a book, but your friends have never heard of it? Or maybe, you watched a critically underrated film that boggled your mind so much that you pulled an all-nighter to write an essay. Whatever your reason may be, chances are that as an English student, you do a lot of writing. So, why not share it with the world? First off, let me introduce myself. My name is Atticus- yes, like the lawyer from To Kill a Mockingbird. I originally started off at UBC with plans to be a physics major, but after falling in love with English literature through the masterpiece of…

  • Blog

    Why I Respect Fanfiction

    Image: “A Rainbow of Books” by Dawn Endico on Creative Commons. License CC BY-SA 2.0 The criticism against fanfiction is most often centered on the rhetoric of it being poorly written, unoriginal, and too sexual in nature. However, this take fails to consider that fanfiction allows a writer to share their creative works without having to navigate through the publishing industry, a place filled with countless barriers against aspiring authors, especially minorities. As for the quality of fanfiction, I argue that there is value in having a genre that constantly puts out work by a variety of authors at different points of their writing journey. A more diverse group of…

  • Blog

    The End of the Road: Escaping through Privilege in My Own Private Idaho

    “I’ve been tasting roads all my life. This road will never end. It probably goes all around the world.”-Mike Waters  Mike Waters is a tragic character. Played by the late River Phoenix, he’s a young gay sex worker whose life is perceived as a fun escape to his best friend, Scott Favor. Mike’s situation was never a choice. His older brother is also his father, he’s poor, never had a “normal family,” struggles with narcolepsy, and is homeless (My Own Private Idaho). Though he insists he doesn’t feel sorry for himself, what makes Mike tragic is his yearning for stability, something he never obtains in the film. Scott sees the…