Sep 5, 2018

Priscila Uppal, poet, author, and English professor at York University, challenges traditional psychological and anthropological models of mourning in her new book We Are What We Mourn: The Contemporary English-Canadian Elegy, suggesting that Canadians mourn differently.

Traditional models define successful mourning in...

Mar 19, 2018

I met with Professor Nick Mount at his University of Toronto offices in "Toronto" to discuss his book Arrival, The Story of CanLit. We talk among other things about the pronunciation of Toronto, the non-Toronto-centricity of his book, Alistair MacLeod, the CanLit boom, early Canadian writers publishing first in the...

Jun 13, 2013

Without question, Friedrich Nietzsche is the go-to guy for those who want to sound smart at a cocktail party.  He's a philosophical superstar, ' the grandfather of postmodernism', an inspiration to thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Sarah Kofman, and Paul de Man.

Nietzsche’s popularity...

May 26, 2013

 George Saintsbury (23 October 1845 – 28 January 1933), though a prolific and influential British literary critic in the late 1800s, is today perhaps best known as the author of a book on wine called Notes on a Cellar-Book (1920). According to Prof. Nicholas Margaritis, Saintsbury deserves a larger modern...

May 20, 2013

Lionel Trilling (1905 – 1975) is one of the best known U.S. critics of the twentieth century. A Professor of Literature and Criticism at Columbia University from 1931 - 1975, his teachings focused primarily on the relationships between literature, culture and politics. His first and best known collection of...