Students in their final year of the Contemporary Studies Program work with a faculty supervisor to complete an honours thesis. Each year, a prize is awarded to the writer of the top thesis paper.
2025–2026
Virginia Hector
Combining my interest in post-colonial theory and my fascination with language, my thesis considers the effects of language on the development of national culture and the ability of literature to activate the national consciousness of people within post-colonial nations. I developed my theoretical basis for this project from Frantz Fanon’s anti-colonial theory, and within this framework, argue that the languages which were previously tools of the colonizer can be used productively in the people’s national liberation struggle. My thesis engages in a dialogue between Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, who present contrasting arguments in response to the question of whether African literature should be written in vernacular languages or languages of global reach. Whereas Ngũgĩ argues that African literature ought to be written in African languages, Achebe defends his decision to write African novels in English. It was important to me that my thesis resist the temptation to dichotomize these thinkers and their respective positions. Rather, I highlight their shared rejection of monolingualism by emphasizing Ngũgĩ’s advocacy for the abolition of linguistic hierarchy and Achebe’s strategic and skillful use of English interspersed with Igbo. Drawing on Homi Bhabha’s notion of mimicry, my thesis concludes with a focused analysis of Achebe’s novels Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God and his successful subversion of colonial control over culture through a transformation in the use of English.
I am so grateful for the knowledge, support and kindness of my supervisor, Dr. Hamza Karam Ally. His encouragement and our ongoing discussions about my ideas were invaluable. I would also like to congratulate my co-winner, Jonah Leibu, as well as all of our fellow CSP thesis writers on the successful completion of their theses.
2019-2020
First Prize: Caleb Sher, “Lomir Redn Yidish: On Speaking Yiddish in the 21st Century”
First Prize: Ghislaine Sinclair, “‘How to inhabit a surface’: Surface Reading the City in Lisa Robertson’s Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture“
“This thesis employs architectural history, surface reading and theories of the lyric essay to consider how Robertson’s essay collection documents the city of Vancouver as it undergoes significant social and economic transformations between 1998-2003. I argue that the fictional Office for Soft Architecture, a sort of pseudonym Robertson adopts, uses surface reading, the act of listening to the surfaces of the city–its façades, its parks, its textiles–to communicate the change witnessed during this time. This thesis is also interested in the affinity between this way of reading and the collection’s form, the lyric essay, essays with the sensibility of poetry.”
Second Prize: Gillian Gawron, “Can You Take the Human out of the Humanities?: Towards a Posthuman Ecology”
“My thesis, “Can You Take the Human out of the Humanities?: Towards a Posthuman Ecology,” was born as I tried to make sense of my odd degree (in CSP and Biology) and the value of a multi-disciplinary education. As I became interested in environmental philosophy, I found myself asking whether there is a place for the humanities in responding to the ongoing environmental crisis. To try to answer that question, I took up the Deep Ecology movement of the 60s, eco-feminist thought, posthumanist philosophy, and microbiology (among other threads) in order to explore new ways to conceive of the human “self.” To move beyond anthropocentrism in our environmental ethics, I argue, we must recognize that we are co-constituted with, but not identical to, the non-human beings that make up our worlds. To access and express a sense of “self” that is receptive, relational, and nomadic, we must use writing strategies which, in both form and content, blur the boundaries among atomistic subjects and among disciplines. This style of writing, I argue, belongs not to the humanities, but the posthumanities.”