VICTORIA UNIVERSITY’S STUDENT NEWSPAPERVOL. 56 ISSUE 12• APR.28 2014 • WWW.THESTRAND.CA

theSTRAND

Strand spends entire budget

on stock photos - p.4

Too Much Democracy at U of T? p. 6 Upon Eviction: Letter from a Student p. 7

Interview with Professor Nick Mount p. 8

2

probably not really the Strand

HACKERARTWORK BY WENTING LITEXT BY ROSALIND DEIBERT

Thank you for choosing to fly Air Cana-da today. Before we take off, please pay close attention to the following safety an-nouncements.

Please ensure that your carry-on bag-gage is safely stowed in the overhead compartments. Also, when stowing your baggage, please be careful not to disturb the raccoon that has been living up there for the past few weeks. He may appear dangerous, but rest assured that he won’t bother you if you don’t bother him.

Please ensure that your seatbelt is se-curely fastened at all times. Do not remove the seatbelt while seated, unless the rac-coon wants to curl up and take a nap in your lap. His name isn’t Porter, please stop calling him that; his name is Lil’ Bandit and he is just the cutest little cuddle monster.

We are pleased to offer you compli-mentary in-flight meals once we have reached our cruising altitude. We ask that you please not consume any peanuts or nut products, as Lil’ Bandit is allergic.

In regards to Lil’ Bandit, we don’t know exactly how he got on the plane in the first place, but over the past few weeks he has come to be a part of our family. All these lonely flights can take a toll on one’s psyche, but when Lil’ Bandit wandered into our cabin one day he changed our lives forever. He makes us laugh, warms our hearts and reminds us why we do this in the first place.

There are four emergency exits locat-ed in the cabin; two at the front and two at the rear. In the event of an emergency landing on water, it is the responsibil-ity of those passengers in the emergency rows to locate Lil’ Bandit and make sure

he gets to safety. It is entirely likely that Lil’ Bandit will not go willingly, so we will be offering complimentary rabies shots to deal with any bites and scratches that may arise. Please be sure to secure his adorable raccoon-sized lifejacket before exiting the cabin.

Please turn off all electronic devices during takeoff. We ask that you disconnect all transmitting functions for the duration of the flight, unless you plan on Instagram-ming photos of yourself with Lil’ Bandit. In that case, we ask that you please use the hashtag #lilbandit.

We are pleased to offer a non-smoking atmosphere. We ask that you refrain from smoking at all times throughout the flight, as Lil’ Bandit is trying to quit and we are really rooting for him to not relapse this time.

In the event of a depressurization of the cabin, oxygen masks will descend from the ceiling. Due to budgetary short-ages, we have been unable to attain an ex-tra oxygen mask; therefore, it will be nec-essary for one of you to give up your mask to Lil’ Bandit. We will be drawing straws shortly before takeoff to determine which of you will have to sacrifice themselves to ensure Lil’ Bandit lives on to bring joy and laughter to weary travellers for many years to come. Please be sure to secure Lil’ Ban-dit’s mask before securing your own.

Finally, if you need use the restroom at any point during the flight, we recommend that you just hold it until landing. There is currently a fully-grown grizzly bear trapped in the bathroom and it seems as if she doesn’t want to leave anytime soon.

AIR CANADA’S LIL’ BANDITFOR YOUR COMFORT & SAFETYDANNY DILLABOUGHMEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEWFOUNDLAND (CUP)

STRAND STOCK LIBRARY

3

Instead of getting into good, hard work after graduation, today’s university students are content to sit around and mooch off their parents’ money because they’re “unem-ployed”. Well, back when I was in school, nobody sat around not working after graduation! We all had good, strong, steady jobs, and we pulled ourselves up by our government-funded and strong-economy-assisted boot-straps!

Millenials also have one advantage we never had when entering the workforce – the unpaid internship. Youth today are able to snag the kind of coveted expe-rience-gathering positions that my generation would have dreamed of, stuck in our boring, paying jobs. It’s a shameful testament to the entitlement of millenials that they think they should get this kind of experience and a living wage!

Young people are clearly spoiled because their overprotective parents let them sleep inside instead of dumping them out in the wild to fend off hungry polar bears from the tender age of five. I’m proud to say that

I’ve never felt I was entitled to a thing in my life*, and my bear-wrestling skills are unparalleled by anyone in my book club! Now that boring child-services laws ap-parently don’t let you do that (my case is still before the court), parents and educators have coddled children so much that they can’t face the world. When confronted with the basic facts of life – like poverty, institutional-ized discrimination and people being paid too much to write plagiarized copy based on anecdotes – they whine about how things are “systematically unfair” and they “want to change it”. See, this would never have hap-pened if we hadn’t gotten rid of the polar bear death-matches.

But the crowning jewel in the crown (they don’t pay me for my metaphors) is that even after having things so much easier than we did, millenials are still being pam-pered in the university system! Citing student stress, universities have watered down the rigorous university curriculum of yesteryear through initiatives like bring-ing in therapy dogs and mandating that students can’t have exams simultaneously. Ugh. If I know one thing

(and I probably do), it’s that students today should be just as miserable as we were. If they’re feeling stressed out by their massive course load, they should do what we always did in my day – drink until they get alcohol poisoning, then hire an out-of-work graduate student to write that essay for them! But today’s students lack the brilliant initiative (and the money) to pull off that kind of scheme. Their spirit has been broken by the university’s sacred cows of “political correctness” and “academic integrity”.

Baby boomers, we need to face the facts. The 100% anecdotal data I gathered from talking with my vaguely-racist bridge partners says that young adults went down-hill right after our children got into the workforce. And, frankly, the more I play on your misplaced nostalgia and hatred of those who still have happiness in their lives, the slower my paper will sink into dusty obsolescence.

For more news on my boring condo and extravagant baby-boomer lifestyle, see the next issue!

*aside from what my enormous race/class privilege affords me

EMILY POLLOCKAYN (ST)RAND

MILLENIALS: LAZY GENERATION OR THE LAZIEST GENERATION?

Millenials slacking off during one of their never-ending bouts of free time.

PHOTO FROM THE STRAND’S NOW-EXTENSIVE STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION

BAD OPINIONS EXISTWHAT I LEARNED FROM THREE YEARS AT THE STRAND

I have spent 3 of my 4 years at UofT with The Strand (a fact which I just realized), 2 of which I spent as Opin-ions editor. I’ve dealt with low content, shitty content, horrible writers who wouldn’t go away, and straight up idiocy, and I’ve managed to foist a fair fuckload of my own opinions on you people along the way. I would be remiss if I didn’t take this chance to give you my opin-ion on a couple more things. Don’t like it? Too fucking bad, this is Opinions. Here’s my master list of what I learned at The Strand, and more broadly, at UofT:

- The bad writers will contribute every content call; they will be convinced that they’re the next Heming-way. Or Kerouac, or Vonnegut or whatever other bullshit white guy they’ve worshipped since high school. The good writers will have to be begged, chased after, and generally convinced that they are in fact good writers.

- Dropbox was sent from above by the god of lazi-ness specifically for newspaper staff who don’t live on campus (sorry not sorry to everyone who didn’t see me at all this year)

- When people complain about you (and they will), you will be able to tell what program they’re in. “Your argument isn’t logical”= philosophy, btw

- Also re: letters of complaint: you are not allowed to be mean when writing responses. Apparently.

- Never take a morning class. It won’t reset your sleep schedule or get you up and doing things earlier in the day. You will sleep through it.

- Also, you will never wake up on your own. Set an alarm across the room or you’ll learn to turn it off in your sleep.

- Just because you can write an entire paper in one day doesn’t mean you should. Same goes for newspaper articles.

- Coffee can be your best friend and your worst en-emy.

- As soon as you find a seat in the library and get set up, you will either need to eat or go to the washroom. Cut your losses and avoid the library.

- There is NOTHING wrong with watching TV all day, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You don’t

need that negativity in your life.- On that note, never apologize for anything. Wanna

wear pajamas all day for a week? Cool. NEVER APOL-OGIZE.

- The best TV shows will come out during midterm season. See above.

- A resume is whatever you want it to be. What is and is not a ‘qualification’ is up to you this point.

- You will be perpetually broke, no matter how much you work. Embrace it. Go to the events with free food.

- On snowy/rainy days, don’t bother. Call it a self-care day.

- This is the only time of your life where being bel-ligerently drunk at 5pm on a Monday will be not only ac-ceptable but also kind of awesome, so take advantage of it. Basically, be drunk as much as possible.

- Try to care less about everything. Trust me. In the grand scheme of your life, that one bad mark doesn’t mean shit.

It’s been real, dummies.

SARA DERISOPINIONS, DUH

4

Upon receiving a substantial amount of money to cover next year’s expenses, The Strand editors have decided that the funds would be better spent on a variety of stock photos. This past Monday, a photo shoot was held to take pictures of The Strand staff in various scenarios. These images will serve as the paper’s visual content for the foreseeable future.

Annual budget funds are typically al-located to updates in office technology and printing and distributions costs. Origi-nally, we had big plans for next year’s bud-get: new Mac computers, updated design software, and an endless supply of coffee filters. But it has occurred to us that these funds could be put to a more practical use. The utility of stock photos far outweighs the value of those trivial improvements.

In previous years, Strand editors have painstakingly navigated through Flickr pages and Google images in search the perfect photo to accompany articles on a diversity of subjects. In times of extreme desperation, we have even resorted to hand drawn illustrations of everything from garden gnomes to David Bowie. But a new year should bring changes, and The Strand is a news magazine, not a fucking coloring book.

Not only will the stock photos lend a sense of professionalism to The Strand’s visual design, they will also provide aes-

thetic consistency in the magazine’s lay-out. We take ourselves very seriously, and moving forward we aim to reach the caliber of renowned publications like The Atlantic and Time Magazine. So we asked ourselves what makes these publications so great. The answer? Stock photos.

We have faced some criticism that such a homogenous visual aesthetic might limit the scope of written content. While it is true that that these stock images portray very specific scenarios, the phe-nomenal quality of the photos has made us realize that we have no choice but to capitalize on their worth. The updated mission statement for The Strand is as fol-lows: photos first, written content later.

Does this mean that articles will be tailored to specifically address the nature of the photos? Absolutely it does.

Does this mean that we will exclude the contributions of writers whose con-tent does not adhere to our narrow crite-ria? Also, true – but this will streamline content towards a sense of cohesiveness in the publication as a whole.

This change may be displeasing to fans of The Strand’s artistry and diverse subject matter. But at this stage our op-tions are limited, because stock photos are expensive, and literally all of our mon-ey is gone.

THE STRAND SPENDS ENTIRE BUDGET ON STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY

THE FACES OF

FINANCIAL CERTAINTY

Strand editors seek a more direct method to

get cash money straight into the computer

for those sweet, sweet stock photos. One

editor, coming out of a fever dream, made

the decision to direct all present and future

funds towards building up a collection of

generic, often bizarre photographs. Today,

it is The Strand’s biggest endeavour.

GEOFF BAILLIECHANTAL DUCHESNEFEATURES

CELEBRATE!

Strand masthead relish in

recent budget decision to use

only stock photos all the time.

Says one editor, “it will be, it

will be so nice.”

Most imitated, JHM-nominatedHotel accommodated, cheerleader prom-datedBarbershop playa-hated, mom-and-pop boot-legged-edFelt like it rained ‘til the roof caved in (pretty much)

Kanye West on The Strand

• makecoffee• puton“work”playlists• checkspreads• makecoffee• fiddlewithfiles• makemillionsofsmallchanges• morecoffee• curseprinter• beunhappywithgraphics• writelastminutearticle• doneyet?

NOBODY SHOULD HAVE TO GO TO WORK THINKING “OH THIS IS THE PLACE I MIGHT SLEEP TONIGHT”

5

LOCAL TEAM PROMOTES SYNERGY

Business operations were vastly improved and productivity rose this week as local office staff promoted synergy amongst their business operations. By consolidat-ing positive momentum and facilitating a paradigm shift aimed toward revenue growth, the firm prevented downsizing.This downsizing was forecasted to pro-vide disastrous results for the mountains of CSW (completed staff work) that re-sulted from the local business’ efforts to enhance their competitive advantage. An-alysts projected metrics milestones that seemed out of reach for the local firm, and the firm’s inability to reach these met-rics within the fiscal year would have lead to income pressure and required cost re-ductions that would result in downsizing. The firm is located in a small community and unified the geographically dispersed families in the area, who often lacked any-thing else to rally around in their lives. The downsizing would have had disastrous re-sults, obliterating what is often the single source of income for many of the families of the employees. Without the synergy fostered by the firm, families could have been left to starve, feeding children in-creasingly smaller portions of food with the meagre compensation they received from their pink slip. Without the firm stimulating the local economy, many local

businesses would have began to fail, in-creasing the average distance each shop-per would have had to travel to purchase the items on their shrinking list of basic necessities. The synergy promoted by the firm was a result of incentivizing joined-up think-ing, which emphasized the cutting-edge practices of the critical thinkers within the firm and freed the firm from the con-straints of the circling-back that they were often prey to by the bottlenecking caused by their previous processes and revenue mix. One of the blue-sky thinkers in the organization proposed a raft of measures in order to prevent the resistance caused by the tent-pole aspects of the project. Focusing on picking the low-hanging fruit, they re-engineered through a strat-egy of giving power to the elbow a plan to push the envelope and sing from the same hymn sheet to their customers. Synergy has shown to be an important de-velopment for both the firm’s profits and its revenue streams, which keeps jobs in the area. The effects on standard-of-living provided by the jobs are yet to be seen, but the proven effectiveness and impor-tance of providing jobs is well understood. This strategic plan was spearheaded by the superior and sustainable silver bullet of obfuscation.

ANTHONY BURTONNEWS

PHOTOS BY: VICTORIA CHUEN, THOMAS LU, WARREN GOODWIN

ANYTHING LESS THAN SECOND BEST IS A FELONY- VANILLA ICE / ANTHONY BURTON

6

OUR MASTHEAD

Editors-in-ChiEf

nEws

opinions

fEaturEs

arts & CulturE

film & musiC

strandEd

dEsign

Copy

photo

art

wEb

distribution

Contributors

Aaron Goodbaum, Lauren Van Klavern, Warren Goodwin, Danny Dillabough

illustrations

Sarah Crawley, Wenting Li, Vivian Che

photos

Victoria Chuen, Thomas Lu, Warren Goodwin

CovEr photo

Warren Goodwin

Paula RazuriAmanda AzizEmily Pollock

Anthony BurtonBen Atkins

Jonah Letovsky

Chantal DuchesneGeoff Baillie

Holly McKenzie-Sutter

Dominique BéchardClaire Wilkins

Emily DeibertOlesya Lyuzna

Vivian Che

Rhianna Jackson-Kelso

Victoria Chuen

Wenting LiSeolim Hong

Thanasi Karachotzitis

Nigel Maynard

The Strand has been the newspaper of record for Victoria University since 1953. It is published 12 times a year with a circulation of 2000 and is distributed in Victoria University buildings and across the University of Toronto’s St. George campus.

The Strand flagrantly enjoys its editorial auton-omy and is committed to acting as an agent of constructive social change. As such, we will not publish material deemed to exhibit racism, sex-ism, homo/trans*phobia, ableism, or other op-pressive language.

The Strand is a proud member of the Canadian University Press (CUP).

Our offices are located at 150 Charles St. W., Toronto, ON, M5S 1K9. Please direct enquiries by email to editor@thestrand.ca. Submissions are welcome and may be edited for taste, brev-ity, and legality.

Follow us on Twitter for news and updates:@strandpaper

T

editor@thestrand.ca

news@thestrand.ca

opinions@thestrand.ca

features@thestrand.ca

artsandculture@thestrand.ca

filmandmusic@thestrand.ca

stranded@thestrand.ca

design@thestrand.ca

copy@thestrand.ca

photo@thestrand.ca

art@thestrand.ca

TOO MUCH DEMOCRACY?JONAH LETOVSKYOPINIONS

We have a lot of elections at U of T. For UTSU alone, we elect a President, VP Campus

Life, VP University Affairs, VP External, VP Equity, and VP Internal & Services and no less than 22 differ-ent types of Directors of the Board.

At Vic—one college—we just elected four Board of Regents members, two Victoria University Senate members, five Victoria College Council members, a VUSAC president, VP Operations, and commissioners for Arts & Culture, Academic & Professional Advance-ment, Commuter, Education and Equity, and Scarlet & Gold (excluding Sustainability and Members-at-Large, for which there will be elections in the Fall).

Yeah, that’s a lot of voting. But so what—that’s just the price of democratic student government, right?

Well, let’s take a look at just how many jobs and appointments are on offer for some context.

At the UTSU, under the “Jobs” section on their website, there’s one listing—for the VP Campus Life (and that in and of itself deserves its own column). From what I gather, there isn’t a single appointed or hired student position of responsibility within the en-tire UTSU organization. Staff members that perform certain technical functions, such as coordinating the health and dental plan, are mostly permanent profes-sionals.

VUSAC, for its part, hires a student Secretary, Chair, Finance Chair, Communications Coordinator, and Chief Returning Officer (CRO). Of those positions, the Secretary, Chair, and Finance Chair are more func-tionally-focused, while the Communications Coordina-tor and Chief Returning Officer have more autonomy—in other words, they’re leadership roles.

By my count, that’s a total of five positions within both UTSU and VUSAC for which students are hired or appointed based on their qualifications, where they can gain valuable experience working within large or-ganizations, and where they can become meaningfully involved with their school if they so wish. Five.

The rest of these roles are elected, under U of T’s current framework.

What are the results of dozens and dozens of elec-

tions? What are the consequences of holding a popu-larity contest for almost every leadership role in the university?

Lots of candidates. Lots of campaigning. Lots of public competition—competition that can, and does, get nasty. And what are we left with? A few student leaders who control our money, programs, and services by din of their campaign skills—not (necessarily) their qualifications. Last year, there wasn’t a single opposi-tion slate running for UTSU. The voting turnout is dis-mal, never rising above 15%. There’s a feeling of utter disconnection between students and their unions.

We need to de-centralize our student government and, though it sounds paradoxical, de-politicize it; it doesn’t exist as a platform to train future Liberal Party members, nor is it there to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict. We have student government in order to lend students some autonomy over the way our money is spent, to decide which and how services are provided, and, most importantly, to give students an opportunity to get involved. If it isn’t fulfilling that basic mandate, then something foundational needs to change.

Queen’s University’s student government, on the other hand, is a big, all-encompassing bureaucracy. There are positions available for students as soon as they arrive on campus, with first-year internships, ser-vice hiring periods in September, and major, competi-tive volunteer opportunities. The Alma Mater Society (AMS) appoints Commissioners, Directors, Officers, and Managers for both 8 and 12 month terms, and strives for 100% turnover each year—largely eliminat-ing the kind of incumbency that so corrupts U of T poli-tics. Queen’s still has elections, of course, but within reason—slates of 2 or 3 candidates run for the presi-dency of the AMS and various other faculty societies, who subsequently appoint large teams to work with them for the year.

We should learn from their example. De-central-izing and growing our student bureaucracy would in-crease involvement, improve accountability, reduce resentment, and finally create a sense that our student government is truly ours.

probably really the Strand

SARAH CRAWLEY

7

To the Office of the Dean,

I’m writing to you regarding a meeting that we had on March 20th, in which you informed me I would no lon-ger be able to live on residence at Victoria College. This came as a surprise to me, as I had never received a formal complaint for any sort of misconduct. I had good rela-tionships with my housemates and enjoyed the commu-nity in which I’d been living for the past seven months. What I hadn’t realized was that when I dropped all of my classes two weeks earlier, I breached the residence contract that I had signed at the start of September.

While I understand that by evicting me you were acting in accordance with Victoria College policy, I want to express to you my disappointment with the way you handled my situation. The remarks you directed at me were insulting, and many of the questions you asked were inappropriate.

You said yourself that I was not being evicted for disciplinary reasons, yet you spent the first half of our conversation reprimanding me for my presence in resi-dence. It had taken two weeks for the registrar to inform your office of my enrolment status, during which time I continued living in my room. I made it clear to you that I was completely unaware that I would have to leave resi-dence before the end of the term. The day before we met I received an email from your office which stated that my move out date was set for April 7th. I had not inten-tionally violated the terms of the residence agreement.

The hostility you showed towards me was unneces-sary. At no point during our discussion did I resist your

demand that I make arrangements to leave residence. You explained that residence was meant to be a support-ive environment for students enrolled at this university, and that it was not meant for, and I quote, “just some-body off the corner.”

When I enrolled at this university almost a year ago, I did not plan on finding myself in the position I am in now. I spent much of the year studying alongside my peers in residence, and enjoyed the friendships that de-veloped out of this experience. I see myself as a part of the Vic community, and resent such a negative compari-son. I explained to you that I had faced many personal challenges throughout the year, and that I had grappled with mental health issues. For these reasons, which I am no more inclined to share in detail with you now than during our meeting, I told you that I chose to drop my courses before the deadline to avoid academic penalties.

I’m still unsure as to why it would seem strange that I had remained in my room which was paid for in full, but you were unmistakably shocked as you asked me, “Why are you still here?” The simplest answer I could offer was that, as far as I had been concerned, this was where I lived. I asked that you make an allowance of several days for me to arrange somewhere to stay, as it would be difficult for me to find a solution on such short notice. My living situation before I moved into residence was none of your business. Like many other students at Vic, my family situation is not typical. This was not an invitation for you to question me on my family or their whereabouts, however I needed you to grant me this re-quest, and so I tried my best to go along with your ques-

tions. I explained that I had not lived with my mother in almost three years, and that my father had passed away around the same time. At this point I insisted that I would be capable of finding an alternate arrangement on my own.

When you said that I had “flunked out”, I reminded you that I had made a careful and difficult choice to drop my courses. You told me that it was all the same. While I don’t care to debate the semantic difference between the two, it was insensitive of you to insist upon labelling me as a failure. It is not your place to pass judgement on my decisions, or to deride me because I do not fit your image of a Victoria College student. Perhaps it’s not that you don’t care about your students. As you made perfectly clear, you do not include me amongst them. Maybe being a student of yours involves being treated with a higher degree of respect.

I may have failed to complete my year at this uni-versity, but you failed to show me the courtesy I would expect from someone in your position. If you refuse to consider me a student, then at the very least your con-duct towards me as a paying customer was less than professional. I hope that this letter will encourage you - along with the other members of the Dean’s office - to consider taking a more thoughtful approach in the future when dealing with students in a similar position.

Sincerely,Aaron Goodbaum

UPON EVICTION AN OPEN LETTER TO THE DEAN’S OFFICE

VICTORIA CHUEN

The following letter was submitted to The Strand by a student of Victoria College who lost “student” status. In doing so, he unknowingly broke the Residence Agree-ment between student and institution signed at the beginning of the 2013-2014 aca-demic session. Upon speaking with the Office of the Dean of Students, The Strand recognizes that students are not commonly removed from residence, and that Vic-toria College aims to always work with the students and be understanding wherever possible.

According to a representative of the Dean’s Office, “to live in residence, there are some obligations the student needs to fulfill; they need to be a student.” For reasons of privacy, the Dean’s Office could not offer a comment on certain elements of the following letter. At this time, there is no formal petition for students who break the Residence Agreement. We have chosen to include the following letter as a possible item of conversation between all students and the University.

8

As it dawns on me that the second year of my undergraduate degree is coming to a close, I wanted to revisit a first year class that fostered a lot of excitement in English literature for me. There’s no doubt that it has excited many other students over the past ten years that it has been taught on Fridays at the Isabel Bader Theatre by the well-known and respected Professor Nick Mount. I met with Mount in his office one Wednesday afternoon to talk to him about his experience teaching the beloved Literature for Our Time. Mount will not be teaching the course next year due to a sabbatical leave, leaving time to work on his book that he tells me he is late in delivering to his publisher.

“Large class lecturing is a different kind of beast - it’s not for everyone and it shouldn’t be for everyone,” he tells me. “I like teaching first year classes because I like teaching people who have not yet been made cynical by the university experience. At 18 when you first come to this university, you still believe there is something special about this place. I believe there is something special about this place, and I continue to believe.”

I must admit that I am gradually starting to feel this cynicism that Mount speaks of. I recall in first year when older students would chuckle mockingly at the eagerness of the frosh, warning us to enjoy frosh week because we would start to dread school soon, once all the hard work and late nights began. But remembering Professor Mount’s class always makes me smile.

“If you don’t believe in the worth of the story you’re telling, how do you expect anyone else to believe it’s worth hearing?” he says. “You have to be interested in what you’re teaching otherwise no one else is going to find it interesting. Being sincerely interested in what I’m doing is not hard for me to fake because I am interested. My goal is to re-enact the curiosity and excitement of my own first encounter with the text, and to restage that so the students get to experience it in real time. The vast majority of what makes a good lecture is the content, not the form — it’s how hard you worked to make sure you understand the material so that you used the most precise, best example to get your point across to a disparate audience.”

Nick Mount’s style is almost like an artistic performance. He covers the stage like a performer would, pacing back and forth, and he puts the technology at Isabel Bader Theatre to good use, playing music before lectures and during the breaks, and including relevant and helpful images in his PowerPoint presentations.

“I try to write lectures so that they feel like a monologue trying to pretend to be a dialogue. I’m trying rhetorically to make this not sound like a lecture, to make

this sound like you’re listening in on something,” Mount explains. “As a student I had a very short attention span, and I continue to have a very short attention span, and in a way it makes you a better lecturer. I think in ten-minute chunks…and then I’ve got to do something to get the room back up again.”

In this age of instant gratification and rapid technological advancement, it seems attention spans keep shortening with each new invention. Nick Mount’s continued effort to engage students is something I appreciate.

“That’s why the images exist in the class, that’s why the music exists. Part of the reason the music exists is because I was a DJ for years as a younger person, and I can’t resist. But the music is also connected to the class. Thematically it’s a big part of the course even though I don’t stress it or bring it up because I like the idea of something being in the lecture that the students figure out for themselves. Whether they notice it or not isn’t important; it’s there mostly for energy. It’s about setting the mood. You’re using music to set an emotional stage. You’re bringing people in, because it’s been a long day, and it’s a Friday afternoon for God’s sake, so I need something to pick people up to tell them ‘we’re here, this thing here starts now.’ “

I often found that I would actively be trying to making connections from the songs to the texts we were studying, or failing that, it would at least help me get in the mood to hear about the books.

“Yeah, I get like 450 music sleuths every year, students writing me and asking me if I’ve heard of this or that, and it’s great. Music is powerful. It’s my way of creating an emotional soundtrack for the course. These things help to sink the texts into your memory, even on a subconscious level. The music is not meant to be conscious, it’s not meant to be explicit.”

I ask him about the different guest authors he brings in every year. John K. Samson’s appearance at Isabel Bader last year in the spring term is still fresh and memorable in my mind. It was amazing to hear him give an impromptu musical performance of some of his best songs for the student body.

“Yeah, it’s a big deal for a Canadian author to go into a room of 450 people who have read your book and listened to lectures about it and are ready for the author and what they have to say. Many books have gone back into print because of the amount of copies needed for this class, which is really exciting for the authors. I select books that are a little older, so they are already in the author’s rearview mirror. When authors come to Bader and talk to us, they can sometimes find understandings

of their own books that they never picked up on before. It’s a unique experience.”

One thing I’m curious about is the one work that has remained on his syllabus every year since the beginning — Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which also happens to be one of my favourite musicals.

“Many of the themes I discover in the second term are themes I discovered in Hedwig initially. For example, the theme of homelessness, and being in between things. Birony. When I first started teaching this course, I wanted to take that seriously, to figure out: ‘What is our time?’ There has to be something that makes a piece specific to our time and place. One of those specific things that Hedwig possesses and that is relevant to our current time is a fluidity around gender, which was simply not the case for my generation. Also, I simply liked it.”

I remember him using the term “birony” in his lectures last year. I ask him if he created it.

“I didn’t coin it, it was my friend Jeremy Keehn who now edits Harper’s Magazine and at the time was writing for The Walrus. Birony is when all your training screams at you that something is definitely ironic, and it appears ironic on the surface and is coded as irony but it is actually serious. Irony in our time is almost ubiquitous now and it wasn’t ten years ago. It feels good and bad; the universe seems to be slowly figuring out what I figured out in the class, unfortunately I never published any of it.”

Give me an example, I say.“I think Lana del Rey might fall into being bironic.

Spring Breakers might be bironic.”The conversation is coming to a close, and I aks him

about coming plans for the course.“Denise Cruz is going to be taking the class over.

She’s young, she’s a woman, she’s not white, she is totally qualified, and wants to teach it. Those kinds of things are important to the University of Toronto.”

He pauses to contemplate his own feelings about stepping down from teaching Literature for Our Time. I want to know how he feels about leaving a course he has invested so much heart, passion, dedication and hard work into for ten years.

“It does feel strange, though ten years feels like a good place to leave it. I love teaching it, and I guarantee you I’m going to miss it. I’m going to have some very conflicted feelings, but Denise is going to take the course and make it her own. She is going to change it, and she should, and that’s the great thing about this title of the course – it enables you to do anything you want with it. Technically, Homer’s Odyssey could be on the syllabus if the professor wanted it to be. Many things can count as literature for our time. That’s what is so unique about it.”

IN

CONVERSATIONWITH

Nick Mount

LAUREN VAN KLAVERN

ARTWORK BY VIVIAN CHE