This year's courses!

Registration is open, so it's time to choose your courses for next year.

This handy guide to courses for 2012-2013 will help.

It's full of information that you won't find anywhere else, so check it out!

Student Ambassadors Needed

STUDENT JOB POSTING

STUDENT AMBASSADORS

Student Services is dedicated to ensuring all students have the opportunity for an enriching and successful experience at CBU. Recognizing the challenges in the transition from high school to university, Student Services is seeking ambassadors to provide support services to incoming students as required.

Functions & Responsibilities

· Provide support to incoming students through CBU Connect.

· Participate in Orientation Week activities under the direction of the CBU Orientation Committee.

· Support ongoing programming and events of CBU Student Services, Recruitment and Alumni.

Training

· Friday, September 7, 2012 (must be available for training)

Term/Commitment

The ambassador term runs from May 1, 2012 to April 30, 2013.

Commitment to the position will be more intense during the September and January academic start times. However, there will be times throughout the year that ambassadors will be called on for special events and requested to make contact with students.

· Ambassadors will be provided a contact list of incoming students prior to September classes. Incoming students will be sent a letter, coordinated through Student Services, to introduce the ambassador to new students as a contact point for Orientation.

· During Orientation periods (September and January) students will be expected to participate in and lead a variety of activities. Staffing the Student Oriented Solutions will also be required for the first two weeks of classes at various times. Expected time commitments for those weeks will be approximately 10-20 hours per week.

· At various times throughout the year ambassadors will be called on to support recruitment and alumni activities at CBU and in the local community. The main activities will be special events, high school visits, and campus tours.

Qualifications

· A minimum of one academic year at CBU.

· A strong academic background.

· A demonstrated commitment to the personal growth and development of both self and others.

· Excellent communication skills, demonstrated leadership and interpersonal skills.

· Passion for CBU, your program of study, and helping others.

Benefits

· Interpersonal communication skills

· Leadership training and professional development

· Job-related skills, such as critical thinking and working with others

· Intercultural and social awareness

· Networking with CBU Alumni

· Stipend provided for participation in contacting new students

· Hourly rate between $12.65 - $13.65 (depending on year of study)

· Certificate of achievement and invitation to year end banquet for Student Ambassadors

In addition, ambassadors will have opportunities to build relationships with other ambassadors and with Student Services personnel.

Qualified candidates should submit:

- a letter of application identifying his/her education and experience as it relates to this position;

- a resume; and

- complete contact information of two references – one academic and one personal

to:

Human Resources Department

Cape Breton University
PO Box 5300, 1250 Grand Lake Rd.
Sydney, NS B1P 6L2

Tel: (902) 563-1158
Fax: (902) 563-1458
Email: humanresources@ns.aliantzinc.ca

Applications must be received by 4:00 p.m. March 23, 2012.

We thank all applicants for their interest; however, only applicants selected for an interview will be contacted.

CBU English Video

Check out our new video on Youtube, complete with original music by Hinson Calabrese.

CBU English Student a Finalist in International Teleplay Competition

Cape Breton University Honours English Student Stephen MacNeil has been named a finalist in the Creative World Awards Screenwriting and Teleplay competition. MacNeil, a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) English student, was honoured in the existing sitcom category for his hilarious spec script for the CBS hit The Big Bang Theory.

The Creative World Awards is an international competition based in Los Angeles. Its goal is to recognize up and coming talent and encourage writing within the film and television industry. Submitted works must be produced by amateurs, and be written in English. The competition is considered by many to be one of the leading screenplay and teleplay competitions in the world with participation from some of the major production companies in the industry.

In 2008, MacNeil’s spec script for film, The Last Anzian, reached the quarter-finals in the Austin Film Festival drama category, and this year, the same script placed as a preliminary finalist in the Creative World Awards action/adventure category in their feature screenplay competition.

MacNeil is currently in the last year of his degree at CBU and plans on earning a Master’s degree in English with a focus on creative writing to help him in pursuing his interests in film, television, and literature.

Meet Dana Mount!

I spend my few bits of free time these days dreaming up reading lists for my future courses. A reading list is a lot like a playlist: you want it to have a theme, a mood. It should excite people, and maybe even surprise them. But you don’t want to hear my playlists, because I’m pretty hopeless when it comes to music, really. What I do know is books. More specifically (because by this point in our education and careers, we professors get pretty specific), I know postcolonial environmental literature.

I’m Dana Mount, and I’m (delighted to be!) the new professor in World and Indigenous Literatures here at CBU. I’ll tell you a bit about how I came to be where I am today. It’s a story of someone who tried to avoid studying English but kept coming back to it.

Upon leaving high school I was pretty determined to Save the Planet. I enrolled in the Bachelor of Environmental Studies program at York University where I met a bunch of wonderful people who were also pretty determined to Save the Planet. Turns out many of them had a lot more hands-on determination than me. I kept gravitating towards questions about why we were in the state of crisis that we were in, what informed our attitudes towards the environment.

My focus on cultural attitudes towards the environment led me to want to study theories of power and structure in society. I undertook a Masters of Arts in the School of Women’s Studies, also at York University. There I studied theories of race and racism, labour history, gender and sexuality, global development and politics. I met a lot of inspiring people who are working to end oppression.

Throughout these two degrees, though, what sustained me was being able to take courses on literature where I could finally see these larger ideas being expressed, argued, and illuminated in ways theory alone was unable to do. I signed on for a PhD in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. I met a lot of people who are passionate about reading and who believe in the power of writing. There I combined my interest in world and indigenous issues, environmentalism, and literature.

And it is that combination that I bring with me here at CBU. Next year I hope to be offering courses in postcolonial literature and theory. I’m working on the reading list right now, and yes, I take requests. Feel free to drop by (CC228) or email me, dana_mount@cbu.ca.

New French Courses

FRNC 3701: L’Acadie/Acadia: Translating Literature and Culture
Instructor: Dr. Richard Marchand
Frnc 3701 is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Acadian culture, its history, language and literature (in the original and in translation). The course will include historical material (Naomi Griffiths – Contexts of Acadian History 1686-1784) revealing both English and French Colonial attitudes and the realities of the Acadian “nation” through the ages. The literary investigation will follow with a focus on poetry (Reves Inachevees – Unfinished Dreams: contemporary Poetry of Acadia), drama (Maillet – La Sagouine) and the novel (Maillet Pelagie la Charette), in the original texts but with English translations for support, although the classroom discussions will be primarily in French. We will also look at the difficulties of translation when what might be called “regional works” are involved.

FRNC 3703: Innovation & Variation in French/Francophone Literature
Instructor: Dr. Bernard Mulo Farenkia
The course will look at forms and functions of innovative language usages (e.g. code-switching, semantic shift, loan word, calquing) and regional variations in the works of some contemporary French / francophone writers (e.g. Ahmadou Kourouma, Yves Viollier, Mongo Beti, Camara Laye, Patrice Nganang, Ferdinand Oyono, Joseph Zobel, etc.). We will further discuss translation difficulties of “regional language usages” and comment on some translation techniques adopted in the English versions of the original texts.

New Course Description Information for 2011-2012

Looking for detailed information on English, French, or Drama courses for the coming year?

Find all the answers in this handy PDF!