Joel Castonguay-Belanger
Research Classification
Research Interests
Relevant Thesis-Based Degree Programs
Recruitment
Complete these steps before you reach out to a faculty member!
- Familiarize yourself with program requirements. You want to learn as much as possible from the information available to you before you reach out to a faculty member. Be sure to visit the graduate degree program listing and program-specific websites.
- Check whether the program requires you to seek commitment from a supervisor prior to submitting an application. For some programs this is an essential step while others match successful applicants with faculty members within the first year of study. This is either indicated in the program profile under "Admission Information & Requirements" - "Prepare Application" - "Supervision" or on the program website.
- Identify specific faculty members who are conducting research in your specific area of interest.
- Establish that your research interests align with the faculty member’s research interests.
- Read up on the faculty members in the program and the research being conducted in the department.
- Familiarize yourself with their work, read their recent publications and past theses/dissertations that they supervised. Be certain that their research is indeed what you are hoping to study.
- Compose an error-free and grammatically correct email addressed to your specifically targeted faculty member, and remember to use their correct titles.
- Do not send non-specific, mass emails to everyone in the department hoping for a match.
- Address the faculty members by name. Your contact should be genuine rather than generic.
- Include a brief outline of your academic background, why you are interested in working with the faculty member, and what experience you could bring to the department. The supervision enquiry form guides you with targeted questions. Ensure to craft compelling answers to these questions.
- Highlight your achievements and why you are a top student. Faculty members receive dozens of requests from prospective students and you may have less than 30 seconds to pique someone’s interest.
- Demonstrate that you are familiar with their research:
- Convey the specific ways you are a good fit for the program.
- Convey the specific ways the program/lab/faculty member is a good fit for the research you are interested in/already conducting.
- Be enthusiastic, but don’t overdo it.
G+PS regularly provides virtual sessions that focus on admission requirements and procedures and tips how to improve your application.
ADVICE AND INSIGHTS FROM UBC FACULTY ON REACHING OUT TO SUPERVISORS
These videos contain some general advice from faculty across UBC on finding and reaching out to a potential thesis supervisor.
Supervision Enquiry
Great Supervisor Week Mentions
My supervisor is brilliant. His patience and humour buoy even the most floundering of minds (fact of which I am empirical proof). A good thing: there are great supervisors aplenty. A magical thing: my supervisor understands me and helps me to understand myself.
Graduate Student Supervision
Doctoral Student Supervision
Dissertations completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest dissertations.
Eighteenth century authors’ fascination with the figure of the nun is attested by its presence in the literary landscape. This presence has led us to question the social stakes behind its protean representations. Utilization of this figure is far from being insignificant as it often appears to be strategic, and above all, is highly rooted in the social and political context of the century. Although the tactical use of nuns as characters is extensive throughout the eighteenth century, it is even more prominent in the last two decades due to the wake of revolutionary events. During that time a radicalization of certain traits in the representations of nuns is especially perceivable.Exploration of a heterogeneous corpus emphasizes the implications of the social imagination of the nun in the evolution of revolutionary discourse, and in the final decision to close the convents in 1792. Antagonistic characterization of nuns in some eighteenth-century literature is symptomatic of the spirit of anticlericalism spreading in the France of the Old Regime. Various sources (novels, theater pieces, letters written by nuns, etc.) highlight the process by which fiction participates in the construction of a negative social imagination of nuns and convents. The present study is a part of the New Cultural History, and exists at the intersection of literary and historical approaches. More importantly, this research sheds a new light on a social imagination that was prevalent in the eighteenth century, and is an original contribution to the study of representation of women in literature.
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Master's Student Supervision
Theses completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest theses.
No abstract available.
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