{"id":7425,"date":"2024-09-17T17:58:04","date_gmt":"2024-09-17T17:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamm.cfdh.ca\/?p=7425"},"modified":"2024-09-17T17:58:29","modified_gmt":"2024-09-17T17:58:29","slug":"a-visit-from-ann-marie-macdonald-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamm.cfdh.ca\/fr\/a-visit-from-ann-marie-macdonald-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Visit from Ann-Marie MacDonald, part 2!"},"content":{"rendered":"
More Impressions of the Day – by Paige Baziuk and Ren\u00e9e Colucci<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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MAMM Team members all had varying levels of familiarity with MacDonald\u2019s work before joining the project. English Language and Literature Major, Dana Alrifai<\/mark> shared that she \u201clearned about Ann-Marie MacDonald through Dr. Gordon in my first-year English course. Fall on Your Knees<\/em> was the text of the year and is how I was introduced to the complexities and intricacies of literature. I learned that MacDonald’s work is dense and intricately layered, with various personal stories woven into the plot. While her narratives are fictional, they are set against historical backdrops, offering glimpses into possible personal pasts<\/strong>\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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In contrast, Emily Mills<\/mark> writes that, \u201cunlike most MAMM team members, I had not read (or otherwise been exposed to) MacDonald’s work before this project\u2014something I blame on my tendency to gravitate towards non-fiction. However, as a geographer, I found MacDonald’s writing phenomenal. She takes her readers on a process of reckoning with their understanding of the “real” world by exposing the tensions (and myths) in its (hi)stories. I look forward to engaging with more of MacDonald’s work, as well as the unsettling it will bring me<\/strong>\u201d. What is significant about comparing these two responses is that Mills is drawn more to the construction of space within the novel whereas Alrifai reflects on the intricate layers of the plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Despite Alrifai being a MacDonald veteran, meeting the author for the first time was no less of an incredibly powerful moment for her. She shared that \u201cmeeting Ann-Marie MacDonald for the first time was an extremely overwhelming and mind-blowing experience. It was fascinating to meet the person behind the texts we were dissecting for our project. Meeting her in person made me realize how serious this project was and how it was a collaborative effort extending beyond our English office. It also made me realize that her texts are works of research in themselves and that all the mappings we were doing independently were not only of her characters and the spaces they interact with but also of the work she put in during her writing and editing processes<\/strong>\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Another team member who felt greatly impacted by meeting MacDonald was Riley Campbell<\/mark>, a first-year English major: \u201cmeeting Ann-Marie MacDonald was the kickstart to my full appreciation of this project and its objectives. As a member of the Omeka team in the project\u2019s first phase, I was removed from the central data cataloguing and was instead working through MacDonald\u2019s research materials, artefacts, and various notes. To see the author herself sitting in front of me made all my work more real and increased my admiration of the immense work she had put into the novel. The meeting was simultaneously my first introduction to the mapping team and an opportunity to witness the extraordinary visual diagrams, intellectually arranged charts, and efficient processes they had created. I was awestruck by the conclusions produced through the merging of disciplinary work and felt more honored than ever to be a member of such a unique, creative initiative<\/strong>\u201d. Despite Campbell being one of the newer team members, it can be said with close to certainty that her sentiments are shared by the rest of the team.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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This research project aims to consider the relations of space and place throughout the geography discussed in MacDonald\u2019s novels<\/mark>, and of course our team could not resist extrapolating this notion onto the meeting with MacDonald herself. When considering the idea of space, the collaboration of author, student, and faculty constructed a very unique environment. Olivia Hay <\/mark>reflected on this collaboration and shares this response: \u201cI went through basically the entirety of undergrad without really working in such a collaborative space – and even when there was any collaborative work it was pretty clearly divided with the professor being the centre of power, and to a substantial degree separated from the student body who were, for example, working together in groups. However, this project really is based on teamwork at all levels and that divide between professor and student is not as harsh, so it\u2019s easier to voice an opinion and have it heard, for example, as opposed to a dynamic where there is no room for negotiations on things. Obviously, we still have our project leads but there is more of an open communication channel between all of us, at all the different stages of our education we\u2019re in\u201d<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Riley Campbell<\/mark> reflects in a similar way by sharing this statement: \u201cThe meeting with Ann-Marie MacDonald was such a unique experience and I attribute part of that to the variety of people welcome in the space. In a world where hierarchy is quite normal in most settings, it is rare that several adults and young adults, or several students in contrast with successful adults, are treated with the same respect or approached for intellectual input in the same way. The MAMM team, however, is a group of so much variety, in terms of age, discipline, experience, etc., which the meeting space made positively evident. Everybody was invited to speak, inquire, and contribute, and that open, mutually respectable environment enhanced the space and the ability to get meaningful work done. This was especially beneficial collaboratively, as no member was seen as lesser, even to a best-selling author\u201d<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Thanks for reading! PB & RC.<\/mark><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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