Dr. Gisèle Baxter has taught with the UBC Department of English Language & Literatures since 1997. Her core teaching and research areas are, among others, 19th to 21st century literary and cultural studies; Gothic studies, especially haunted houses and vampires; Modernist fiction; Victorian and 19th-century literature; and science fiction and fantasy, especially dystopian and post-apocalyptic narratives and representations of synthetic humans/humanoids.
In this Know Your Profs feature, Dr. Baxter shares with us her favourite parts about teaching and studying literature, and her recommendations for spooky literature and film, just in time for Halloween.
What courses do you teach?
I’ve been with the department for so long that I’ve taught many different courses. The ones I’ve taught most often include the two introductory literature courses ENGL 100 and ENGL 110; ENGL 243, which is speculative fiction; ENGL 362, which is Victorian literature; ENGL 365: Modern literature; ENGL 392: Children’s Literature; and ENGL 301: Technical Writing, which is a hybrid course in the rhetoric of professional communication. More recently I’ve had the opportunity to teach ENGL 246: Literature and Film and ENGL 200, a team-taught course in the principles of literary studies.
What is your favourite part about studying literature?
Above all else, I enjoy the engagement with lived culture in various periods and genres that studying literature affords me. This engagement is a living thing itself, evolving and growing. I love discovering new texts and finding different ways to incorporate old favourites in various contexts . Studying literature has also led me to riveting work. Social media and my interest in Bluebeard the fairy tale put me in touch with a filmmaker in Lutruwita/Tasmania and I became an unofficial consultant on her short horror film Little Lamb, which re-set Perrault’s tale in an early 19th century prison for transported women convicts. Conference talks and a book chapter resulted from this work; later conference work focused on my examination of gender and synthetic humans/humanoids, especially in the Blade Runner films and Ex Machina.
What is your favourite part about teaching?
The engagement with students has made sure I will never ever be a person who dismisses younger generations (though some of my original students from part-time post-MA teaching in the 1980s would be seniors now, like me!). I think they’ll do great things, even if they’re small local things. I love lecturing much more than I would have expected as a very shy child and adolescent. I love students’ insights in discussions, their engagement with the texts, and their honesty in responding to them. My students give me new things to think about, new contexts and approaches to consider. I learn a lot from them.
What do you want students to know before taking your course(s)?
You do have to do the readings and watch the assigned films; please feel free to ask me questions (I check my email notoriously often). I make a lot of use of learning management systems (and have for over 20 years), so all the course documents will be backed up on our Canvas site. I realize students bring many contexts and learning preferences to class, and I try to find different ways for everyone to get the best experience out of the course. In many ways, my personal motto is “we must always budget for the unforeseen” so do check Announcements on our Canvas site regularly.
If you weren’t a professor, what would you do with your life and why?
The road not taken was radio. I was record librarian at CKDU at Dalhousie for two years, just before it went to FM and I went into academia. I did a record review program, then had my own music program on Friday afternoons. I absolutely loved doing this, as I had access to a huge library and made sure as librarian it was well stocked with the newest proto-punk, punk, post-punk, and proto-Goth music I was discovering at the time.
I’ve also always wanted to write fiction, and have written a lot that may, eventually, see the light of day. For the past year, I have been writing a vampire novel. I hope to finish the first draft next month.
As someone who does research in Gothic studies, what are some of your recommended novels or films based on literature? The spookier the better!
This is tough as I’ve seen many adaptations I’ve enjoyed for various reasons (even if I don’t think they’re very good adaptations). However, one that always stands out is The Haunting, the 1963 film based on Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Another is The Innocents, the 1961 adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. I’m teaching two of my favourite Dracula adaptations this term: Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu and Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Obviously, I must recommend my beloved core Gothic novels: Frankenstein, Carmilla, Dracula, and The Turn of the Screw (which I teach in three different courses), but I’ll also recommend Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching, Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger, Alan Garner’s remarkably scary YA novel The Owl Service, and M.R. James’s short story “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”.
