As Carleton’s first PhD English graduates, Emma Peacocke and Amatoritsero Ede say the program has left them well prepared for any career in their future.
“English makes you think outside of the box. If you study the humanities, it prepares you for anything and it broadens your horizons to see things in a way that others don’t see,” says Ede.
As the founder of Maple Tree Literary Supplement, a quarterly online journal promoting culturally diverse Canadian writing and arts, Ede says the degree has given him the discipline to start a project and take it to its end.
“I’m more the writer than the scholar,” says Ede, “so the discipline of doing a PhD will translate very well into sitting and working on a novel.”
Born in Nigeria, Ede studied English literature and German for his master’s degree before coming to Carleton in 2005 through PEN Canada’s writer-in-residence program. His dissertation looks at the intersection of colonialism with the production, distribution, and canonization of African writings, and in particular Nigerian texts.
After studying biology for her undergraduate degree, Peacocke came to Carleton to complete a master’s degree in English language and literature.
“I think every graduate of this doctorate program would fit in extremely well into whatever kind of employment beckoned,” says the Ottawa native.