OVPR: What was the focus of your PhD?
Max Karpinski: I defended my dissertation, “Against Arcadia: Rereading Pastoral in Contemporary Poetry in Canada,” in December of 2019 in the Department of English at the University of Toronto. The project examined how contemporary poets writing in Canada critically engage the traditional poetic mode, known as the pastoral, to address the legacies and ongoing manifestations of settler colonialism as well as the intensifying environmental crisis. The project begins, for example, with Lisa Robertson’s XEclogue (1993), an experimental, feminist revision of Virgil’s Eclogues. Robertson’s book of poems opens with a prose preface in which the poet seed bombs the ancient pastoral text, flinging “spores and seeds and bits of invasive root . . . into the hokey loam of an old genre.” As the figure of the seed bomber suggests, my project departed from the canonical understanding of pastoral in Canadian literary criticism, which implicates the mode in the romanticization of Canadian wilderness exemplified by early exploration and settlement narratives. Instead, I argued that contemporary poets tactically misuse the forms and thematics of the traditional pastoral, in effect composting the mode in order to reimagine it as a vital utterance for the flourishing of a more equitable and just society.
OVPR: What skill do you think is most important for a PhD to learn before starting a PDF?
MK: I can only speak to the question from a humanities perspective, but the biggest shift that I felt in moving from my doctoral studies to postdoctoral work is the self-direction required. Although postdocs are also attached to departmental supervisors, that relationship is markedly different. For one, you’re no longer beholden to externally imposed deadlines. Postdocs are expected to pursue, organize, complete, and disseminate individual research projects, as well as engage, whenever possible, in departmental events or campus organizations. If, as a PhD student, you’re drawing on the resources of your department, as a postdoctoral fellow you’re expected to contribute to that department’s expertise.
This can be a difficult and disorienting transition. It was for me, especially during my first postdoc, which I held prior to the UTM Fellowship, and which I started in March 2020, immediately before the pandemic transformed our daily lives, and the university’s operations. From my own experience and from conversations with others, postdocs can already feel somewhat separate from their host department; the pandemic definitely contributed to an intensification of this atomized feeling. I would urge incoming humanities postdocs, especially, to build local or on-campus relationships, or find whatever ways work best to keep themselves motivated in their research.
OVPR: What is the aim of your current research?
MK: Broadly speaking, I study the relationship of contemporary experimental ecopoetry to environmental activism, the legacies and ongoing manifestations of settler colonialism on Turtle Island, and the climate crisis. The UTM Fellowship has afforded me the opportunity to develop and extend the work that I began with my dissertation in a variety of directions. I’m in the process of completing a monograph that began during the first postdoc, examining the tactic of textual “appropriation” or “extraction” in contemporary ecopoetry. I read a range of poets who select and revise text from, for example, western novels, scientific and corporate petrochemical discourse, and government or legal documents. This project allows us to think about appropriation and extraction as complex ecopoetic forms for addressing the inter- and transdisciplinary crises that define the Anthropocenean contemporary, in turn expanding our sense of what so-called “nature poetry” looks like. A second project, which is in the planning stages, traces the cross-border pollinations of American and Canadian ecopoetry since the 1960s; not only to demonstrate how these exchanges have contributed to the flourishing of an experimental environmental poetry in these respective countries, but also to make an argument about the impossibility of siloing ecopoetics and environmental theory within national boundaries. Finally, with my friend and collaborator Dr. Melanie Dennis Unrau, during the UTM Fellowship I’ve co-edited two special issues of the journal Canadian Literature on the topic of “Poetics and Extraction.” The special issues draw together critical work on literary form and studies of extraction and extractivism to consider how we have arrived at the intersecting crises of global warming, environmental racism, and genocide in Canada and Turtle Island, and also to envision decolonial, reciprocal land relations for a just energy transition.
OVPR: Why did you choose UTM for your PDF?
MK: In my opinion, postdocs should look for institutional and departmental affiliations where the resources and expertise in place best fit their research. In my case, first and foremost, my supervisor in English & Drama, Professor Stanka Radović, has shown immense support for my work from the moment I reached out to her in Fall 2021, from offering feedback and helping me to tailor the Fellowship application itself, to connections with campus organizations that I hope to carry forward beyond my tenure at the university. Joining UTM granted me access to the broader University of Toronto library system, including the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library, which houses a number of collections, fonds, and individual texts that inform my critical projects. Finally, my family immigrated to Toronto when I was less than a year old. This has been home for much of my life. I recognize how lucky I am to have been offered the Fellowship here.
OVPR: What is your aspiration after completing this fellowship?
MK: I’m leaving UTM in Summer 2023 for another fellowship, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellowship, in the Department of Humanities at York University. I hope to continue my research, to find more opportunities for teaching and community engagement, and, ultimately, to find a way to make that work permanent.
OVPR: What do you do outside of research to unwind?
Let’s end on a fun question that doesn’t ask me to engage with the realities of the academic job market for humanities grads! I have three major outlets: my dog, sports, and movies. First, Edie, the dog, is an overly anxious potcake from El Salvador that my partner and I adopted through a rescue agency in Toronto in 2017. We go on long walks, down from Parkdale, where we live, to the lake and Ontario Place. It’s partially Edie’s anxiety and the fact I need to stay alert to keep her safe from incoming triggers (skateboarders, rollerbladers, big dogs, etc.) but I do these walks without headphones or without making phone calls, and they are a nice respite from the desk (when she’s good). I am probably a bit too invested in the Maple Leafs (this is the year), but I think I have a sufficient critical distance on the randomness of the sport to be able to call it an outlet for unwinding. And finally, my new year’s resolution this year was to change how I engage with art and culture outside of my research. I had found myself falling too often and too comfortably into the embrace of reality TV. So, I downloaded Letterboxd, and echoing the self-directed structure of the postdoc embarked on a self-directed tour of the Criterion collection, as well as whatever movies my friends recommend. Some first-time favourites from the last few months: Gregg Araki’s Nowhere, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, and Todd Haynes’s Safe.