Professor Neil ten Kortenaar offers a commencement address to our 2021 graduates, on behalf of the faculty and staff of the Department of English at UTSC.
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My name is professor Neil ten Kortenaar, and it is my honour to be the Chair of the Department of English at UTSC.
Dear graduates of English 2021, graduation is a ritual, a public celebration with a larger community of family and friends, of a momentous achievement in your individual lives. This should be a rite of passage, as you leave behind the condition of being a student and become something else: a graduate. As you've no doubt heard from professors, a rite of passage is a liminal moment, as the initiate stands perched on a threshold, no longer what you were, but not yet what you will be. And your professors no doubt promised that liminal moments are full of potential, because you're between spaces and identities.
This past very long year, however, the usual ritual has lost its ceremonial aspect. Not only can we not get together to celebrate in person, but the liminal moment has engulfed the world. Nothing is what it was -- it's as though in the process of crossing the threshold the entire order of the universe was disturbed. As you're getting ready to leave the university with one foot still perched on campus, your weight shifted to the raised foot preparing to land outside, the world transformed. Where should you put your feet? You need to be nimble to keep your balance. The people who are sending you off, and those on the other side reaching out to welcome you have lost their balance as well.
But you are literature and film and creative writing students. By definition attuned to image and narrative. You have the resources to interpret this moment, make a narrative of it, and tell it in ways both creative and critical.
Looking back, perhaps it is the Fall, from innocence to a new, bitter knowledge. Perhaps it was the apocalypse, a disaster made inevitable by human actions, and this is the dystopian future we need to survive as we lay the foundations for a new community, and more sustainable social and economic structures. Perhaps it's the passage through the rabbit hole or the looking glass, to what always lay beyond or behind, but will now stand revealed. Perhaps this is a story of ordeal and resilience. I sense a new dawn: vaccination is progressing apace, we expect to be back in classrooms in January. The city and the university will not be the same, but there's hope in the air. Interpreters need to be careful truth-tellers, identifying the risks and dangers, naming the problem, imagining the world afresh, persuading others of your narrative.
But hey: you've got this.
When the old words no longer satisfy, you'll have fresh metaphors. When the established stories of how we got here do not explain enough, we will listen for other voices -- your voices. When the canonical interpretations fail us, we'll seek new ones. This is what we do as students of visual and literary texts, and as critical and creative writers.
UTSC Department of English graduates, the class of 2021, as you're poised on this threshold, know that you carry with you the skills and tools you'll need to help make sense of the moment in which we find ourselves, to help the world to respond in creative, resilient, and just ways. Thank you for all that you've contributed to our department and to UTSC. As faculty members we feel incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with you, both inside and outside the classroom, and in a whole series of other digital, virtual, strange new spaces, and to learn from you every day.
Most important: Congratulations. We're so proud of you and your accomplishments, and proud too that you'll be representing UTSC Department of English wherever your journey takes you.