Creating a University: The Newfoundland Experience

Creating a University is a collection of memoirs by more than 30 former faculty and staff of Memorial University ― a series of “MUNographies,”― about personal and professional experiences working at Newfoundland’s only university. It is something of a Memorial University family reunion, without a drunken uncle.

In the years covered by this volume, primarily 1950 to 1990, few Memorial faculty were Canadians, let alone Newfoundlanders. These “come from aways” arrived in the middle of a post-colonial cultural renaissance, which saw a movement toward new interdisciplinary studies, and laid the groundwork for many of the programs and courses that are offered at the University today.

Roberta Buchanan was born in Uitenhage, South Africa, and educated in England. She received her PhD from the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. Roberta immigrated to St. John’s in 1964 to teach English literature. She was a founding member of the Women’s Studies program at Memorial University. Publications include I Moved All My Women Upstairs (poetry); with Anne Hart and Brian Greene, The Woman Who Mapped Labrador: The Life and Labrador Expedition Diary of Mina Hubbard.

Stephen Harold Riggins, PhD, University of Toronto, taught sociology at Memorial University for 25 years, first as a visiting professor and in a tenurestream position beginning in 1990. Stephen has edited four books about ethnic minority media, sociological theory, and material culture studies. He is the author of the autobiographical book The Pleasures of Time: Two Men a Life. Stephen was born in southern Indiana.