PHD STUDENT PROFILE - Kent Smith
Kent Smith earned a BAH (2014) and MA (2015) in English Literature, and is currently in his first year of the PhD program at the University of Guelph.
His main academic interests revolve around colonial and post-colonial studies, practices of improvisation, and Indigenous Literature from various nations and communities in what is now known as North America.
The significance of his PhD research is the examination of intersections of Indigenous and non-Indigenous stories, and the resulting implication that we all carry shared trauma, directly linked, in different degrees, to our shared colonial history. The intersections between post-colonial, improvisation, and Indigenous theories offer numerous ways to express and deal with these traumas that help untangle cultural confusions and promote cultural communication that can take place in any moment of encounter, not just within the framework of projects such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
On Campus, Kent is involved with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) as an events volunteer, The Journal of Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation (CSI/ECI) as copy editor, and is the Graduate Committee Representative for SETS; off campus he is the workshop curator and volunteer coordinator for the international arts and community project, Silence. He has also been involved in various fundraising projects in Guelph. Kent is a mature student who is married and has two young children.