Undergraduate Fellow
Mitzi Badlis is a passionate scholar and an aspiring teacher. She co-coordinates the VicReach program at Victoria College, is a part-time figure skating coach, and is the youngest member on the Board of Directors for Common Boots Theatre. In 2023, Mitzi conducted archival and arts-based research under Dr. Tara Goldstein as her University of Toronto Excellence Award (UTEA) research assistant while also completing an independent study on teaching queer literature. In her research thus far, she has been particularly interested in storytelling and exploring the ways in which different mediums can be read as texts.
Fellowship Project: To the World We Dream About: An Analysis of Community and Hope in Hadestown (2019)
Set in a depression-era America, Hadestown breathes new life into the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice—two tragic lovers unable to escape the underworld together. Hadestown’s overworld is fraught with environmental calamities and widespread poverty while its underworld is an industrial, capitalist hellscape populated by tirelessly toiling workers with broken spirits. Orpheus’ songs of love and hope resonate with people above and below the surface and inspire them to work together to build a better world. This research project aims to analyze the significance of Hadestown and the ways in which its themes are relevant to our present.