Academic Background

DEGREES

• PhD     English     University of Western Ontario
• MA      English     University of Toronto
• BA      English     Carleton University

RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS

Postcolonial Literature, Medieval Literature, Women's Literature and Gender Studies, Popular Culture / Cultural Studies, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Creative Writing.

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

1. Literature and Culture in the Black Atlantic: From Pre- to Postcolonial (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

2. "Internal Colonization and the Culture of Street Life in Bud Osborn's hundred block rock," The Canadian Review of American Studies, 2007.

3. “Reading Queer Caribbean Identities: Faizal Deen’s land without chocolate and the Gay Caribbean Canon,” Postcolonial Text, 2006.

4. “Nation-building Colonialist-style in Bevis of Hampton,” Exemplaria, 2006.

5. “Aboriginality and Storytelling in My Place: Discourse and Contexts,” in Women In Storytelling. Afra Kavanagh, ed. (University College of Cape Breton Press, 2000)

Additional Information

REPRESENTATIVE CONFERENCE PAPERS 

"Encountering the Other as Reflection of the Self in the Middle English Book of John Mandeville."  Unstable Zones: Self and Other in British Narratives of First Encounter. Ecole Normale Superieure Lyon, France, March 22-24, 2007.

"The Postcolonial, The Caribbean, The Medieval." Futures of the Field Symposium, along with Bruce Holsinger (University of Virginia) and Kellie Robertson (Pittsburgh University). The George Washington University, Washington DC, October 27, 2006. [Invited Paper]

“Before the Black Atlantic: Imagining Africa and Africans in the English Middle Ages.” CACLALS / COHSS Annual Conference. York University, Toronto, May 26-30, 2006.

“The Unpopularity of Disappearance in the Classroom: Dabydeen and Gilroy.” Caribbean Migrations: Negotiating Borders. Ryerson University, Toronto, July 18-22, 2005

“An End to Black Atlantic Hybridity?: The Nationalist Impulse in David Dabydeen’s Disappearance.” Accute Annual Conference. University of Western Ontario, London, May 28-31, 2005.

“‘inside this north american culture of death’: Internal Colonization and the Culture of Street Life in Bud Osborn’s hundred block rock.” CACLALS / COHSS Annual Conference. University of Western Ontario, London, May 28-31, 2005.

“Moments of Queerness in the Writings of Three Medieval Women Visionaries.” Intersections: Medieval and Postmodern Forms, Theory, and Semiotics. McMaster University, Hamilton, May 28, 1999.

“Castration, Language, Meaning: (En)gendering the Vernacular in Medieval France.” Vernacularity: The Politics and Language of Style. Medieval and Renaissance Seminar Annual Conference. University of Western Ontario, London, March 4-7, 1999.

“Constructing Heterosexuality in Cleanness.” X: Out of Bounds. Illinois Medieval Association Annual Conference. De Paul University, Chicago, February 19-20, 1999.