Graduate Students
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Aon Ul Abideen Research areas and/or fields of study: I work at the intersection of South Asian post colonial studies, trans studies, and queer theory. Thesis title/topic: In my thesis, I trace the legal and literary representation of trans Pakistanis and interrogate how laws and literature imagine trans citizenship. |
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Mikayla Bortscher |
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Rachel Burlock Research areas and/or fields of study: My research interests include prairie literature, book history, geocriticism and habitat studies. Thesis title/topic: My thesis is a geocritical analysis of the Manitoba Interlake region. My research draws on canonical prairie texts, archival documents and local history books from (and about) the Manitoba Interlake region to explore how Interlake "placeness" has been constructed and represented by Interlake inhabitants and visitors through time, with a focus on human relationships to the land and non-human communities. |
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Samantha Buryn Research areas and/or fields of study: Contemporary Young Adult literature, Cultural studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies Thesis title/topic: The Trouble with White Feminist Narration in Contemporary Young Adult Literature |
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Dylan Calmes |
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Hilary Caplan Research areas and/or fields of study: 19th Century American Poetry, Abolition, Suffrage, Poetic Aesthetics Thesis title/topic: Poetry of Protest: Linguistic Grace in 19th Century American Activist Poetry |
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Alp Cevirme Research areas and/or fields of study: Theories of everyday life, Michel Serres, Psychoanalysis, Critical Theory, World Literature, Urban humanities, Geocriticism |
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Richard Costa Research areas and/or fields of study: Environmental Humanities, Ecocriticism, Habitat Studies Thesis title/topic: Magpie Habitat Studies and the Bioregional Imagination |
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Francina Cousins Research areas and/or fields of study: Caribbean Women's Poetry/Writing, Caribbean Popular Culture, Sexualities, Post-Colonial, African Diaspora and Women's Studies |
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Max Dickeson Research areas and/or fields of study: Game studies -- analog games, tabletop roleplaying games; narrative -- interactive storytelling, narratology; science fiction and fantasy -- history of, sociopolitical work of Thesis title/topic: Social Rolls: The Interdependence of Narrative Play and Social Interaction in Tabletop Roleplaying Games |
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Chelsea Dingman Research areas and/or fields of study: Research Creation; Contemporary Poetics; Creative Writing Thesis title/topic: If, Beyond: Poems and Prose |
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Keighlagh Donovan Research areas and/or fields of study: In my research, I trace the conceptualization of “ally” and consider what it means to be here in amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta) and Treaty 6 territory in responsible relationship. Reading, writing alongside, and responding to calls to action from Indigenous literatures, I work to imagine new and just pathways toward collective liberation. Thesis title/topic: The working dissertation title ally, interrupted: a poetics of care attempts to encapsulate the entanglements between my position as white, settler, neurodivergent reader responding to calls to action from Indigenous literatures and informed by queer theory, disability justice work and Indigenous methodologies. |
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Caitlyn Dube |
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Sosthenes Ekeh Research areas and/or fields of study: My research areas are psychoanalysis, postcolonialism, hermeneutics, existential psychotherapy, and cultural sociology. I am particularly interested in the insights the conversations across these theories bring to understanding of suicide and depression in a postcolonial context. Thesis title/topic: My thesis topic is 'Cultural destitution and suicidality in the postcolonial Nigerian literary world'. I am exploring the enabling conditions of suicidality in the Nigerian context. My focus is on the intersection of colonialism, the Nigerian Civil War, and leadership failure in Nigeria and how it contributes to the changing structure of thought that facilitates suicidal ideation. |
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Kyung Hwa Eun Research areas and/or fields of study: Eighteenth-Century Novels, Literary Realism, Material Culture, Decorative Arts, Printed Ephemera, History of Shopping and Shopkeeping Thesis title/topic: Female Shopping and Shopkeeping in Eighteenth-Century Shops: The Representations of Female Subjectivity in Frances Burney’s Novels |
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Hope Eze |
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Kufre Friesenhan Research areas and/or fields of study: Indigenous literatures, Petroculture, Ecocriticism, Ecofeminism Thesis title/topic: My research is focused on Ecocide and Resistance to Petro-culture in Indigenous Poetics of Niger Delta (Nigeria) and Northern Alberta (Canada). |
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Lizette Gerber Research areas and/or fields of study: My current research considers the ways in which Black women's speculative fiction rejects humanist hierarchies and imagines being otherwise. I am particularly interested in Black queer and feminist theories of relationality, temporality, monstrosity, and madness. Thesis title/topic: Monstrosity, Animality, and Madness: Black Women's Speculations of Otherwise Being |
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Jaskiran Gill Research areas and/or fields of study: Border studies, Feminist theory, Oral history methodology, Postcolonial theory Thesis title/topic: Borderlands of Resilience: Women’s Agency in Samarth Mahajan’s Documentary |
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Theo Gray Research areas and/or fields of study: Critical Border Studies, Speculative Fiction, Contemporary Literature Thesis title/topic: Border Speculation: A Critical Approach to Borders in Speculative Fiction |
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Karine Hopper |
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Yaghma Kaby |
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Shashi Kumar |
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Kevin Kvas Research areas and/or fields of study: My main research interest is the economics and mathematics of literature, with especial focus on using information theory (from computer science and physics) to assess the credibility of literary theories and evaluations (both critical and economic) and how literary value is created and maintained within "discourse markets/economies". Other research topics have ranged from digital psychogeography, to operatic adaptations of poetry, to Milton's Paradise Lost, to the literary economics of eighteenth-century labouring-classed poetry. Thesis title/topic: How to Read 100 Trillion Poems or Dollars, Without an Infinite Post-Structuralist Credit Card: The Economics of Literary Value, the Mathematics of Literary Theory |
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Rachel Lallouz |
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Nathan Lamarche Research areas and/or fields of study: My current studies and research interests focus on Indigenous and queer storytelling and the relational impacts of technology on our perceptions of the self and our humanity. I am engaged in the examination of the marginalisation of cultures and perspectives through a lens of objective morality that is created through artificial intelligence, and how these happenings are displayed in science fiction literature and film. Ethics and aesthetics are also core to these interests. I am also studying accessibility through academia and writing centres, and the portrayal of non-settler, non-European cultures in fantasy storytelling. Thesis title/topic: My thesis examines our anthropomorphisation of artificial intelligence, especially in science fiction media, to investigate the impacts of that anthropomorphisation in our modern interactions with consumer-ready GenAI technologies, such as interactions with simulations of deceased loved ones, romantic and sexual companion apps, and AI-hosted customer service platforms. What does our approach, notably through our perceptions of humanised AI in fiction, say about us? |
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Kaylie Leblanc Research areas and/or fields of study: I am a graduate student within the University of Alberta Arts department working on my MA in English Literature. In particular, my primary areas of research include Romantic-era women's writing, poetry, feminisms, British literature, and biography. I investigate influential literature and consider the driving forces behind their content: both the societal place of British women in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as the author's own personal history. I also volunteer as a Research Assistant with CWRC and the Orlando Project, as my particular interest in British women's writing and literary history allows me to work alongside academics who share my passion. Thesis title/topic: My thesis is titled "'Peace the woman's heart hath found': Biography and Feminism in Felicia Hemans' 'Records of Woman'", in which I explore four selections from the 1828 poetry publication. I examine how she utilizes the women depicted in her poetry as vessels for unpacking her personal emotions in order to fully explore her understanding of herself as an artist. I argue against critics who, for years, have suggested that Hemans' writing lacks nuance and complexity, and insist that this particular publication is too important to feminist literary history to be overlooked. Using Hemans' publication as context, I also investigate the literary history of women writing about other women, where Hemans' work both succeeds and falls short in accurate portrayals of figures such as Joan of Arc. |
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Amanda Lim |
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Celina Loew Research areas and/or fields of study: My research area examines totalitarian governance and literary censorship, depicting how present-day western governments and societies are reflected in totalitarian fiction. Thesis title/topic: My thesis examines the censorship of L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time and what can be concluded from these gaps by exploring modern literary censorship. |
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Miriam Mabrouk |
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Michael MacKenzie Research areas and/or fields of study: Study of embodiment desire, with focus on corporeality and growth manipulation. Areas include Archive studies, study of body modification and DIY trans*, Body and Trans* Studies, Video Games Studies (focus on avatars), 20th and 21st Century Speculative Literature (including indigenous and afro-futurism), Lacanian psychoanalysis, Affect Theory, anime and manga studies. Thesis title/topic: Examination of contemporary examples of virtual and actual corporeal neoteny, critically (that is, with critical awareness of ideological and power-structure influenced readings of the texts), by making use of speculative, fictional and poetic representation of such virtual and actual corporeal neoteny. I.e., reconsidering the case of Ashley X through Peter Pan. |
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Karen McFadyen Research areas and/or fields of study: Contemporary literature, film, psychoanalysis, Gothic fiction, gender studies |
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Tanviatul Mohile |
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Zachary Morrison |
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Alex Mortensen Research areas and/or fields of study: My future research aims to explore the connection between how literary representations of the environment affect and influence the relationship between humans and the environment. Specifically, how colonial and Eurocentric literary representations of the environment align nature with the feminine, thereby creating and perpetuating a static, asymmetric human-environment relationship. A goal for my future research is to contribute to the advancement of environmental humanities by investigating this connection and finding environmental literary representations that support solutions based on a reciprocal and symbiotic human-environmental relationship. The genres I am interested in working with are Canadian Literature, American Literature, and Indigenous Literature. Using an ecocritical approach will allow my research to critique and interrogate retroactive ways of writing and engaging with the environment. Living through the climate crisis, now more than ever, it is vital to reassess and reframe how humans interact with the environment. My main goal is to produce research that is both accessible and interdisciplinary and can work in tandem with the hard sciences when it comes to fighting climate change and protecting the environment. |
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Anindita Mukherjee Research areas and/or fields of study: Philosophy of Literature ǀ Critical Theory ǀ Literature of the Catastrophes ǀ Twentieth Century and Contemporary Literature ǀ Memory and Affect Studies ǀ Continental Philosophy ǀ Philosophy of Art ǀ Holocaust and Genocide Studies ǀ Philosophical Aesthetics and Totalitarianism| Historiography and Narratology| Poetics Thesis title/topic: Listening in the Aftermath of Catastrophe |
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Ayantika Mukherjee Research areas and/or fields of study: Child and Youth Studies; American Studies; Nineteenth Century; Boardgames; Print History and Material Culture; Visual Culture Thesis title/topic: Playful Imperialisms: Children and Informal Modes of Education in the Long American Nineteenth Century |
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Bhuva Narayanan |
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Melanie Oberg Research areas and/or fields of study: Melanie Oberg (she/her) is a PhD Student and instructor in the department of English and Film at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on video game design and narrative—particularly, what video games can ‘tell’ the player without the use of language. She received her MA from the University of Victoria with a focus on Let’s Play Videos, fan culture and the spectacle of gameplay. She is a recipient of The Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship and a three-time recipient of the Academic Graduate Excellence Scholarship. Thesis title/topic: Silent game design: Meaningful Gameplay without Words |
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Jason Purcell Research areas and/or fields of study: I am interested in queer theory, crip and disability studies, affect, and life-writing expressed using research-creation and creative writing methods Thesis title/topic: Rupture: A History of Bad Queer Feelings in Myself and Others |
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Niru Raghavan Research areas and/or fields of study: Manga studies, energy humanities, ecocriticism, postcolonialism Thesis title/topic: Vicious Circle: Energy Anxieties in Arakawa Hiromu's Fullmetal Alchemist |
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Amaan Rizvi Research areas and/or fields of study: My research fields include religion, fashion, politics and horror among many other things. I am also interested in the politics of embroidery and its relationship with oral storytelling. |
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Layla Rosser Research areas and/or fields of study: Manga studies; theories and expressions of individual, collective and cultural trauma; identity and memory; graphic narratives and film adaptations Thesis title/topic: Japanese post-nuclear anxiety and the shaping of expressions of survivor experience in manga and anime |
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Charis St. Pierre Research areas and/or fields of study: Children's Literature, Ecocriticism, Picturebooks, Critical Plant Studies Thesis title/topic: My research considers the environmental implications of plant characters in picturebooks, attending to how plant agency, communication, and temporalities can disrupt anthropocentric views of the world |
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Jide Salawu Research areas and/or fields of study: African Literature, African Films, Postcolonial Studies, Black Diasporic Narratives Thesis title/topic: No other binary is as pervasive as the city and the country in the lives of postcolonial migrants in Africa whether they are migrating within the continent and outside. This is due to the image of colonial modernity as transferred through various ideological means. My doctoral rsearch examines how city and country images inform social process of movements in African migration narratives. |
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Fatemeh Salehivaziri |
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Meaghan Sych Research areas and/or fields of study: I am interested in the intersection of feminism, listening, eco-criticism, reading, and creation. My MA thesis, entitled Ecological Colonialism and the Impact of the “Englishman’s Foot”: A Literary Ecology of an Invasive Species, was completed in Spring 2024. Thesis title/topic: Sound Walker: Finding an Ethics and Poetics of Movement and Listening |
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Meredith Snyder |
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Sara Taghvaeishahroodi Research areas and/or fields of study: Gender studies, humour studies, reception studies, contemporary literature, media studies Thesis title/topic: “We Are Bad Feminists”: Women’s Empathic and Transgressive Humor in Contemporary Postfeminist Culture |
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Brayden Tate Research areas and/or fields of study: Shakespeare, Renaissance Literature, History of Political and Legal Thought Thesis title/topic: Staging the English Republic: Shakespeare and Popular Sovereignty |
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Pouria Torkamaneh Research areas and/or fields of study: Media Aesthetics, Sound Studies, Radio Studies, 20th-Century Literature, Critical Theory Thesis title/topic: Sounds of Playable Texts: BBC Radio and Modern Irish Literature |
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Alex Ventimill Research areas and/or fields of study: Though broadly interested in the environmental humanities, my current research operates at the intersection of critical human-animal studies, posthumanism, extinction studies, and ecological cinema. Thesis title/topic: My thesis dissects the affective and discursive tropes of environmental documentaries interested in biodiversity loss and conservation |
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Julianna Wagar Research areas and/or fields of study: Romance novels; contemporary readership; women's reading; sexuality; BookTok; reading relationships |
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Zhishang Wang Research areas and/or fields of study: Queer Asian Women’s Poetry; Queer of Color Critique; Gender Studies |
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Stephen Webb Research areas and/or fields of study: Digital Humanities, Book History and Print Culture, Romanticism and Byron Studies Thesis title/topic: The Digital Reconstitution of Lord Byron's Library as Network |
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Matthew Weigel |
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Xuege Wu Research areas and/or fields of study: Xuege's research is primarily focused on examining how Shakespeare's plays engage with and represent the ecological concerns of the early modern world, interrogating the intersections between literature, environment, and cultural context. In addition, she is a Graduate Student Assistant on the SSHRC-funded SpokenWeb project, where her work explores the ways different listening practices and digital archival methodologies shape and influence the preservation and interpretation of oral literary history. Thesis title/topic: Ecology of Ireland in Shakespeare: 1591–1611 |
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Nagehan Yanar Research areas and/or fields of study: US Literature and Intellectual History of the 19th- and 20th-Century, Modernism, and Literary and Cultural Theory |