杏吧原创

Research

My research focuses on the public work of testimony in contemporary Canada. As a scholar of autobiography, memory, and cultural studies, I explore how audiences are invited to bear witness to difficult knowledge and histories of injury and harm through literary, visual and performance art.

I turn to testimony because it outlines the relational and ethical stakes of this moment, shaping the dynamics between communities鈥� protest and societal response. My research aims to better understand what it means to bear witness to testimony, and how relations between communities in the nation-state are shaped through the ways we listen and respond to each other鈥檚 stories of protest. Interlacing diasporic, transnational, Indigenous, and intersectional feminist approaches, these questions guide my research on the politics of recognition, reconciliation, and redress in Canada, thinking through its colonial roots, neo-colonial risks, and de-colonial futurities.

My current work turns to the intersection of life stories and mediation studies, examining the ethical tensions between emerging technologies and testimonial culture, asking how the use of new media and technology is pushing testimonial discourse to new frontiers and raising new questions on cultural memory and the ethics of bearing witness.

Teaching

My courses often focus on the ways that textual and visual culture shape/ challenge/ imagine national identity, the public role of collective memory and counter-memory in cultural institutions, and the uses of life stories as vehicles for socio-political change. With over a decade of university teaching experience, I approach my courses as active sites of learning, exploring Canadian Studies as a distinctly political site of inquiry that is formulated through its settler-colonial, diasporic, Indigenous, and transnational histories and trajectories. In so doing, my pedagogy uses critical humanities approaches to explore how cultural production is strategically mobilized to shape our ways of being with others, within and beyond the nation. Prior to joining the School I was an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Alberta (2017-2022) where I also served on the executive committee of the Canadian Literature Centre (2015-2017).

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Selected Publications

Edited books

In Search of Right Relations: Ethics and Life Narratives.听Wilfrid Laurier University Press. [under review].

Trans Narratives: trans, transmedia, transnational. Co-edited with Anna Horvat, Sarah McRae, and Julie Rak. Routledge, 2021. ()

Peer reviewed journal articles

鈥淥n Teaching Life Writing in an Age of Social Change.鈥� Co-authored with Amanda Spallacci. 鈥淭eaching Life Writing: Theory, Methodology, and Practice鈥� special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 37.3, 2022. doi:

鈥淢aterial Weapons: Paratext, Ethics, and Testimony in Carmen Aguirre鈥檚听Something Fierce.鈥� 鈥淭estimonial Encounters in the Americas鈥� special issue of听AmLit 鈥� American Literatures听edited by Molly Appel and Leila Pazargadi, 1.1 (Oct. 2021): 64-85.听听[open access]

鈥淎 VR Empathy Machine:听Canada Reads听2019, Testimonial Transactions, and the Cunning of Affective Recognition.鈥澨�Canadian Literature, 242 (2020): 58-78.

鈥淐ollaboration鈥� co-authored with Maria Faini and Emma Maguire, in 鈥淲hat鈥檚 Next? The Futures of Life Writing鈥� special issue of听a/b: Auto/Biography Studies. 32.2 (2017): 247-250. doi:听.

鈥淔rom Qallunaat to James Bay: An Interview with Mini Aodla Freeman, Keavy Martin, Julie Rak, and Norma Dunning鈥� co-authored with Rebecca Fredrickson, Brandon Kerfoot and Katherine Meloche.听Canadian Literature听226 (Autumn 2015): 112-123. doi:听

Edited special issues

鈥淭eaching Life Writing: Theory, Methodology, and Practice鈥� a special issue of听a/b: auto/biography studies 37.3 (2022). co-edited with Amanda Spallacci.

鈥淎uto/biography in Transit鈥� special issue of听Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly听co-edited with Jason Breiter, Lucinda Rasmussen, and Julie Rak, 38.1 (Winter 2015).