Orly Lael Netzer
Adjunct Research Professor
- PhD (Alberta)
- Email Orly Lael Netzer
My research focuses on the public work of testimony in contemporary Canada. I turn to testimony because it outlines the relational and ethical stakes of this moment, inviting us to contend with the gaps between our aspired values, shared narratives, and lived realities. Working at the intersection of autobiography, memory, and cultural studies, with particular focus on histories of injury, and discourses of redress and reconciliation 鈥 my scholarship explores how testimonial culture (in literature, performance, and visual arts) invites us to become witnesses, rather than readers or spectators.
Interlacing settler, Indigenous, and diasporic approaches, my research practice focuses on inheriting difficult knowledge, weaving diverse ways of knowing, centering survivors and communities鈥 agency and aims, and fostering socially-responsible spaces for learning and dialogue. In so doing, my scholarship uses critical humanities approaches to explore how cultural production shapes our ways of being with others, within and beyond the nation.
Selected Publications
Edited collections
In Search of Right Relations: Provocations on Ethics and Life Stories. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2027. ()
Teaching Life Writing: Theory, Methodology, and Practice. Co-edited with Amanda Spallacci. Routledge, 2025. ()
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 Something Fierce.鈥 鈥淭estimonial Encounters in the Americas鈥 special issue of AmLit 鈥 American Literatures edited by Molly Appel and Leila Pazargadi, 1.1 (Oct. 2021): 64-85. doi: [open access].
鈥淎 VR Empathy Machine: Canada Reads 2019, Testimonial Transactions, and the Cunning of Affective Recognition.鈥 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 a/b: Auto/Biography Studies. 32.2 (2017): 247-250. doi: .
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. Canadian Literature 226 (Autumn 2015): 112-123. doi: .