PDFs of some of the work below can be found here
Articles
“‘We do not have whims on the moon’: A Wrinkle in Time, The Lotus Caves, and the Problem of American Exceptionalism in 1960s Science Fiction for Children.” Forthcoming in The Lion and the Unicorn, 2021.
With Ada Bieber, Humboldt University. “Streams of Consciousness: The Downriver Narrative in Young Adult Fiction.” International Research in Children’s Literature 13.1 (2020): 61-75. Forthcoming.
“Clockwork: Philip Pullman’s Posthuman Fairy Tale.”Children’s Literature in Education 42 (2011): 308 – 324. Winner of Children’s Literature Association Article Award for 2011.
“‘Something Very Old and Very Slow’: Coraline, Uncanniness, and Narrative Form.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 33 (Winter 2008): 390 – 407.
“‘A Complication of Disorders’: Bodily Health, Masculinity, and the Discourse of Gout and Dropsy in Henry Fielding’s The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.” Literature and Medicine 26 (Fall 2007): 386 – 407.
“Romance, History, and the Ideology of Form in Tom Jones.” CEA Critic 63 (2001): 23 – 38.
“Pamela, Shamela, and the Politics of the Pamela Vogue.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction. 7.2 (1995): 109 -130. Rpt in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, vol 85 (Gale, 2003).
Book Chapter
“Our Posthuman Adolescence: Dystopia, Information Technologies, and the Construction of Subjectivity in M.T. Anderson’s Feed.” Blast, Corrupt, Dismantle, Erase: Contemporary North American Dystopian Literature. Eds. Brett Grubisic, Tara Lee, and Gisèle Baxter. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2014. 111-127.
Reviews
“Teaching Resources for the Apocalypse.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, vol. 13 no.1, 2021, 342-346.
“Posthumanist Readings in Dystopian Young Adult Fiction. Negotiating the Nature/Culture Divide. By Jennifer Harrison.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 2, 2020, 386-89.
“The Voice of Nature in Ted Hughes’s Writing for Children: Correcting Culture’s Error. By Lorraine Kerslake.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 44 no. 2, 2019, 233-236.
“Posthuman in Waterloo.” Review of Robert J. Sawyer’s WWW Trilogy. Canadian Literature 216 (Spring 2013): 192-93.
“Gauging Young Readers.” Omnibus review of Linda Smith, The Broken Thread; Alison Acheson, Molly’s Cue; and Shane Peacock, The Secret Fiend. Spring 2011. Canadian Literature. 208 (Spring 2011): 185 – 186.
“Adventures in Ontario.” Omnibus review of Richard Scrimger, Into the Ravine; Curtis Parkinson, Death in Kingsport; and Irene Watts, When the Bough Breaks. Autumn 2008. Canadian Literature 198 (Autumn 2008): 173 – 174.
“Teenage Resentments.” Omnibus review of Becky Citras, Never to be Told and Penny Chamberlain, Chasing the Moon. Autumn 2007. Canadian Literature. 194 (Autumn 2007): 110 – 112.
“That Tyrant, I.” Omnibus review of Mitchell Parry, Tacoma Narrows; Iain Higgins, Then Again: Something of a Life; David Zieroth, The Village of Sliding Time. Canadian Literature Spring 2007. Canadian Literature 192 (Spring 2007): 158 – 159.
Invited Presentations
“Posthumanism in writing for the young: what it is, what it does, where it needs to go.” Lisa Tetzner Lecture, Humboldt University, May 2019.
“Posthumanism in writing for the young: an introduction.” Master class presented at the University of Glasgow as part of the Erasmus Mundus International Master in Children’s Literature, Media, and Culture, September 2019
Selected Conference Papers
“Noisy Waters, Silent Eddies: Race, Ability, and Boyhood in a Canadian River Narrative,” International Research Society for Children’s Literature, Stockholm, August 2019.
“Talking to Americans: Canadian Identity, Globalization, and the Dawn of the Posthuman in Robert J. Sawyer’s WWW Trilogy.” Children’s Literature Association, Indianapolis, Indiana, June 2019.
“A River Becomes a Stream: Twain, Scrimger, and the Fate of the River Narrative in Contemporary Suburbia” Children’s Literature Association. San Antonio, Texas, June 2018.
“Neal Shusterman and the Problem of Distributed Cognition” International Research Society for Children’s Literature, Toronto, Ontario. August 2017.
“Imagining the Posthuman Adolescent: Computational Psychology, Mechanical Bodies, and the Problem of Literary Form in Mary E. Pearson and Robin Wasserman” Children’s Literature Association, Tampa, Florida, June 2017.
“Downriver Narratives, Metafiction, and Identity Formation in Richard Scrimger’s Into the Ravine” 35th IBBY International Congress, Auckland, New Zealand, August 2016.
“Watching the Watchers: Using social network mapping software to animate surveillance networks in Little Brother and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” Children’s Literature Association, Columbus, Ohio, June 2016.
“Humanism’s last stand: Bernard Beckett’s Genesis and the Curious Sanctity of Gendered Bodies in Posthuman Young Adult Fiction” International Research Society for Children’s Literature, Worcester, England. August 2015.
“Denizens of the Uncanny Valley: David Almond’s Posthuman Monsters.” Children’s Literature Association, Richmond, Virginia. June, 2015.
“Huck Finn for Canadians: Richard Scrimger’s Tale of Acceptance and Understanding.” Children’s Literature Association. Columbia, South Carolina. June, 2014.
“The Researching ‘Research’ Project: Implications for Teaching Writing-in-the-Disciplines.” With Katharine Patterson, Anneke van Enk, Jaclyn Rea, and Katja Thieme. Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing. Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario. May, 2012.
“Policies, Practices, and the Challenge of Conducting Research for Contract Faculty at a Canadian Research University.” COCAL (Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor) IX. Universite Laval, Quebec City, Quebec. Aug, 2010.
“Researching ‘Research’: Connecting Student Meanings to Socio-cultural Discourses.” Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing. With Katharine Patterson, Jaclyn Rea, Katja Thieme and Anneke van Enk. McGill University, Montreal, Quebec. May, 2010.
“‘Stale Virgins after they are married, and Widows’: Thomas Sydenham and the Construction of Dropsy as a Hysterical Disease”. Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. McGill University, Montreal, Quebec. Oct, 2008.
“Henry Fielding and the Language of Dropsy”. Patients’ Tales. University of Victoria, Victoria, BC. Apr, 2007.
“Indian Weapons, A Sea Horse’s Pizzle, and Pope Adrian IV: Don Saltero’s Coffee House and Eighteenth-Century Museology”. Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS. Oct, 2006.
“Using Web CT to Teach Eighteenth-Century Studies”. Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS. Oct, 2006.
“Fielding’s Other Female Husband: Disease and the Domestic Dad in The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon“. Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC. Oct, 2003.
“Hogarth, Heemskerk, and the Iconography of the Barbershop”. Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Oct, 2001.
“Masculinity and Scapegoating in The Ox-Bow Incident“. Scapegoat: A One-Day Symposium on the Work of René Girard. Institute for the Humanities, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC. Feb, 1998.
“Bakhtin’s Barbers: Barbersurgery and the Carnivalesque in the English Popular Imagination”. Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. University of Victoria, Victoria, BC. Oct, 1996.
“Contagion and Quarantine in Fielding’s Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers“. Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario. Oct, 1995.
“‘Pride, ambition, avarice, curiosity, revenge, lust’: Hume, Sympathy, and Fielding’s Amelia“. Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Oct, 1994.
“The Encyclopedic Barber: Tom Jones, Arabian Nights Entertainments, and the Delights of Incompetence”. Atlantic Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS. May, 1994.