I completed my PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta; I am a feminist scholar who studies contemporary women’s historical fiction (emphasis on Caribbean, Canadian, and postcolonial), contemporary world Anglophone and postcolonial literature, and contemporary gender theory (postcolonial, transnational, and digital/technological). Other areas of interest include gender and race in popular culture, postfeminism, continental philosophy, and works by Virginia Woolf, Luce Irigaray and Simone de Beauvoir.
I am currently working on a manuscript on Caribbean women's historical fiction.
This thesis contributes to contemporary feminist philosophy by establishing a definition of postf... more This thesis contributes to contemporary feminist philosophy by establishing a definition of postfeminism and analyzing two of its central tenets: equality and sexuality. The work's central claim is that postfeminism is anti-feminist and functions as a façade that conceals the continuation of the structural subordination of women in our capitalist patriarchal society. This is evident in the latest instantiation of postfeminism, in which women sexually objectify men in the name of equality. The argument is that because women are objectified sexually in popular culture it is only fair men be as well. In refuting postfeminist claims, I draw from and expand upon Simone de Beauvoir's and Luce Irigaray's feminist philosophical theories of equality and sexual difference, and I focus on specific examples from popular culture (sports, movies, music videos, magazines, commercials/advertising, online writing, social media, and so on).
Fictionalizing the history of infanticide in mid-eighteenth-century Haiti, Évelyn Trouillot's Ros... more Fictionalizing the history of infanticide in mid-eighteenth-century Haiti, Évelyn Trouillot's Rosalie l' infâme (2003) [The Infamous Rosalie (2013)] centres on Lisette, a pregnant Creole slave, and her maternal kin. Attempting to voice the unspeakable, painful history of infanticide in Haiti, the novel, though understudied, makes a significant literary contribution in contemporary historical fiction. The purpose of this article is to bring critical awareness to this innovative, intersectional feminist novel. Closely analysing the role of infanticide in the novel, I argue that the slave mother who commits infanticide highlights the slave system's inability to both affirm and deny slaves the appellation 'mother'. Highlighting this contradiction, Trouillot portrays infanticide as a courageous maternal disruption and intervention of slavery that simultaneously exposes the fallacious logic of the slaver and the limits to his power.
Fictionalizing the history of infanticide in mid-eighteenth-century Haiti, Évelyn Trouillot's Ros... more Fictionalizing the history of infanticide in mid-eighteenth-century Haiti, Évelyn Trouillot's Rosalie l' infâme (2003) [The Infamous Rosalie (2013)] centres on Lisette, a pregnant Creole slave, and her maternal kin. Attempting to voice the unspeakable, painful history of infanticide in Haiti, the novel, though understudied, makes a significant literary contribution in contemporary historical fiction. The purpose of this article is to bring critical awareness to this innovative, intersectional feminist novel. Closely analysing the role of infanticide in the novel, I argue that the slave mother who commits infanticide highlights the slave system's inability to both affirm and deny slaves the appellation 'mother'. Highlighting this contradiction, Trouillot portrays infanticide as a courageous maternal disruption and intervention of slavery that simultaneously exposes the fallacious logic of the slaver and the limits to his power.
This paper suggests that Canadian women are rewriting the history and institution of slavery in t... more This paper suggests that Canadian women are rewriting the history and institution of slavery in the Caribbean. Even though scholarship highlighting and tracing the trajectory of the Caribbean historical novel is becoming more visible (Barker; Halloran; Kyiiripuo Kyoore; Rody), a focus on gender and women authors remains underrepresented. Women novelists are, however, largely taking on the burden of transmitting the slave past (e.g., Isabel Allende, Maryse Condé, Andrea Levy). Recognizing the contributions of women writers, this paper compares two innovative Canadian novels which re-vision slavery by putting women's lives at the forefront: Dionne Brand's <em>At the Full and Change of the Moon</em> (1999) and Jenny Jaeckel's <em>House of Rougeaux</em> (2018). Both novels provide portraits of nineteenth-century plantation life, Trinidad and Martinique respectively, as well as life in the contemporary Canadian diaspora. Emphasizing the need for decolo...
This manuscript pairs Margaret Atwood’s poem ‘Marsh Languages’ with Luce Irigaray’s recent philos... more This manuscript pairs Margaret Atwood’s poem ‘Marsh Languages’ with Luce Irigaray’s recent philosophical text In the Beginning She Was. By doing so, an important conceptual resonance emerges betwee...
This article examines the relatively unstudied field of the aesthetics of nature from a feminist ... more This article examines the relatively unstudied field of the aesthetics of nature from a feminist perspective. Currently a feminist aesthetics of nature does not exist in scholarship, though I argue in our age of eco-crisis this is necessary. I explore what this feminist approach might entail by discussing three essential elements to the current masculinist study of nature: 1) the role of the subject or observer, 2) method of appreciation, and 3) appropriate object for appreciation. By focusing on the recent impasse in feminism, between essentialism and non-essentialism, this paper looks at how each side of the debate would approach these above three topics, and what future paths feminism might take in creating an adequate study of the aesthetics of nature. [
This article analyzes the term “intersectionality” as defined by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw in re... more This article analyzes the term “intersectionality” as defined by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw in relation to the digital turn: it argues that intersectionality is the dominant framework being employed by fourth wave feminists and that is most apparent on social media, especially on Twitter. Resume Cet article analyse le terme « intersectionnalite » tel que defini par Kimberle Williams Crenshaw en liaison avec le virage numerique : il affirme que l’intersectionnalite est le cadre dominant employe par les feministes de la quatrieme vague et que cela est surtout evident sur les reseaux sociaux, en particulier sur Twitter.
1Literary criticism on women's historical novels not only in Canada but also globally is not ... more 1Literary criticism on women's historical novels not only in Canada but also globally is not as prevalent as one might imagine. This is curious given the international profile of award-winning authors like Margaret Atwood, the sheer number of historical novels written by women, and the popularity of women's novels with critics and readers despite these facts, a sustained analysis of Canadian women's historical fiction does not exist.[1] In this article, I remedy this neglect by bringing attention to a specific trend in many contemporary Canadian women's historical novels written in English: the establishment of a transnational maternal genealogy. [2] The purpose of a transnational maternal genealogy, in the corpus of this distinct sub-genre of Canadian women's historical fiction, I argue, is to achieve three important goals. First, it asserts a critical contemporary feminist narrative style as an intervention against the two preceding dominant trends in the genre...
This article revisits A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf's foundational 1929 text on wom... more This article revisits A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf's foundational 1929 text on women's writing. I examine from a feminist materialist perspective the relevance of Woolf's notion of a "room" in our globalized and technological twenty-first century. I first review Woolf's position on the material conditions necessary for women writers in her own time and then the applicability of her thinking for contemporary women writers on a global scale. I emphasize that the politics of writing, and in particular writing by women, that Woolf puts forth gives feminists the necessary tools to reevaluate and rethink women's writing both online and offline. I therefore argue that Woolf's traditional work on materiality can be updated and developed to further inform what is now, in the twenty-first century, an urgent need for women writers, a feminist philosophy of sexual difference in relation to technology, and an e-feminism of online spaces and women'...
This article revisits Julia Alvarez’s critically acclaimed historical novel In the Time of the Bu... more This article revisits Julia Alvarez’s critically acclaimed historical novel In the Time of the Butterflies (1994). While much scholarship has paid attention to the novel as historiographic metafiction, its depiction of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s regime (1930-61), and its feminist perspective on the Dominican Republic, its racial politics are under-studied. In particular, scholars have overlooked Fela, the Afra-Dominican servant, spirit medium, and storyteller. I argue that studying Fela’s presence in the text as an unauthorized and unauthored voice not only adds complexity to the production of historiography and storytelling but also provides new insight into postcolonial feminist critiques of voice/lessness, narrative, and marginalized identities in the novel and criticism on it. Closely analyzing Fela’s voice—as it intersects with storytelling, historical slave narratives, Vodou, the maternal, and Haiti’s contribution to the Dominican Republic’s history—makes visible the unacknowl...
This thesis contributes to contemporary feminist philosophy by establishing a definition of postf... more This thesis contributes to contemporary feminist philosophy by establishing a definition of postfeminism and analyzing two of its central tenets: equality and sexuality. The work's central claim is that postfeminism is anti-feminist and functions as a façade that conceals the continuation of the structural subordination of women in our capitalist patriarchal society. This is evident in the latest instantiation of postfeminism, in which women sexually objectify men in the name of equality. The argument is that because women are objectified sexually in popular culture it is only fair men be as well. In refuting postfeminist claims, I draw from and expand upon Simone de Beauvoir's and Luce Irigaray's feminist philosophical theories of equality and sexual difference, and I focus on specific examples from popular culture (sports, movies, music videos, magazines, commercials/advertising, online writing, social media, and so on).
Fictionalizing the history of infanticide in mid-eighteenth-century Haiti, Évelyn Trouillot's Ros... more Fictionalizing the history of infanticide in mid-eighteenth-century Haiti, Évelyn Trouillot's Rosalie l' infâme (2003) [The Infamous Rosalie (2013)] centres on Lisette, a pregnant Creole slave, and her maternal kin. Attempting to voice the unspeakable, painful history of infanticide in Haiti, the novel, though understudied, makes a significant literary contribution in contemporary historical fiction. The purpose of this article is to bring critical awareness to this innovative, intersectional feminist novel. Closely analysing the role of infanticide in the novel, I argue that the slave mother who commits infanticide highlights the slave system's inability to both affirm and deny slaves the appellation 'mother'. Highlighting this contradiction, Trouillot portrays infanticide as a courageous maternal disruption and intervention of slavery that simultaneously exposes the fallacious logic of the slaver and the limits to his power.
Fictionalizing the history of infanticide in mid-eighteenth-century Haiti, Évelyn Trouillot's Ros... more Fictionalizing the history of infanticide in mid-eighteenth-century Haiti, Évelyn Trouillot's Rosalie l' infâme (2003) [The Infamous Rosalie (2013)] centres on Lisette, a pregnant Creole slave, and her maternal kin. Attempting to voice the unspeakable, painful history of infanticide in Haiti, the novel, though understudied, makes a significant literary contribution in contemporary historical fiction. The purpose of this article is to bring critical awareness to this innovative, intersectional feminist novel. Closely analysing the role of infanticide in the novel, I argue that the slave mother who commits infanticide highlights the slave system's inability to both affirm and deny slaves the appellation 'mother'. Highlighting this contradiction, Trouillot portrays infanticide as a courageous maternal disruption and intervention of slavery that simultaneously exposes the fallacious logic of the slaver and the limits to his power.
This paper suggests that Canadian women are rewriting the history and institution of slavery in t... more This paper suggests that Canadian women are rewriting the history and institution of slavery in the Caribbean. Even though scholarship highlighting and tracing the trajectory of the Caribbean historical novel is becoming more visible (Barker; Halloran; Kyiiripuo Kyoore; Rody), a focus on gender and women authors remains underrepresented. Women novelists are, however, largely taking on the burden of transmitting the slave past (e.g., Isabel Allende, Maryse Condé, Andrea Levy). Recognizing the contributions of women writers, this paper compares two innovative Canadian novels which re-vision slavery by putting women's lives at the forefront: Dionne Brand's <em>At the Full and Change of the Moon</em> (1999) and Jenny Jaeckel's <em>House of Rougeaux</em> (2018). Both novels provide portraits of nineteenth-century plantation life, Trinidad and Martinique respectively, as well as life in the contemporary Canadian diaspora. Emphasizing the need for decolo...
This manuscript pairs Margaret Atwood’s poem ‘Marsh Languages’ with Luce Irigaray’s recent philos... more This manuscript pairs Margaret Atwood’s poem ‘Marsh Languages’ with Luce Irigaray’s recent philosophical text In the Beginning She Was. By doing so, an important conceptual resonance emerges betwee...
This article examines the relatively unstudied field of the aesthetics of nature from a feminist ... more This article examines the relatively unstudied field of the aesthetics of nature from a feminist perspective. Currently a feminist aesthetics of nature does not exist in scholarship, though I argue in our age of eco-crisis this is necessary. I explore what this feminist approach might entail by discussing three essential elements to the current masculinist study of nature: 1) the role of the subject or observer, 2) method of appreciation, and 3) appropriate object for appreciation. By focusing on the recent impasse in feminism, between essentialism and non-essentialism, this paper looks at how each side of the debate would approach these above three topics, and what future paths feminism might take in creating an adequate study of the aesthetics of nature. [
This article analyzes the term “intersectionality” as defined by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw in re... more This article analyzes the term “intersectionality” as defined by Kimberle Williams Crenshaw in relation to the digital turn: it argues that intersectionality is the dominant framework being employed by fourth wave feminists and that is most apparent on social media, especially on Twitter. Resume Cet article analyse le terme « intersectionnalite » tel que defini par Kimberle Williams Crenshaw en liaison avec le virage numerique : il affirme que l’intersectionnalite est le cadre dominant employe par les feministes de la quatrieme vague et que cela est surtout evident sur les reseaux sociaux, en particulier sur Twitter.
1Literary criticism on women's historical novels not only in Canada but also globally is not ... more 1Literary criticism on women's historical novels not only in Canada but also globally is not as prevalent as one might imagine. This is curious given the international profile of award-winning authors like Margaret Atwood, the sheer number of historical novels written by women, and the popularity of women's novels with critics and readers despite these facts, a sustained analysis of Canadian women's historical fiction does not exist.[1] In this article, I remedy this neglect by bringing attention to a specific trend in many contemporary Canadian women's historical novels written in English: the establishment of a transnational maternal genealogy. [2] The purpose of a transnational maternal genealogy, in the corpus of this distinct sub-genre of Canadian women's historical fiction, I argue, is to achieve three important goals. First, it asserts a critical contemporary feminist narrative style as an intervention against the two preceding dominant trends in the genre...
This article revisits A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf's foundational 1929 text on wom... more This article revisits A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf's foundational 1929 text on women's writing. I examine from a feminist materialist perspective the relevance of Woolf's notion of a "room" in our globalized and technological twenty-first century. I first review Woolf's position on the material conditions necessary for women writers in her own time and then the applicability of her thinking for contemporary women writers on a global scale. I emphasize that the politics of writing, and in particular writing by women, that Woolf puts forth gives feminists the necessary tools to reevaluate and rethink women's writing both online and offline. I therefore argue that Woolf's traditional work on materiality can be updated and developed to further inform what is now, in the twenty-first century, an urgent need for women writers, a feminist philosophy of sexual difference in relation to technology, and an e-feminism of online spaces and women'...
This article revisits Julia Alvarez’s critically acclaimed historical novel In the Time of the Bu... more This article revisits Julia Alvarez’s critically acclaimed historical novel In the Time of the Butterflies (1994). While much scholarship has paid attention to the novel as historiographic metafiction, its depiction of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s regime (1930-61), and its feminist perspective on the Dominican Republic, its racial politics are under-studied. In particular, scholars have overlooked Fela, the Afra-Dominican servant, spirit medium, and storyteller. I argue that studying Fela’s presence in the text as an unauthorized and unauthored voice not only adds complexity to the production of historiography and storytelling but also provides new insight into postcolonial feminist critiques of voice/lessness, narrative, and marginalized identities in the novel and criticism on it. Closely analyzing Fela’s voice—as it intersects with storytelling, historical slave narratives, Vodou, the maternal, and Haiti’s contribution to the Dominican Republic’s history—makes visible the unacknowl...
At the outset, Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles (1916), via its female protagonists, proposes that e... more At the outset, Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles (1916), via its female protagonists, proposes that establishing meaningful connections and friendships between women is the only path for gender equality to occur; critics laud Glaspell’s work for championing a “sense of sisterhood” (Koprince 78), a “total feminine community” (Alkalay-Gut 79), and “powerful female-centered networks” (Nelligan 87). In this article, I question notions of feminist solidarity by traveling in Part I back to America’s feminist roots in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the time of suffragism and the first wave (1848-1920). Part II, the majority of this article, revisits and offers a new reading of Trifles by challenging traditional scholarship (Ben-Zvi; Ferguson; Gainor; Hedges; Kolodny; Koprince) which reads the play straightforwardly as a feminist text. I argue, in the manner of Lisa Maria Hogeland’s influential work “Fear of Feminism: Why Young Women Get the Willies,” that the play puts forward a notion of gender consciousness, which celebrates women’s sexual difference, but it does not advocate for a feminist consciousness which entails a political and social commitment to action and change.
Scholars typically have difficulty defining and categorizing the works of Christine de Pisan, the... more Scholars typically have difficulty defining and categorizing the works of Christine de Pisan, the first professional woman writer in Europe. For some she is, foremost a poet, for others a historian, a philosopher, a prose writer, or a feminist – even a plagiarist. Perhaps the inability of literary critics to claim Pisan as their own until recently may account for her scholarly neglect and lack of status in the literary canon; The Book of The City of Ladies (1405), first translated by Brian Anslay into English in 1521 as Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes was not again translated until 1982 by Earl Jeffrey Richards. I would like to suggest, however, that the reasons scholars have been unable to adequately define Pisan's writing and specifically The City of Ladies is because they have overlooked the possibility that Pisan creates her own genre: the genre of feminist historical fiction.
Paper presented on Paule Marshall's historical novel Praisesong for the Widow at National Women's... more Paper presented on Paule Marshall's historical novel Praisesong for the Widow at National Women's Studies Association in Montreal, 2016. Focus is on decolonizing the genre of historical fiction.
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