The University of Western Ontario

Faculty Member, Women's Studies and Feminist Research

About

I work on a number of research areas that circulate around questions of identity, citizenship and belonging. My central focus is on sexuality and gender and my approach to these topics is informed by queer and feminist theory, by postmodernist and postcolonial theory, and by emerging approaches to questions of race, ethnicity and diaspora, as well as by lesbian and gay and trans perspectives. I investigate these issues in a number of texts, predominantly science fiction, Canadian literature and film, and Indigenous film. While some may see these areas as disconnected, I see my interest in them as spiralling out of my central focus. I am also particularly interested in the connections between them -- reading Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach, for example, in the context of both science fiction and Indigenous studies; or Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl in terms of the relationship between sexuality, gender and race, science fiction and Canadian literature; or Sherman Alexie's film, The Business of Fancydancing, in relation to both queer and Indigenous issues.

I recently received a SSHRC standard research grant to study the effects of distribution and marketing on the aesthetics and politics of worldwide Indigenous film cultures. This is a big project and I am currently working on it with Ernie Blackmore (University of Wollongong) and Kerstin Knopf (Universitat Greifswald). I am also working on finishing the final chapter of my book, Calling Home: Sexuality and Citizenship in Contemporary Canadian Queer Culture. In addition to this, I am in the final stages of one anthology (Reverse Shots: Indigenous Film and Media in an International Context, co-edited with Susan Knabe) and the early stages of a second, First Women and the Politics of Looking (co-edited with Renee Bedard, Ernie Blackmore and Kim Verwaayen). Finally, I will soon be starting work on a book on John Greyson's film Zero Patience for the Queer Film Classics series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays for Arsenal Pulp Press.

Once all of this is done, I will be starting work on a new research project, tentatively titled A Queer History of Science Fiction.

PhD (University of Wollongong)
MA (McGill University)
BA (McGill University)

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Call for papers:

First Women and the Politics of Looking: Gender, Indigeneity and Representation

Ed. Wendy Gay Pearson, Kimberly J. Verwaayen, Ernie Blackmore and Renée Elizabeth Mzinegiizhigo-kwe Bédard

Description:

This anthology will focus on the representation and especially the self-representation of Indigenous girls and women in the arts. The editors are particularly interested in articles that address questions of cultural imagination, resistance, recuperation and the complex politics of representation within the fraught spaces of cultural and geopolitical contexts that may be considered variously colonial, post-colonial and neo-colonial.

Some of the questions that contributors might address include: How are Indigenous girls and women both traditionally and non-traditionally signified  in either Indigenous or non-Indigenous cultural production? How do such significations vary in mainstream cultural products compared with avant-garde or experimental work? How do artistic and theoretical contributions by Indigenous girls and women intervene – if they do – in cultural understanding of  gendered indigenous lives? Are the “appropriation of voice” debates still meaningful in an era of heightened production by Aboriginal women artists, film-makers, writers and theorists? How does collaboration between non-Indigenous and Aboriginal individuals or communities work in relation to the representation of girls and women broadly, and what are its cultural and political implications? How do the histories and genealogies of Indigenous representation affect contemporary cultural work? What are the implications of generic choices, including autobiography, ficto-criticism, fiction and varieties of non-fiction? How do Aboriginal women speak differences of class, sexuality, age, location and other forms of identification in ways that can be heard and understood across a collective cultural imagination?


What we’re looking for:

The editors of this anthology invite papers that respond to any of these issues through a critical concern with the (de)construction of  historically raced, classed, and sexed subjectivities of Aboriginal women, especially in relation to issues of identity and the representation of Aboriginal girls and women in works of art, film, music, literature, or other forms of cultural production. We also invite articles that explore particular intersections of ‘postcolonial’ theory and feminism in relation to gendered indigeneity and its varieties of representation, or which assess how canonical and other understandings of cultural, theoretical, and aesthetic “value” are embedded in histories of colonization (and resistance) to limit (or encourage) self-representation by Aboriginal girls and women.

Deadlines:

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be received by the editors on or before January 1, 2010. Email submissions are preferred, in WordPerfect, MS Word or RTF format.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by February 26, 2010, and the finished articles will be due by June 30, 2010.


To submit abstracts or for more information, please contact one of the editors:

Dr. Wendy Gay Pearson, Film Studies, University of Western Ontario (wpearson@uwo.ca) or Dr. Kimberly J. Verwaayen, Women’s Studies and Feminist Research, University of Western Ontario (kjverwaa@uwo.ca) or Dr. Ernie Blackmore, Woolyungah Indigenous Centre, University of Wollongong (ernie@uow.edu.au) or Dr. Renée Bédard, Native Studies, University of Western Ontario (renee.bedard@gmail.com)

Contact Information