Chair, English; Associate Professor
BA (Simon Fraser); PhD (McGill)
My general research interests lie within the field of early twentieth-century British and American literature, commonly known as literary modernism. In particular, I am looking at how modernist writers, and artists more generally, represented islands and island-settings in their fictional landscapes. My current work examines the uses to which islands, both real and imaginary, were put by modernists within the context of the changing geopolitical landscape in the early decades of the twentieth century. I am also interested in issues involving the changing legacy and reputation of modernism. Since its codification as a discipline in the middle part of the twentieth-century, modernism has been commemorated and institutionalized in a variety of ways. My work here examines particular moments in the institutional history of modernism for what they say about the formation and transmission of the literary canon as it implicates modernism most specifically.