糖心原创

Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies

 

 

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Gillian Roberts

Professor of Contemporary Literature and Culture, Faculty of Arts

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Biography

I am a settler Canadian scholar who grew up on Algonquin and W瘫S脕NE膯 territories. I studied at the University of Victoria and Carleton University before coming to the UK in 2000 to begin my PhD at in the School of English at the University of Leeds. After returning to Canada for a year as a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Western Ontario (now Western University), I came back to the UK to take up a position as Senior Lecturer in World Literature at Leeds Metropolitan (now Leeds Beckett) University. I have been at the 糖心原创-first as a Lecturer and then Associate Professor in North American Cultural Studies, and now Professor of Contemporary Literature and Culture-since 2008.

Expertise Summary

My research focus on anglophone, settler Canadian cultural texts and their circulation and celebration examines how the boundaries of 'Canadianness' are constructed and reconstructed according to opportunities for Canada to accrue cultural power. My work consistently returns to hospitality discourse in its engagement with immigrant and hyphenate Canadian writers who become internationally celebrated, in my interest in the Canada-US border, and in the position of the settler: I am interested in how a 'Canadian host position' is constructed, the discrepancy between Canada's projection of itself as hospitable and the exclusivity with which 'Canadianness' is often defined, and the usurpation of the host position from Indigenous peoples. Thus, I often return to concepts of citizenship in my work in my effort to assess Canada's claims to be a just society as they are presented and invoked in its contemporary settler-colonial culture.

Teaching Summary

My teaching interests lie primarily in the areas of contemporary settler-colonial and postcolonial literature and culture, border studies, and film adaptation. In 2025-26, I am teaching on the… read more

Research Summary

My current research examines the representation of settlement in anglophone Canadian literature, especially poetry, from the advent of the Idle No More movement to the present. I am expanding my 2017… read more

Selected Publications

  • GILLIAN ROBERTS, 2023. Edinburgh University Press.
  • ROBERTS, G., 2024. "Visualizing the Canada-US Border: Comic Adaptations of Wayde Compton鈥檚 'The Blue Road' and Thomas King鈥檚 'Borders'" Studies in Canadian Literature. 48(1), 131-151
  • ROBERTS, G., 2024. "Border Hypotheses: Speculations on Territory and Sovereignty in Wayde Compton鈥檚 The Outer Harbour". In: ORR, J. and STIRRUP, D., eds., Canada-US Border Theory Edinburgh University Press. 174-194
  • ROBERTS, G., 2023. 鈥淚ndigenizing the Archive: Souvenir and the NFB". In: CARRUTHERS, L. and TEPPERMAN, C., eds., Canadian Cinema in the New Millennium McGill-Queen's University Press. 203-216

My teaching interests lie primarily in the areas of contemporary settler-colonial and postcolonial literature and culture, border studies, and film adaptation. In 2025-26, I am teaching on the modules CULT1033 Ways of Seeing, Hearing, and Reading; CULT1035 Global Media and Cultural Flows; and CULT3044 Politics and Visual Culture.

Current Research

My current research examines the representation of settlement in anglophone Canadian literature, especially poetry, from the advent of the Idle No More movement to the present. I am expanding my 2017 Journal of Canadian Studies article, which was awarded a prize by the Canadian Studies Network, into a monograph for Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

I am co-host, with Zalfa Feghali (University of Leicester) of the podcast .

PhD theses by past and present supervisees have focused on cultural representations of Vancouver; literary representations of Toronto; queer theatre in Toronto; Carol Shields's fiction; comparative border studies; Asian North American women's transnational literature; the Educational Gothic genre in Australian, Canadian, and US culture; Afrofuturism; and nature writing by Indigenous and settler women authors in North America. I would welcome expressions of interest from potential PhD candidates working in the areas of literary prize culture, film adaptations, Canada-US border studies, contemporary Canadian literature and cinema, and comparative settler-colonial cultural studies.

Past Research

My PhD focused on Canadian writers Michael Ondaatje and Carol Shields and their relationship to national and international literary prizes, as well as the ways in which international celebration is involved in negotiating the identities of immigrant writers. My first monograph, entitled (University of Toronto Press, 2011), extends the PhD material and adds writers Rohinton Mistry and Yann Martel to my discussion. Prizing Literature won the International Council for Canadian Studies' Pierre Savard Award.

My second monograph, , was published by McGill-Queen's University Press (2015). The book comprises chapters on travel writing, cross-border policing dramas, First Nations and Native American approaches to the border, African-Canadian perspectives on the border, and Canada's relationship to Latin America.

I acted as Co-Investigator on the (PI David Stirrup, Kent), funded by the Leverhulme Trust, and I was the organiser of the network's Cultural Crossings: Production, Consumption, and Reception across the Canada-US Border conference, which took place at Nottingham in June of 2014. The network's final event, a symposium on , took place in Paris in May of 2015. In addition to in Canada, France, the United States, and the UK, this collaboration has produced a number of publications, including (eds. Roberts and Stirrup, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013) and (ed. Roberts, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018), which won the prize for Best Collection in Canadian Studies from the Canadian Studies Network.

My third monograph, , was published by Edinburgh University Press in April 2023. The book examines postcolonial, settler-colonial, and Indigenous film adaptation, encompassing literature and film from Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, Canada, India, the US, and the UK. Chapters focus on intersections of feminist and postcolonial adaptation; representations of racism and slavery; magic realism; cultural appropriation; "told-to" adaptations; and Indigenous representational sovereignty.

Future Research

Future plans for my research include studies of settler-colonial literary cosmopolitanism, settler-colonial citizenship, and comparative postcolonial border studies.

  • 2026. Comparative American Studies.
  • ROBERTS, G., 2024. "Visualizing the Canada-US Border: Comic Adaptations of Wayde Compton鈥檚 'The Blue Road' and Thomas King鈥檚 'Borders'" Studies in Canadian Literature. 48(1), 131-151
  • ROBERTS, G., 2024. "Border Hypotheses: Speculations on Territory and Sovereignty in Wayde Compton鈥檚 The Outer Harbour". In: ORR, J. and STIRRUP, D., eds., Canada-US Border Theory Edinburgh University Press. 174-194
  • 2024. . In: ZALFA FEGHALI and DEBORAH TONER, eds., Routledge Companion to Gender and Borderlands Routledge. 156-166
  • ROBERTS, G., 2023. 鈥淚ndigenizing the Archive: Souvenir and the NFB". In: CARRUTHERS, L. and TEPPERMAN, C., eds., Canadian Cinema in the New Millennium McGill-Queen's University Press. 203-216
  • GILLIAN ROBERTS, 2023. Edinburgh University Press.
  • ROBERTS, G., 2020. CanLit and Canadian Literature: A Long-Distance View Canadian Literature. 239, 20-25
  • ROBERTS, G., ed., 2018. Reading between the Borderlines: Cultural Production and Consumption across the 49th Parallel McGill-Queen's University Press.
  • ROBERTS, G., 2018. Introduction鈥擟ultural Production and Consumption across the 49th Parallel: Negotiating Material Citizenship. In: GILLIAN ROBERTS, ed., Reading between the Borderlines: Cultural Production and Consumption across the 49th Parallel McGill-Queen's University Press.
  • ROBERTS, G., 2018. Cross-border Film Adaptation and Life of Pi. In: GILLIAN ROBERTS, ed., Reading between the Borderlines: Cultural Production and Consumption across the 49th Parallel McGill-Queen's University Press.
  • ROBERTS, G., 2018. Canadian Literature. Available at: <http://canlitguides.ca/gillian-roberts/canadian-literature-and-the-canada-us-border/>
  • ROBERTS, G., 2017. JOURNAL OF CANADIAN STUDIES. 51(1), 64-89
  • ROBERTS, G., 2015. Discrepant Parallels: Cultural Implications of the Canada-US Border McGill-Queen's University Press.
  • ROBERTS, G., 2015. Discrepant Traumas: Colonial Legacies in Jindabyne. In: ABIGAIL WARD, ed., Postcolonial Traumas: Memory, Narrative, Resistance Palgrave. 159-72
  • ROBERTS, G., 2014. International Journal of Canadian Studies. 48, 53-66
  • ROBERTS, G. and STIRRUP, D., eds., 2013. Parallel Encounters: Culture at the Canada-US Border Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
  • ROBERTS, G., 2013. Strategic Parallels: Invoking the Border in Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water and Drew Hayden Taylor's In a World Created by a Drunken God. In: ROBERTS, G. and STIRRUP, D., eds., Parallel Encounters: Culture at the Canada-US Border Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 127-143
  • ROBERTS, G. and STIRRUP, D., 2013. Introduction鈥擟ulture at the 49th Parallel: Nationalism, Indigeneity, and the Hemispheric. In: ROBERTS, G. and STIRRUP, D., eds., Parallel Encounters: Culture at the Canada-US Border Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 1-24
  • BATES, C., ROBERTS, G. and TOLAN, F., 2013. British Journal of Canadian Studies. 26(2), 165-171
  • BATES, C., ROBERTS, G. and TOLAN, F., EDS, 2013. Canadian Literary 糖心原创 in the Twenty-First Century: Special issue of British Journal of Canadian Studies 26 (2).
  • ROBERTS, G., 2011. American Review of Canadian Studies. 41(1), 65-80
  • ROBERTS, G., 2011. Prizing literature: the celebration and circulation of national culture University of Toronto Press.
  • ROBERTS, G. and STIRRUP, D., eds., 2010. Culture and the Canada-US Border: Special Issue of American Review of American Studies 40(2).
  • ROBERTS, G., 2010. 'The Reading Lesson Revisited: Educating the English Patient' MOVING WORLDS: A JOURNAL OF TRANSCULTURAL WRITINGS. 10(2), 68-78
  • ROBERTS, G. and STIRRUP, D., 2010. AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES. 40(2), 321-325
  • ROBERTS, G., 2008. Return of the prodigal: hospitality and Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family'. In: CARRI脠RE, M. and KHORDOC, C., eds., Migrance compar茅e : les litt茅ratures du Canada et du Qu茅bec = Comparing migration : the literatures of Canada and Qu茅bec Peter Lang.
  • ROBERTS, G., 2008. "The greatest hotel on earth": citizenship, nationality, and the circulation of Canadian literature West Coast Line: A Journal of Contemporary Writing and Criticism. 42(3), 146-160
  • ROBERTS, G., 2007. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY. VOL 76(NUMB 3), 962-976
  • ROBERTS, G., 2006. 'Sameness and Difference: Border Crossings in The Stone Diaries and Larry's Party' CANADIAN LITERATURE. NUMB 191, 86-102
  • ROBERTS, G., 2003. 'Circulations of Taste: Titanic, the Oscars, and the Middlebrow'. In: STRINGER, JULIAN, ed., Movie Blockbusters Routledge. 155-166
  • ROBERTS, G., 2002. '"Sins of Omission": The English Patient, THE ENGLISH PATIENT, and the Critics' ESSAYS ON CANADIAN WRITING. ISSU 76, 195-215
  • ROBERTS, G., 2000. 'Spectacle Matters: Titanic, The Sweet Hereafter, and the Academy and Genie Awards' CANADIAN REVIEW OF AMERICAN STUDIES. VOL 30(PART 3), 317-338

Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies

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