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 W̱SÁNEĆ 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 University of Nottingham-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 in the areas of Canadian literature and culture, Canada-US border studies, and film adaptation. In 2024-25, amongst contributing to other modules in Cultural, Media and… 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. Race, Nation and Cultural Power in Film Adaptation Edinburgh University Press.
  • ROBERTS, G., 2024. "Visualizing the Canada-US Border: Comic Adaptations of Wayde Compton’s 'The Blue Road' and Thomas King’s 'Borders'" Studies in Canadian Literature. 48(1), 131-151
  • ROBERTS, G., 2024. "Border Hypotheses: Speculations on Territory and Sovereignty in Wayde Compton’s The Outer Harbour". In: ORR, J. and STIRRUP, D., eds., Canada-US Border Theory Edinburgh University Press. 174-194
  • ROBERTS, G., 2023. “Indigenizing 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

Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies

University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

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