Research

For me, the object of investigation is not just the cultural product itself, but also the ideas it generates and that generate it, and the forces in our world which make it circulate. My work is marked by this intense interest in process because I am fascinated by what so-called ordinary people do, read, watch, produce, love and hate. Sometimes those people are marginalized by their cultural background, economic status, sexuality or gender, sometimes not. Sometimes they are heroic in their daily lives, and sometimes not at all. For me, English studies today offers the opportunity to bring into view what “popular” or “vernacular” means, and to understand how things like the discourse of liberalism and ideas about citizenship interact with that. 

Some literary studies research expresses suspicion and contempt for this kind of inquiry. But when I was a kid and a young adult, it’s not an exaggeration to say that my life was saved by three things: poetry, music and television. All of them gave me entry to imaginative worlds that took me far beyond my situation. And all of them taught me things I needed to know: what a family is, what love can be, and what people can and should owe each other. Today, I honour that legacy in what I study, think about and write about.  

Areas of research

• auto/biography, life writing, nonfiction, automedia

• literature and culture in Canada

• book history

• mountaineering and gender

• popular culture: print, analog and digital