Dr. Anne Quéma
Position: Professor
Education: PhD (Royal Holloway College, University of London)
MA in Comparative Literature (Carleton University)
MA in English, (Carleton University)
Licence in English (Université de Savoie)
Office: Beveridge Arts Centre 430
Phone: (902) 585-1111
Email: aquema@acadiau.ca
Research interests
Experimental poetry in the UK, US, and Canada; theories of critical analysis; queer studies; theories of critical analysis; queer studies. I welcome students’ projects in these areas. For the last twenty-four years, I have supervised and examined numerous theses, and I have included research assistants in nineteen projects.
Since publishing The Agon of Modernism: Wyndham Lewis’s Allegories, Aesthetics, and Politics in 1999 (Bucknell UP), I have published articles on poetry, law and literature, legal discourse and same-sex partnership, historiography, Gothic fiction, fiction and the visual arts, and Canadian modernism. In Power and Legitimacy (2015), I examine relationships between power and language in the context of interdisciplinary analyses of jurisprudence, statutory law, and literature.
My current book project focuses on biopoetics in Erín Moure’s poetry and her approach to historiography, translation, and citizenship. Theoretical frameworks include works by Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Nancy. In chapters and articles, I explore the poetry of authors such as Nicole Brossard, Oana Avasilichioaei, M. NourbeSe Philip, Liz Howard, Dionne Brand, Anne Carson, Chantal Givson, Renee Gladman, and Syd Zolf in the context of international practices of experimental poetry. I establish dialogues between these poets and poets in the UK such as Maggie O’Sullivan, Geraldine Monk, Caroline Bergvall, Frances Presley, Redell Olsen, Sophie Robinson, Harriet Tarlo, Andrea Brady, and Catherine Walsh.
Selected publications:
“M. NourbeSe Philip: Essay-Writing and the Space of Dissent.” The Edinburgh Companion to Women’s Experimental Literature Since 1900, edited by Kaye Mitchell and Melissa Tanti, Edinburgh UP. Forthcoming Fall 2025. Refereed.
“Ossuaries: Songs of Necropolitics.” Propagules: Essays on Dionne Brand’s Works, edited by Titilota Aiyegbusi and Mark A. McCutcheon, Guernica Editions, 2025. In press. Revised and refereed.
“(dis)(re)learning with Liz Howard’s Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent.” Living and Learning with Feminist Ethics and Poetics Today, edited by Dominique Hétu, Libe García Zarranz, Amanda Fayant, and Marie Carrière, U of Alberta P, 2024. Refereed.
“Phonotopia of Migrations: Oana Avasilichioaei’s Limbinal.” Forms of Migration, edited by Jennifer Reimer and Stefan Maneval, Berlin, Falschrum Books, 2021.
“Engendering Biopoetics of Testimony: Louise Dupré, Chus Pato, and Erín Moure.” Canadian Holocaust Writing, edited by Ruth Panofsky and Goldie Morgentaler, Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, vol. 32, 2021.
“Bioarchives of Affect: Erín Moure’s The Unmemntioable.” Studies in Canadian Literature, vol. 45, no. 2, 2020, pp. 25-47.
“How to Make Sense? An aesthesis of Citizenship and Legitimacy.” Sensing Law, edited by Sheryl Hamilton, Diana Majury, Dawne Moore, Neil Sargent, and Christiane Wilke, Routledge, 2016, pp. 111-132.
“Metaphor, Law, and Poetry: An Actor-Network Approach to Zong !” Journal of Law and Society, vol. 43, no.1, 2016, pp. 85-104. Special Issue edited by David Gurnham.
Power and Legitimacy: Law, Culture, and Literature. U of Toronto P, 2015. Referred.
“Ossuaries: Songs of Necropolitics.” Canadian Literature, vol. 222, Autumn 2014, pp. 52-68.
“Kinship, Sexuality, and Citizenship in the Civil Partnership Act 2004.” Contemporary Issues in Law, vol. 10, no. 4, 2010, pp. 313-329. Refereed.
“A Culture of Retribution: Symbolic Violence in Legal and Literary Discourses on Juvenile Delinquency.” International Journal of Law in Context, vol. 2, no.2, 2006, pp. 159-76, edited by Michael Freeman and Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Cambridge UP.
Teaching
My pedagogy remains the same from first year courses to graduate seminars: students’ voices will precede my contributions to the class. Hence, we always begin by listening to students’ presentations on whatever topic is discussed. To prepare the ground, I discuss presentation projects in online mini tutorials with students. Media of discussion revolve around various technologies. I typically approach literature (of all kinds) in the context of music and the visual arts such as videos, cinema, photography, sculpture, or painting
Courses recently taught:
ENGL1406 Writing and Reading Critically
ENGL 2006 Strategies for Reading Literature
ENGL 3073 Theory
ENGL 3773 Modern British Poetry
Honours and Graduate Seminars
ENGL 4323/ENGL 5713 Studies in Modern British Literature and Culture
Women’s and Gender Studies
WGST 3023 Feminist Theory
Teaching Awards
2010: Acadia Student Union Teaching Award
2002: Acadia Student Union Teaching Award
2005: President’s Award for Innovation