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; theories of critical analysis; queer studies; modern and contemporary fiction and poetry in the UK; law and literature. I welcome students’ projects in these areas. For the last twenty years, I have supervised and examined numerous theses, and I have been able to include research assistants in fifteen projects.

Since publishing The Agon of Modernism: Wyndham Lewis’s Allegories, Aesthetics, and Politics in 1999, 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 research projects focus on affect and historiography, translation, and citizenship. I explore the poetry of authors such as Nicole Brossard, Erín Moure, Oana Avasilichioaei, M. NourbeSe Philip, Liz Howard, Dionne Brand, and Rachel 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.  Theoretical and philosophical frameworks of analysis include the writings of Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Rancière.

Recent publications
“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.

“Ossuaries: Songs of Necropolitics.” Canadian Literature, vol. 222, Autumn 2014, pp. 52-68.

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