Dr. Laura Robinson

Position: Professor
Office: BAC 224/225
Phone: 902-585-1485
Email: laura.robinson@acadiau.ca

 

 

 

Research interests: Women’s writing and children’s literature, particularly Canadian. Feminist and queer theory. Gender and sexuality. L.M. Montgomery.

Teaching: I tend to teach with a fair number of texts in a writing-intensive course. Expectations are very high, but the upshot is that students will hone their ability to write persuasively and well. While I prepare and present arguments about the literature, my classes are conducted in a seminar style, in that I pose questions or present different takes that we can discuss together. I’m also a relentless chalk or whiteboard teacher.

Recent publications and scholarly activity:
L.M. Montgomery and Gender. Edited by E. Holly Pike and Laura M. Robinson. Montreal:  McGill-Queen’s UP, 2021.

"'You don’t want me because I’m not a boy.'"  L.M. Montgomery and Gender. Eds. E. Holly Pike and Laura M. Robinson. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2021. Refereed.

“Notes from a Feminist Dean: Female Leadership in the Academy” in Sister Scholars: Untangling Issues of Identity as Women in Academe. Eds. Ellyn Lyle & Sepideh Mahani. New York: DIO Press, 2021: 195-202. Refereed.

“Kindred Spirits: Kinship and the Nature of Nature in Anne’s House of Dreams and The Blue Castle.” L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature(s). Eds. Rita Bode and Jean Mitchell. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2018: 171-83. Refereed.
This volume won the 2018 Gabrielle Roy Prize for the best book-length study of literary criticism (English).

"L.M. Montgomery’s Great War: The Home as Battleground in Rilla of Ingleside." L.M. Montgomery and War. Eds. Andrea McKenzie and Jane Ledwell. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2017: 113-127. Refereed.

“‘What does it matter to us?’: War and the Masculine Ideal in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and L.M. Montgomery’s Rilla of Ingleside.” War Memories: Commemoration, Re- enactment, Writings of War in the English-speaking World (18th-21st centuries). Eds Stéphanie Belanger and Renée Dickson. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2016: 371-90. Refereed

SSHRC-Funded Bilingual Multimedia Curated Exhibit: “The Canadian Home Front: L.M. Montgomery’s Reflections on The First World War.” From 2014-18, visited 14 discrete locations in three countries over the four-year centenary of the war.

Covers of multiple works and the Exhibit in Leeds UK, at a public bookstore in 2015:

Academic Consultant, iImagine. The Inspiring World of L.M. Montgomery Literary Tour, 2019.

Academic Consultant, Historica Canada. Heritage Minute about L.M. Montgomery, 2017-18.

Courses Recently Taught: I have only taught Children’s Literature so far at Acadia, but I have taught a host of other courses at other universities, such as Introduction to Literature, Gender and Literature, Reading the Contemporary World, Girls’ Stories, Sexuality Studies, and Bridging the Two Solitudes/Rapprochement les deux solitudes: English and French Canadian Literature, a bilingual co-taught course cross-listed with English and French.