Billy Johnson
Dr. Billy Johnson
Office: BAC 430
Email: james.johnson@acadiau.ca
Education: BA (St. Thomas), MA (UNB), PhD (Toronto)
Research Interests: Canadian Literature and Culture, Book History and Print Culture, Periodical Studies, Global Modernisms, Diaspora, and Critical Writing Pedagogy.
Underpinning my research is an interest in how literature and print media have contributed to the production of place, mobility, and collective identity in the modern transatlantic world. This interest motivates the three projects I’m currently working on: a book that examines periodical form and transatlantic identity in Atlantic Canadian periodicals, another that examines the intersection of modernism and Black expressive culture in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean, and a feature film project that tells the story of diaspora and deindustrialization in 19th and 20th-century Scotland and Nova Scotia. Uniting these projects is both a commitment to interdisciplinary dialogue and the belief that understanding the historical dimensions of print communication can help us become more attuned to the ways new media shapes our material realities in the present.
Teaching
My teaching, like my research, foregrounds the close relations between literature and its social and material contexts. Situating literature in relation to geography, history, and material production opens up new opportunities for interdisciplinary approaches in the classroom. Above all, I aim to provide an environment in which students can engage thoughtfully in critical conversations with their peers and acquire skills needed to formulate strong analytical arguments in their discussions and writing.
I strive to impart these lessons and skills because they ultimately extend well beyond the community of our classroom. The ability to think creatively and critically, to analyze texts, and to articulate clear and persuasive arguments produces better essay-writers, but it also gives students the tools they need to contribute meaningfully to personal and public conversations about literature, social justice, and the world in which they live.
Selected Publications
My first book, Publishing Place: Transatlantic Modernity and Periodical Culture in the East, is currently under contract with McGill-Queen’s University Press. My recent publications include “A.B. Walker’s Neith and the Aesthetic Grammars of Black Modernism in Canada” (2023), which won the 2023 Herb Wyile Prize for best essay published in Studies in Canadian Literature, and “The Maritime Labor Herald (1921-1926) and the Genealogy of Socialist Feminism in Canada” (Canadian Literature, 2024). My essays and articles have also appeared in The English Languages: History, Diaspora, Culture, The Canadian Modernist Magazines Project, Confluences 1: Essays on the New Canadian Literature, and Morbus: Creative Musings on Being Ill.
Courses
Writing and Reading Critically 1: ENGL 1413 (Fall 2024, Winter 2025)
Writing and Reading Critically 2: ENGL 1423 (Winter 2025)