---

Availability

TBA Fall 2021

Area of Study / Keywords

gender and performance maternity and popular culture gender and genres histories of feminism and feminist theory feminism and imperialism

---

About

My research and teaching interests cross a number of areas but are primarily focused on the representation and circulation of images and ideologies of femininity--and in particular of the maternal body--in popular cultural and especially Anglo-imperial contexts after 1850 and into the contemporary moment. Since completing my PhD at York University in 1995 on late 19th-century English-Canadian poet Isabella Valancy Crawford, I have published and presented work on imperial motherhood, colonial girlhood, eugenic feminism, the figure of the white slave, the imperial idea of the "Indian maiden," hysteria, erotic dancers, Anne of Green Gables, feminist theory in Canada, femininity and comics, and chick lit.

---

Research

I am completing a book-length study of early twentieth-century "Salome" dancers, and am beginning a new SSHRC-funded project on white impersonations of Indigeneity in early twentieth-century performance and representation.

Some recent work:

“Hysteria in the age of mechanical reproduction: back to the ‘image factory’ in Westworld.” Performing Hysteria: Contemporary Images and Imaginations of Hysteria. Edited by Johanna Braun. Leuven/Ithaca, NY, Leuven/Cornell University Press, 2020, pp. 167-88.

“Salome, Herodias, and the ‘curious transition’: the cultural logic of reproductive fetishism in the representation of erotic dance.” ESC: English Studies in Canada vol. 43, no.2-3, 2018, pp. 121-47.

“Made for Mankind: Cars, Cosmetics, and the Petrocultural Feminine.” Petrocultures: Oil, Energy, Culture. Edited by Imre Szeman and Sheena Wilson, Montreal and Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017, pp. 162-86.

---

Teaching

I have worked to develop and have taught for many years in our department's team-taught first-year English course. When I'm not Chairing, I also teach senior and graduate courses in gender and sexuality and popular fiction. I am involved in supporting and mentoring new Graduate Teaching Assistants. I have directed the teaching proseminar for first-year PhD students many times. I have been a member of the University of Alberta Graduate Teaching and Learning committee, and have served as EFS Coordinator for the FGSR Graduate Teaching and Learning Program. I am currently supervising and co-supervising graduate theses on eugenics, on tabletop role-playing games, and on the figure of the madwoman. I received a Faculty of Arts Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2011 and the Kathleen W. Klawe Prize for Excellence in Teaching of Large Classes in 2017.

While the University is closed, the best way to reach me is by email.

ENGL 579 - Gender Studies

---

Browse more courses taught by Cecily Devereux