Julie Rak, FRSC, PhD (McMaster) MA (Carleton) BA Hons. (McMaster)

Area of Study / Keywords

autobiography life writing nonfiction gender Canadian literature book history publishing diary

---

About

Julie Rak, FRSC, is HM Tory Chair and a Professor in the University of Alberta’s Department of English and Film Studies. She holds a BA and a PhD in English from McMaster University and an MA in Canadian Studies from Carleton University.

My primary research interests include the study of personal nonfiction (the field of life writing) with a focus on biography, autobiography, diaries and personal journals. Other areas of research include American and Canadian literature, popular culture and publishing, focusing on the thoughts, actions and writings of people in the context of their everyday lives. I often share my research findings with the public, with more than 90 media appearances in major newspapers, and on radio shows and television networks.

I have more than 25 years of experience in research and teaching.  I served as the interim Chair of the EFS Department 2023-2024 and hold the Henry Marshall Tory Chair (2019–2025). In 2023, I received the J. Gordin Kaplan Award for Research Excellence, the University of Alberta’s most prestigious research award, and in 2017, I was named a Killam Annual Professor for my work in highlighting relatively unknown narratives. I also was also part of the steering group for Stories of Change, a signature research area at the U of A that explores the interplay between micro-level stories and macro-level social transformation. I serve on the editorial boards of Critical Gambling Studies, a/b: a journal of auto/biography studies, the European Journal of Life Writing and Canadian Literature. In 2022, I was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for my record of scholarly and educational leadership.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8470-3202

Awards

The Henry Marshall Tory Chair, University of Alberta, 2019-2025.

J. Gordin Kaplan Award for Excellence in Research, University of Alberta, 2023

The Killam Annual Professorship, University of Alberta, 2017-2018.

The Hogan Prize. For the essay “Radical Connections: Genealogy, Small Lives, Big Data," A/B: AutoBiography Studies special issue “Excavating Lives.” 32.3 (Spring 2017): 479-497.

Fellowships

2022: Fellow, Royal Society of Canada

2024: Visiting Professor, Merton College, University of Oxford, for research on journaling and commonplace books, Merton College Library and the Bodleian Library. April 22-29.

2017: Eccles Centre Visiting Canadian Fellow in North American Studies Award. British Library and the British Association of American Studies (BAAS). For 'Animals and Machines: Inuit Traditional Knowledge as (New) Materialism.’ (£2500 GBP, approx. $4100)

---

Research

Recent Books (Monographs and Edited Works)

2023: Ed. with Sonja Boon, Laurie McNeill, Candida Rifkind. The Routledge Introduction to Auto/biography in Canada. New York: Routledge. Series editors Robert Lecker and Lorraine M. York. 227 pp.

2020-2022: Associate Editor, Identities volume 2 of Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Online version published July 2020. 1103-1526.

2021: False Summit: Gender in Mountaineering Nonfiction. Kingston, Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press. 268 pp.

Selected Special Issues of Journals

2021: with Ana Horvat, Orly Lael Netzer and Sarah McRae, "Introduction: "Unfixing the Prefix," Trans Narratives: Trans, Transmedia, Transnational. London and New York: Routledge, 1–7. doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2019.1548084

2020: With Bill Mullen, Ed. Special cluster for Biography, "Academic Freedom, Academic Lives." Vol 42, no. 4. 

Recent Articles

2024: “Teaching Secrets: Reading Alice Munro for Information.” The Typescript. July 25, 2024. https://thetypescript.com/teaching-secrets-reading-alice-munro-for-information-by-julie-rak/?(not peer-reviewed--public resource).

2022: "Mediation Then and Now: Ang Tharkay's Sherpa and Memoires d’un Sherpa." Primerjalna književnost [Comparative Literature Slovenia] vol. 45 no. 3:125–144. 8172 words. https://doi.org/10.3986/pkn.v45.i3.08

2022: "Margaret Atwood and Sexual Assault." Canadian Literature vol. 250: 79–111. 13,750 words. 

Recent Book Chapters

2025: “Diaries, Amsterdam and the Post-digital.” Eds. Marleen Rensen, Leonieke Vermeer, Laura van Hasselt and Ernestine Hoegen.  Amsterdam Urban Lives. Amsterdam University Press. 5900 words.  In press.

2024: “Auto/biographical Comics in World Literature: Silences and Gaps.” Life Writing as World Literature. Edited by Ioana Luca and Helga Lénárt-Cheng. Bloomsbury. In press. 

2024:  “Autobiographical Writing ‘from below’ and Popular Forms of Life Writing,” Handbook of Life Writing. English and American Studies: Genres, Media, Periods, Texts, Theories. Eds. Alfred Hornung and Helga Schwalm. De Gruyter. 3750 words. In press.

2023: “Festival Obscura: Gender, Race, Class in Festival-Driven Mountaineering Documentaries.” Global Mountain Cinema. 6000 words. Eds. Christian Quendler, Kamaal Haque, Caroline Schaumann. Edinburgh University Press. 209-224.

---

Teaching

My undergraduate teaching focuses on popular culture, autobiography, critical theory (including gender and sexuality) and contemporary Canadian literature and cultural studies. In 2021-2022 I taught undergraduate courses about autobiography, gender and sexuality theory, and contemporary Canadian literature. 

I am teaching the graduate course Engl 693 Diaries and Journals.

I have supervised Honors Tutorials and directed readings on the following topics: trauma theory, Jacques Derrida, Alice Munro, Walter Benjamin and the city, mountaineering writing, Canadian women's autobiography, women's autobiography, postcolonial Canadian literature, utopian literature, gender and mainstream radio, queer horror fiction, social media and Baudrillard and digital fan fiction.

For more information about my past and current research projects, please consult my website.

ENGL 250 - Introduction to Canadian Literatures

A survey of literatures in what is now Canada. Prerequisite: 6 units of junior ENGL, or 3 units of junior ENGL and 3 units of junior WRS.

---

ENGL 378 - Contemporary Canadian Literatures

Selected works from literatures produced after 2000. Prerequisite: 6 units of junior ENGL, or 3 units of junior ENGL and 3 units of junior WRS.

---

ENGL 402 - Studies in Genres

Prerequisites: 12 units of senior ENGL with a minimum of 6 units at the 300 level. Note: variable content course which may be repeated.

---

ENGL 693 - Literary Genres

---

Browse more courses taught by Julie Rak

Sonja Boon, Laurie McNeill, Candida Rifkind, Julie Rak

New York. 2023 January;

---

2023 January;

---

Critical Gambling Studies. 2022 March;

---

2022 January;

---

2022 January;

---

Julie Rak

McGill-Queens UP. 2021 April;

---

Mini Aodla Freeman, Keavy Martin, Julie Rak

2015 January;

---

Julie Rak

Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurer University Press. 2013 January;

---

Philippe Lejeune, eds. Jeremy Popkin and Julie Rak

Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2009 January;

---

Julie Rak

2004 January;

---

View additional publications