Lucas Crawford, PhD, MA, BA Honours

Area of Study / Keywords

Transgender Studies Queer Theory Creative Writing 20th c. Literature Disability & Mad Studies

About

I joined Augustana on 1 July 2021 after working as Associate Professor of English at UNB, R.W.W. Junior Chair of Gender Studies at SFU, and postdoctoral fellow in Architecture and Gender Studies at McGill. I grew up in rural Nova Scotia. Interests include: poetry, snack foods, tennis, basketball, pop music, the long 1990s, and queer aesthetics. 

I would love to hear from prospective graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who do work in the queer and trans Arts & Humanities, especially those whose work includes considerations of mental health, disability, food, creativity, and affect.

Read more about me here: https://www.ualberta.ca/the-quad/2022/05/have-you-met-lucas-crawford.html 

Research

I am the author of five books:

Sideshow Concessions (Invisible Publishing, 2015).

Transgender Architectonics: the Shape of Change in Modernist Space (Routeldge, 2016).

The High Line Scavenger Hunt (U of Calgary Press, 2018).

Belated Bris of the Brainsick (Nightwood Editions, 2019).

Muster Points (U of Calgary Press, June 2023).

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You can learn about some of my other research projects -- focused on fatness, space, transgender, and/or mental illness -- at the following links.

Trans Formations (The Architectural Review, 2021).

The Crumple and the Scape: Two Archi-Textures in the Mode of Queer Gender (Places, 2020).

Four Gestures Towards a Trans-Mad Aesthetic of Space (Social Text, 2021).

Slender Trouble: Berlant and Sedgwick (GLQ: Gay and Lesbian Quarterly, 2017).

(Video!!!) Lecture at Berkeley College of Environment and Design (2020).

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In addition to my scholarship and writing, I am the founding creative director of "Rewriting Ourselves: Poetry in the Psych Ward," a two-year pilot project funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. Soon, we will use our collaboratively designed poetry curriculum to connect with our mad peers on the inside. As of January 2024, we are rounding the corner on the third draft of our 30-session curriculum, under the leadership of project manager (Matthew Stepanic) and our project's brand new postdoctoral fellow (Rob Colgate), both excellent poets in their own right. Our current curriculum team is comprised of 30 mad poets, writers of other genres who express emotional anguish in unique ways, disability and mad studies scholars, mad ally therapists and social workers who work in wards, booksellers, community workshop leaders, professors, students, activists, publishers, and more -- all from a very wide range of life experiences.

If you're a psych ward professional who happened to find this site and you are interested in participating in our pilot, please email me.

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Matthew Stepanic and I also co-oganize VERS/e: Queer Poetry Series, which features one guest poet and a lively open mic, the first Wednesday of each month (Sept-May), 6-8 PM, with the poetry beginning at 6:30. No cost + 11x17 broadsides of the featured poet, by donation. Check out our venue, Felice Café. So far, we have featured Jordan Abel, Ellen Kartz, Michael V. Smith (Kelowna), Steacy Easton (Hamilton), and Rob Colgate.

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Dr. Thom Vernon and I are co-editing a book of experimental poetry called Monosyllabic Queer Theory, in which dozens of authors from several continents "translate" works of canonical and contemporary queer theory into poems that only use words consisting of one syllable. These are theoretical 'readings' as much as translations, and each shows in a different way the potentials of poetry as an intellectual and political tool. These are sometimes cheeky, sometimes poignant, always clever responses to queer theory's and poetry's shared charges (not always without merit) of inaccessibility and/or obscurity. The book is currently under review at a leading Canadian press. There are a few specific theorists we would like to add, however, so please get in touch if this captures your interest.

Teaching

I teach Selected Topics courses on queer theory and cultural production, as well as on madness and its literary, intellectual, and pop cultural histories.

I am not teaching in the Winter 2024 term, but former Edmonton Poet Laureate Nisha Patel will be teaching English 299: Madness and Creativity -- highly recommended!