Louise Harrington, PhD and MA SOAS, University of London, BA Trinity College Dublin
Pronouns: she, her, hers
Contact
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Arts - English & Film Studies Dept
- lmharrin@ualberta.ca
Overview
Area of Study / Keywords
Postcolonial War Peace Borders Partition
About
I'm an assistant professor in postcolonial studies and contemporary literatures with an emphasis on South Asia, Ireland and Palestine. My research lies at the intersection of cultural & literary studies and ethno-religio-national conflict & peace studies. In the context of Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine and South Asia I am interested in exploring border poetics and border aesthetics in a comparative framework.
My current book project on these three regions takes up aspects of critical border studies and geocriticism to examine how literary and cinematic mediations of 20th century partitions map spaces of conflict and their legacies. I am also leading SSHRC-funded multidisciplinary research that studies how literature as a form of cultural peace work serves an essential function in mobilizing creative modes of peacebuilding, called 'Cultural Peace Work in "Post-Conflict" Northern Ireland'. Another project examines the intersections between critical border studies and postcolonial and decolonial literary studies.
I have previously published on topics including the railway in Indian literary imagination; narratology and the Partition of Bengal; South Asian Irish cultural production; Bengali and Bangladeshi resistance writing; the militant body in Northern Ireland and Palestine; and the anxiety of post-partition Irishness.
Research
Supervisory and Research Interests
Postcolonial and comparative literatures; critical border studies; South Asian literatures and cultures; Irish literature and culture; the Arab-Israeli conflict; war, (post-)conflict and partition studies; literature and religion; spatial literary studies and theory.
Teaching
Recent and upcoming courses include:
- ENGL 103 Case Studies in Research: Language Politics in Irish Literature
- ENGL 150 Intro to English Studies: Narratives of Migration
- ENGL 222 Reading Race and Ethnicity
- ENGL 305 Topics in Literature and Religion
- ENGL 315 South Asian Literatures in English
- ENGL 367 Contemporary Literature and Culture
- ENGL 426 The Short Story in South Asia
- ENGL 481 Borders, Lines and Walls
- ENGL 569 Borders as Methodologies
- ENGL 680 Border Aesthetics
Courses
ENGL 223 - Reading Empire and the Postcolonial
An introduction to dynamics of colonization and its resistances in literary and other cultural texts, and to the critical concepts and methods key to their study. Prerequisite: 6 units of junior English, or 3 units of junior English plus WRS 101.
ENGL 315 - South Asian Writing in English
Selected works from the Indian context. Content and period focus may vary. Prerequisite: 6 units of junior ENGL, or 3 units of junior ENGL and 3 units of junior WRS.
ENGL 465 - Studies in Gender and Sexualities
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 555 - Directed Reading
ENGL 680 - Post-Colonial Texts
Featured Publications
Louise Harrington
TEXT special issue: 'Writing and Illustrating Interdisciplinary Research'. 2016 January; 34
Louise Harrington
Postcolonial Text. 2016 January; 11 (2):1-16
Louise Harrington
South Asian Diaspora. 2014 January; 6 (1):19-32
Louise Harrington
The Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies. 2013 January; 4 (2):47-79
Louise Harrington
Partitions and Their Afterlives eds. Mohanram and Raychaudhuri.