Roxanne Harde, PhD

Area of Study / Keywords

American Literature & Culture Children's & YA Literature Popular Culture Rape Culture Feminist Theory Social Transformations Scholarship of Teaching and Learning; Health and Well-Being

About

Education

SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Cornell University

PhD, Queen's University

MA, University of Saskatchewan

Major Awards

Fulbright Canada Visiting Research Chair, Vanderbilt University

Teagle Foundation Grant

SSHRC Insight Development Grants

Augustana Teaching Leadership Award

McCalla University Professorship

Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund Project Grant

SSHRC Standard Research Grant

I teach and research American literature and culture. Though my original field of specialization was American literature to 1865, my work on American women writers from the colonial, revolutionary, ante- and post-bellum periods has led me to work on a disparate variety of American texts and cultural moments. My interest in children's and young adult literature has been grounded by my earlier career as a children's librarian. I have worked on and taught Indigenous texts and contexts for nearly twenty years, and now blend those interests in a project on Indigenous children's books. My theoretical approaches combine new historicism and feminist cultural materialism as I uncover how the texts I study work to reform the society that produced them. My current projects include a examination of date/acquaintance rape narratives written for young adults, a study of the strategies of decolonization in contemporary Indigenous texts for children, and an ongoing project on singer-songwriters working in the Americana genre. Alongside my disciplinary research, I also engage in the scholarship of teaching, and have published on my classroom practices.

Research

Forthcoming Publications

• “Sexual Assault and the Queer Art of Failure in Young Adult Fiction.” Roxanne Harde and Logan Driedger. International Journal of Young Adult Literature. Submitted. 23 pp. typescript.

Recent Publications

Books

• Stories: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Zea Books / University of Nebraska Press, 2023. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/135/
• The Legacy Book in America, 1664-1792. Edited by Roxanne Harde and Lindsay Yakimyshyn, Zea Books / University of Nebraska Digital Commons, 2021. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/110/
• Consumption and the Literary Cookbook. Edited by Roxanne Harde and Janet Wesselius, Routledge, 2021. Winner of the South Atlantic Modern Language Edited Book Award, 2021.

Articles

• "'What about justice?’: Persisting Girls in Young Adult Rape Fiction.” Women’s Studies, vol. 52, no. 6, 2023, pp. 660-73. 
• “Enter your watchwoman”: Alanis Morissette, Teaching Our Children Well.” Feminist Media Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2023.2229058
• “Marm the Doctor, Mill Children, and the American Dream in ‘One Way to Get an Education’: A Recovered Short Story by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.” Scholarly Editing, Vol. 40 (2023). DOI: 10.55520/JH2H5VJD.
• ‘Hangin’ in the Tremé’: New Orleans, Music, and Resilience in Treme.” South Atlantic Review, vol. 87, no. 1, Spring 2022, pp. 39-58.
• “‘She wished someone would help them”: Building Empathy for the Mentally Ill in YA Fantasy Fiction.” Kelly Keus and Roxanne Harde. Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 53, no. 1, 2022, pp. 130-46. doi.org/10.1007/s10583-021-09441-0
• “‘He called their namesakes, the animals, from each direction’: Kinship and Animals in Indigenous Children’s Literature.” Children’s Literature Quarterly, vol. 46, no. 3, 2021, pp. 230-243.
• “‘The flavors mix together slowly’: Cooking Connections in Picture-Cookbooks.” Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature, vol. 59, no. 1, 2021, pp. 28-40.
• “Talking Back to History in Indigenous Picturebooks.” International Research in Children’s Literature, vol. 13, no. 2, 2020, pp. 274-288.
• “‘You doesn’t know magic. … Plus, you children’: Growing Ecocitizens in Three American Children’s Novels.” The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 43, no. 3, 2020, pp. 327-344.
• “‘Looking for whatever bowl of soup … might restore us’: Consumption and Nostalgia in Treme: Stories and Recipes from the Heart of New Orleans,” in Consumption and the Literary Cookbook, Edited by Roxanne Harde and Janet Wesselius, Routledge, 2021, pp. 216-227.

Teaching

Senior Courses

AUENG 205: “Children’s Literature.”

AUENG 298: America's Poets

AUENG 270: “America, Exceptionalism and Empire.”

AUENG 271: “America, Law, Literature, and Justice.”

AUENG 302: “Feminist Theologies and Women’s Writing.”

AUENG 306: “Indigenous Children’s Literature and Theory.”

AUENG 368: “Women’s Environmental Literature.”

AUENG 392: “Feminist Critical Theory and Women’s Writing.”

AUENG 441: “Reform Writing for Children.”

Recent Directed Readings

2023     Logan Driedger: Embracing Failure: An Exploration of Queerness in YA Rape Novels.

2022     Mia Arciniegas: Subversive Glamour: Reconsidering the Impact of Hyper Femininity in Classic Hollywood Films

2022    Shelby Paulgaard: Media Representations of Sexual Assault in Young Adult Rape Novels (Winner, Augustana Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award)

2020    Sarah Preston: Feminism and Religious Doctrine in Women’s Writing

2019    Crystal Labrecque: Slut Shaming in Young Adult Fiction (Winner, Augustana Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award)

Graduate Supervision

I regularly supervise or serve on the examining committees of graduate students at the University of Alberta and other institutions.