Sheena Wilson, PhD

Domaine d'étude / Mots-clés

Energy Humanities Intersectionality Feminism Social Justice Media CSJ chercheurs - Approches interdisciplinaires multidisciplinaires transdisciplinaires CSJ chercheurs - Sciences sociales et humaines

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À propos de moi

Professor of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, working in the Energy Humanities

Advisor to Edmonton's City Council: Member of ETCRC: Energy Transition Climate Resilience Committee

Principal Investigator of Just Powers

Co-Director and -Founder of the Petrocultures Research Group

Ambassador of the Energy Futures Lab

Associate Director Research of the Sustainability Council, University of Alberta (Past)

Coordinator for all English programming at Campus Saint-Jean.

See sheenawilson.ca  and justpowers.ca for more details. 

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Recherche

As Principal Investigator on Just Powers and its many projects, my current research focuses on Energy Humanities, energy transition and climate justice. I work to simultaneously analyze how we are collectively imagining new ways of being in relationship to energy and the environment, while also working to mobilize and further the public imaginary about what is possible. I am most keenly interested in representations of human rights abuses, and intersectional issues of gender, race, class and Canadian politics in the context of the resource extraction economy’s impact on various stakeholders—Indigenous communities, activists and other dissenters, and the wider Alberta and Canadian public.

This work builds on earlier work interrogating patterns of exclusion exercised on non-dominant communities within the paradigm of state-multiculturalism, including but not limited to discursive and visual representations of WWII internment of Japanese Canadians and post-9/11 exclusionary practices. I am particularly interested in how women writers and filmmakers represent marginalization, the reception of ethno-cultural media representations, as well as women in the rhetorical tradition.

Likewise, I have always maintained an interest in the relationship between the written word and the image as discursive referents in socio-political contexts. These earlier research trajectories are now woven into my ongoing work on oil and culture, as seen through an intercultural feminist lens.

My work on Just Powers involves collaborations with researchers and communities across Canada and around the world. To learn more about the ongoing work of Just Powers and its many partners follow us via our website, Facebook, and Twitter. 

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Enseignement

Broadly, I teach in the areas of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies. More specifically, my teaching focuses on energy transition, climate justice, representations of social justice issues in literature, film and media, from an intersectional feminist perspective. I am interested in visual and textual resistance narratives and the reception of those discourses within the larger matrix of white colonial patriarchy, as people seek justice, whether it is around historical injustices around gender, race and class, such as the historical experiences of women, the internment of “enemy aliens” during the Second World War, or ongoing practices of exclusion that are part and parcel of twenty-first century Canadian and global oil culture.

Graduate Supervision: I am willing to consider graduate supervision in any of the following areas: Petrocultures, Energy Humanities and Eco-criticism; Critical Race theory, Human Rights and Social Justice Issues; Canadian Literature, Film, and Media Studies; Comparative Literature; Women's Literature; Motherhood Studies; Communication, Rhetoric and Writing Studies.

A Selection of Courses Taught:

➢ Anglais 429: Canadian Cultural Studies

➢ Anglais 328: Canadian Women’s Narratives

➢ Anglais 126: Exploring Writing Studies

➢ Anglais 122: Exploring Writing Studies

➢ Anglais 101: Critical Reading and Writing

➢ Anglais 111: Language, Literature and Cultures

➢ Comparative Literature 100: World Literature

➢ Comparative Literature 372 & 472: Comparative Studies in Canadian Prose

➢ English 111: Communications

➢ Etudes Canadiennes (ETCAN) 501 Méthodologie de recherché/ Research Methodology

Feel free to follow along with public course conversations via Facebook at Anglais CSJ: Writing to Create Change.

Commencé: 2015-

What is After Oil?

After Oil: Explorations and Experiments in the Future of Energy, Culture and Society” is a collaborative, interdisciplinary research partnership designed to explore, critically and creatively, the social, cultural and political changes necessary to facilitate a full-scale transition from fossil fuels to new forms of energy. To date, it has hosted to schools AO1 and AO2. AO2, which took place in May 2019 was focused on Solarities. The feminist solarities working group, which Dr. Wilson co-led with Jessie Beier, produced a range of public facing outputs. For more details on After Oil, AO1 and AO2, as well as the work of the Feminist Solarities Mirrorland Collective, see After Oil and Feminist Solarities.

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Commencé: 2017-

Just Powers is a research network focused on on socially just--which for our team means feminist, decolonial and indigenized--energy transition as a means to design more livable futures for all. There are several research project operating under the banner of Just Powers, including the

Speculative Energy Futures,

iDoc,

La cité résiliente: A Decade in Transition,

JP Podcast,

and more.

See justpowers.ca for more information about the latest work of the Just Powers teams and its researchers.

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Commencé: 2010-

I am the co-director of the Petrocultures Research Group--a project co-founded with Imre Szeman.

What is Petrocultures?

Petrocultures is a research group at the University of Alberta (founded in 2011) whose aim is to support, produce, and distribute research related to the social, cultural and political implications of oil and energy use on individuals, communities, and societies around the world. For more information, see the Petrocultures website.

After Oil Collective

Minnesota University Press. 2022 April;

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Sheena Wilson

South Atlantic Quarterly, Duke University Press. 2021 January; 120 ((1)):137-150 10.1215/00382876-8795779

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Sheena Wilson

West Virginia University Press . 2020 October;

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Bellamy, B. R., Wilson, S.

A Ecotopian Lexicon. 2019 January;

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Wilson, S.

Materialism and the Critique of Energy. 2018 January;

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Wilson, S., Carlson, A., Szeman, I

McGill-Queen's UP. 2017 January;

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Wilson, S.

Fueling Culture: Energy, History, Politics. 2017 January;

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Petrocultures Research Group / West Virginia Press. 2016 October;

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Wilson, S.

Telling Truths: Storying Motherhood. 2016 May;

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Wilson, S.

Oil Culture. 2014 January;

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Wilson, S., Pendakis, A

Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies. 2012 September; 4 (1):213

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Sheena Wilson

American Book Review. 2012 March; 33 (2):8-9

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