Heather Zwicker
Associate Professor
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Phone:
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780.492.4223
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Email:
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heather.zwicker@ualberta.ca
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Office:
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4-15 Humanities Centre
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Office Hours:
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By appointment
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Address:
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University of Alberta
4-15 Humanities Centre
Edmonton, AB
Canada T6G 2E5
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BA Alberta, PhD Stanford
Supervisory and Research Interests:
A postcolonialist by training, my intellectual curiosity envelops contemporary literary and cultural studies in the context of third-wave feminism. My early research investigated the meanings of “nation” and “nationalism” for women writers from Canada and Northern Ireland. More recently, I have turned my attention to questions of university governance and administration, as well as public intellectualism. I am a co-applicant on the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory, an innovative online infrastructure funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (.5 million). Under its aegis, I am investigating digital representations of Canadian urbanism.
I am happy to supervise research in a wide range of topics under the general headings of feminism, postcolonialism, cultural studies and queer theory. I have supervised projects on African American masculinities (L. Tucker, tenured at Southern Arkansas University), gender and orientalism (S. Rahman, tenured at University of Western Illinois), the history of the personal computer (A. Morrison, tenure-track at Waterloo), humanitarianism and violence (M. Youssef, Refugee Relocation Manager for the UN - Cairo), and ecocriticism (N. Shukin, tenure-track at Victoria). MA thesis supervisions include Flat City (A. Fung, creative nonfiction about Edmonton), Crisis And Safety: Asexuality In A Postmodern World (E. Przybylo, English and Women’s Studies project), and Words Like Buckshot: Hiromi Goto (M. Sasano). Currently I supervise PhD students researching Nigerian street literature (N. Otiono), the discourse of twenty-first-century corporations (M. Talpalaru), border-transgressing women writers (L. Garranz), and queer Canadian writing (D. Mason).
Courses Taught:
I regularly teach undergraduate courses in Edmonton writing and literary theory. My most recent graduate courses have been on public intellectualism and institutional critique. In addition, I have developed and delivered a large number of graduate proseminars on teaching and professionalization; and in my capacity as Associate Dean (Graduate Studies) I spearhead a number of teaching-related initiatives including TA training, innovative graduate programs, and summer institutes for students. I won the Faculty of Arts Teaching Award in 1999, the university-wide Rutherford Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (also 1999), and the Students’ Union Teaching Matters! Award in 2008.
Representative Publications:
‘Not Drowning but Waving’: Women, Feminism and the Liberal Arts. Ed. Susan Brown, Jeanne Perreault, Jo-Ann Wallace and Heather Zwicker. University of Alberta Press, forthcoming.
“Things We Gained in the Fire: Burnout, Feminism and Radical Collegiality.” ‘Not Drowning but Waving’: Women, Feminism and the Liberal Arts. Ed. Susan Brown, Jeanne Perreault, Jo-Ann Wallace and Heather Zwicker. University of Alberta Press, forthcoming.
“‘To Build a Better World’: Corporate Genealogy of The Bechtel Group.” Cultural History and the Global Corporation, ed. Laura Lyons and Purnima Bose (Indiana UP, 2010).
“The Provost’s Initiative on Faculty-Driven, Whole-Systems Academic Planning and Its Outcomes.” Co-authored with Ken Zakariasen. Journal of the World Universities Forum. 1.6: 43-50 (2008).
Edmonton on Location. Ed. Heather Zwicker. Edmonton: NeWest, 2005.
Remarks:
I am a big believer in collaboration – with students, with artists, and with colleagues. Several of the contributions to Edmonton on Location were developed in English 478 (2003-2004). In 2007 I helped launch the nine-day multi-disciplinary (and now annual) “Exposure: Edmonton’s Queer Arts and Culture Festival,” the only event of its kind in Canada. Among my current projects is an essay on student engagement, co-authored with former MA student Alyson Fortowsky, a presentation in Australia with Exposure Producer Ted Kerr, and an interactive digital project called “Putting Edmonton on the (Google) Map,” conceived and developed with E-Learning Manager Maureen Engel.
Links:
http://ssrg.cs.ualberta.ca/index.php/CWRC
http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/clc/
http://www.exposurefestival.ca