Postdoctoral Fellows

The Department of English has been fortunate to host postdoctoral fellows conducting research in a number of fields. We encourage potential applicants to contact the Chair of the department, as well as faculty working in areas in which they intend to pursue their postdoctoral work. The Department provides support (office space, library facilities) for fellows and makes every effort to include them in all aspects of the department’s life. 

Current Postdoctoral Fellow:

Erin Julian, PhD (McMaster) 2014, MA (McMaster) 2010, BA (Brock) 2009.
SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow September 2016-18
Supervisor: Dr Kim Solga.

Erin’s postdoctoral research project, ‘Rape under erasure in early/modern Shakespeare’, examines representations of sexual violence on the contemporary Shakespearean stage, exploring the connections between feminist theatre practices and theory, early modern culture and criticism, and contemporary cross-media discourses on sexual violence. Dr Kim Solga is supervising this project.

Erin’s research interests include Jacobean and Caroline drama, city comedy (particularly the plays of Ben Jonson and John Marston), boy and women actors in the Elizabethan through Restoration periods, and the intersections of gender and genre in early modern drama and literature. She completed her SSHRC-funded doctoral dissertation, ‘Laughing Matters: Sexual Violence in Jacobean and Caroline Comedy’ in the department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster under the supervision of Dr Helen Ostovich.

Her recent publications include ‘Review Essay: New Directions in Jonson Criticism’ for Early Theatre 17.1 (2014) and (co-authored with Helen Ostovich) ‘Pedagogical and Web Resources’ in Julian and Ostovich (eds), The Alchemist: A Critical Reader (London: Arden, 2013). She has also previously worked as Acting Assistant editor for Early Theatre (2014) and as dramaturge/assistant director for a production of Robert Wilson’s Three Ladies of London as part of the Performance-as-Research conference held at McMaster in June 2015, which she also helped organise.


Recent Fellows:

Karen Bourrier, "Nineteenth-Century Disability: A Digital Reader" (2011-2013)
Michelle Faubert, "Rhyming Reason: The Poetry of Romantic-Era Psychiatrists" (2003-2004; now Associate Professor, Department of English, Film, and Theatre,  University of Manitoba)
Jason Haslam, "Penned America: The Prison in America Fiction, 1840-1917" (2004-2005; 2004 Polanyi Prize winner; now Associate Professor, Dalhousie University) 
Charn Jagpal, "Twist  and Shout: Dances of Hybridity in South Asian Women’s Diasporic Fiction" (2012-14)
Mark McCutcheon, "The Medium is the Monster: Canadian Frankensteins, Global Articulations." (2008-2009; now Assistant Professor, Department of English, Athabasca University)
Jonathan Murphy, "Pro Aeris et Focis: Transfigurations of Finitude in 19th-Century American Fiction"  (2010-11; now Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities, Texas A & M International University)
Wendy Pearson, “Performing Alter/Natives: Performativity and Identity in the indigenous Arts in Canada and Australia” (2004-2006; now Assistant Professor, Women's Studies and Feminist Research, Western)
Grace Pollock, "Engendering Celebrity:  Idolatrous Economies in Eighteenth-Century Britain" (2006-2008; currently co-director of The Public Intellectuals Project at McMaster University)
Nicole Schukin, “Animal Signs: Languages, Literature and Theory” (2005-2006; now Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Victoria)
Emma Wilson (Commonwealth Scholar), "’How how, chopt-logic?’: Comparing How the Literary Styles of Milton and Shakespeare Work Using Renaissance Logical and Rhetorical Methods”