Theses

Since the inception of its MA program in 1990, and the PhD program in 2002, more than two hundred graduate students have successfully completed the programme in Theory and Criticism. A listing of all graduates and their MA thesis and PhD dissertation titles can be found below. Theses submitted electronically are available through Western's Electronic Theses & Dissertation Repository.

2020 to present 

2024

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2023

2022

2021

2020

2015 to 2019

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2010 to 2014

2014

2013

2012

2011

  • Brendan Bruce, The Subject and the Ghost of ImmanenceMaster of Arts.
  • Galen Crout, Expanding the Bounds of Critique: Kant and Benjamin, Master of Arts.
  • Jennifer Gartner, From Terminology to Ontology, Master of Arts.
  • Owen Glyn-Williams, The Politics of Kants' Aesthetics, Master of Arts.
  • Stephen Gray Jibb, Austerity in America, Doctor of Philosophy.
  • David Janzen, The Right to Politics, Master of Arts.
  • Ian McCausland, Thinking Where I am (k)not, Master of Arts.
  • Jared McGeough, Romantic Anarche: The Philosophical and Literary Anarchism of William Godwin, Doctor of Philosophy.
  • Cristian Melchiorre, The Downward Path, Doctor of Philosophy.
  • Sara Rodrigues, Vaginal Biopolitics, Master of Arts.
  • Laura Rooney, Contemplating Suicide, Master of Arts.
  • William Samson, Rights As Praxis, Master of Arts.
  • Marshall Smith, Touch My Desire, Master of Arts.
  • Hart Walker, Perceiving Cosmopolitanism, Master of Arts.
  • John Vanderheide, Allegory and Apocatastasis, Doctor of Philosophy.

2010

  • Mary Bunch, Outlawry and the Experience of the (Im)possible: Deconstructing Biopolitics, Doctor of Philosophy.
  • Brendon Langer, Literature and its DimensionsMaster of Arts.

2005 to 2009

2009

  • Brock Baines, The Practice of Freedom: Kant and Levinas in Proximity, Master of Arts.
  • Michael Bennett, Sociality and Infinity, Master of Arts.
  • Jason Dockstader, Spinoza's Divine Wisdom, Doctor of Philosophy.
  • Kane Faucher, Oncontology: Plateau 1001, Doctor of Philosophy.
  • Ariel Fuenzalida, Pharmakontologies, Doctor of Philosophy.
  • Laura Krahn, Eat Your Words: The Incorporation of Language and Body, Master of Arts.
  • Alasdair McMillan, Mechanism, Dynamism and Subjectivity, Master of Arts.
  • Laurel Mitchell, Find the Dyke in This Picture, Master of Arts.
  • Catherene Ngoh, Memory and Truth, Master of Arts.
  • Jessica Reilly, Beyond the Spectacle: Rethinking Debord, Master of Arts.
  • Jessica Sherman, Israel and Its Discontents, Master of Arts.

2008

  • Mark Asberg, Go On, Give Up: Cynical Aporias, Doctor of Philosophy.
  • LindaBeth Nichols, Engendering Heteronormativity: A Critical Analysis of Marriage in the United States as a Discursive Site of Cross-Institutional PracticesMaster of Arts.
  • Sheena McKay, Taboo, Laughter, Shame in Psychoanalysis, Master of Arts.
  • Gerald McKinley, Tease of the New Earthdivers: Following Native Narrative in Search of New IdentitiesMaster of Arts.
  • Adam Parker, Effective HistoryMaster of Arts.
  • Christopher Shaw, The Mouse That Roared: Information Theory and the Clinamen, Master of Arts.
  • Adrian Sinclair, Thinking the Digital Corporeally, Master of Arts.
  • Kevin Spencer, Swearing: Force and Language, Master of Arts.

2007

  • Kieran Aarons, Time and Intensity in Deleuze's Difference and Repetition, Master of Arts.
  • Leila El Qawas, Thinking Literature, Master of Arts.
  • Shannon Foskett, Speculative Science: Gilles Deleuze, Chaos & the QuantumMaster of Arts.
  • Corey Katz, The Territorialisation of Responsibility: International Relations, Kant, and the Failure of the Levinasian TurnMaster of Arts.
  • Emily Smart, A Grammar of Grey: A Study of Crowds, Clouds and PronounsMaster of Arts.
  • Joshua Synenko, Uncommon Singularities: Event, Politics and RepresentationMaster of Arts.
  • Elise Thorburn, The Crude and the Abject: A Psychoanalysis of the Oil EconomyMaster of Arts.
  • Sarah Trimble, Monstrous: Action, Life and Citizenship in Science FictionMaster of Arts.
  • Jakub Zdebik, The Extraordinary ContractionDoctor of Philosophy.

2006

  • Timothy August, The Edible PlebisciteMaster of Arts.
  • Matthew Austin, Critical Studies on the Subject, the Genius Figure and Faust, Master of Arts.
  • David Collins, Physical and Artistic Taste in Hegel, Nietzsche and HuysmansMaster of Arts.
  • Averil Farrar, Toward a Critical 'Ontology of the Present'Master of Arts.
  • Petra Hroch, Puppet Masters: Aesthetics and Politics of the Marionnette, Master of Arts.
  • Darren MacDonald, (En)counter Dialogues, Master of Arts.
  • Martin McCallum, Trauma and Metaphor: Lacan, Lacapra, and the 'Poetic Spark', Master of Arts.
  • Andrew Robb, Hegemony and Governmentality, Master of Arts.

2005

  • Dustin Atlas, Kierkegaard's GrotesqueMaster of Arts.
  • Christopher Bundock, Ethics and Writing, Master of Arts.
  • Shea Coulson, Adorno's Aesthetics of CritiqueMaster of Arts.
  • Andrea Dumbrell, A History of Care in the Work of Michel FoucaultMaster of Arts.
  • Jason Dockstader, Gigantomachia: Spinoza vs. Heidegger, Master of Arts.
  • Tara Kachroo, Under the Sign of Transparency, Master of Arts.
  • Joshua Lambier, Justice, Community and the Romantic Political Unconscious, Master of Arts.
  • Dolleen Manning, Anishinabemowin: Language that Gives to the Eternal Impasse, Master of Arts.
  • Christopher Morrison, Post-Heideggereanism and the Co-Ontological Horizon, Master of Arts.
  • Alexei Procyshyn, 'Silence': Towards a Critical Theory, Master of Arts.
  • Kathryn Simpson, Minerva's Owl, Master of Arts.
  • Carolyn Veldstra, Subversive Postmodern Humour in the Era of Its Impossibility, Master of Arts.

2000 to 2004

2004

  • Dana M. Broadbent, Outside of All Places?, Master of Arts.
  • Fiona Coll, Writing Without Authority in the Practice of Everyday Life, Master of Arts.
  • Timothy De Vries, Passage Atlas: Benjamin and the Arcades, Master of Arts.
  • Selena Horrell, "Worlding" Corporeality, "Dis Placing" Globalization, Master of Arts.
  • Lila Knighton, Expressive Marks: Women's Self-Injury and Communication, Master of Arts.
  • Allison Mackey, The Gift That Keeps on Giving: Guilt Language and Reparation, Master of Arts.
  • Maureen Melnyk, Monstrous Expressions: On the "Style" of Tattooed Women, Master of Arts.
  • Jonathan Murphy, Onto-Epistemology after Metaphysics, Master of Arts.
  • Jeremy Proulx, Non-Contemplative Idealism, Master of Arts.

2003

  • Heidi ArsenaultBasic Cable: Notes Toward Digital Ontology, Master of Arts.
  • Darryl BiedronMaurice Merleau-Ponty and Hannah Arendt: The Intersection of Institution, Natality, and Birth, Master of Arts.
  • Elana Commisso, Simulate This! Figurations of Simulacra: The Truth(s) that Belie Representation, Master of Arts.
  • Siobhan Corr, The New World: (Re)mapping the Globe, Master of Arts.
  • Heather Egger, A Glittering Set of Things: Performing Postmodern Subjectivities, Master of Arts.
  • Rachel HancockThe Violence of Aesthetics: Benjamin, Kane, Bolaño, Master of Arts.
  • Timothy Kaposy, The Claim of Errancy: Psychoanalysis and Ideation, Master of Arts.
  • Cristian Melchiorre, Affect and Transference in Theoretical Discourse, Master of Arts.
  • Steven Millar, New Abolitionism, White Abjections, and the Cooption of Antiracism, Master of Arts.
  • Tara Mimnagh, Living Dead Girl: Death, Representation and Repetition, Master of Arts.
  • Andrew PendakisHegel's Unconscious: Analyzing Matter in the Philosophy of Nature, Master of Arts.
  • John ReedLife Beyond Politics: Toward the Notion of the Unpolitical, Master of Arts.

2002

  • Mary Bunch, Mapping the Secrets of Life, Master of Arts.
  • Camilla Eckbo, The Iterable Sublime: Towards a Theory of Communication, Master of Arts.
  • Cynthia Leighton, Mechanics of Thought and Its Relation to the Concept of LifeMaster of Arts.
  • Bernard Lesawich, Towards a Politics of the PosthumanMaster of Arts.
  • Margaret Macpherson, The Politics of ThereismMaster of Arts.
  • Ursula MisztalThe Elemental Coding of Sexual Difference, Master of Arts.
  • Andrea Schwam, Mis entre parenthèses, Master of Arts.
  • Surti Singh, Negativity in Hegel, Master of Arts.
  • John Vanderheide, On Ideology and the Ideological Ritual of AllegoryMaster of Arts.
  • Jakub Zdebik, A Diagram of Allegory: Benjamin, Deleuze and the Space of Language, Master of Arts.

2001

  • Christopher Bradd, On the Fields of Emergence: Towards a Politics of TimeMaster of Arts.
  • Elizabeth Guerrier, The Promise of Justice: Interpreting Mi'kmaw Treaties in an Ever-Changing World, Master of Arts.
  • David Patrick, Chemistry at Work: Drugs, Mysticism, TheoryMaster of Arts.

2000

  • Keith Bresnahan, Nothing, Really: Absence, Negativity, and the Last Word (On Theological Remainders in Post-Heideggerian Thought)Master of Arts.
  • Kevin Davis, Hypnogony: The Sleep of Philosophy-An Art of Sleep, Master of Arts.
  • Jared Hunt, Image (Gesture) Text: Toward an Aesthetic of Gesture in William Hogarth and Walter BenjaminMaster of Arts.
  • Randy Innes, Architecture at Sea: Desire, Rhythm, and the Poetic ImageMaster of Arts.
  • Katherine Kiloh, A girl, being, a sculpture: Eva Hesse, Emmanuel Levinas, and the ethical image, Master of Arts.
  • Zahra McDoom, Unsettled Identity: Rhizomes, Home and Diaspora in the West Indies, Master of Arts.
  • Julie Petruzzellis, Anti-Optant: First Nations Rights, Citizenship, and Radical Democracy, Master of Arts.
  • Heather Snell, Spacing the Event: The Theoretical Performance of Jean Baudrillard, Master of Arts.
  • Graeme Stout, Vienna-Berlin-Frankfurt: The Fragmenation of Subjectivity in Weimar Germany, Master of Arts.

1992 to 1999

1999

  • Mark Asberg, Towards a Kantian Ethics of (In)decisive Obligation, Master of Arts.
  • Brett Buchanan, Who is Nietzche's Philosophy?: Psychological Remainders of Post-Kantian Anthropology, Master of Arts.
  • Neil Gohill, "Spirit" in Schelling's Freedom Essay, Master of Arts.
  • Nathaniel Leach, The Ethical Face and the Tragic Mask: Levinas and the Responsibility of Tragedy, Master of Arts.
  • Kim Olynyk, Suffering, Master of Arts.
  • Stephen Schryer, Discourses of Delinquency: Language and Power in a Canadian Juvenile Court, Master of Arts.
  • Dorian Stuber, Waving, Drowning: Trauma, Representation, Corporeality, Master of Arts.

1998

  • Colin MacPhersonThe Spirit, Grace, and the Soul of ScienceMaster of Arts.
  • Laura Penny, Spent, Master of Arts.
  • Cynthia Thoroski, Re/Collective Narratives: Relational Economy in the Confessional Ethnography of Michel Leiris and Eric Michaels, Master of Arts.

1997

  • R. Scott Bakker, Supernaut: An Assay into the Temporalities of Performance and Representation, Master of Arts.
  • Jennifer Caruso, Towards a Theory of the Threshold: Levinas, Benjamin, ProustMaster of Arts.
  • Jennifer Dyer, The Theory of Repetition: Rothko and KierkegaardMaster of Arts.
  • Maria Lundin, Spiral/Translation/Skin: An Aesthetic History of the Video ImageMaster of Arts.
  • Allyson Lunny, Queerying Homosexuality as Inversion: The Trope of Inversion and the Heterosexualizing ImperativeMaster of Arts.
  • Gary Peters, Martin Heidegger and the Ethics of Deconstruction, Master of Arts.
  • John Sawicki, Towards a Politics of Apathy: Baudrillard, Bartleby and AdornoMaster of Arts.

1996

  • Nandita Biswas, The Anxiety of Conscience: On the Non-Concept of CommunityMaster of Arts.
  • George Conway, Spivak/Bhabha: Re-Reading Foucault, Power- Knowledge and Said's Orientalism, Master of Arts.
  • Amanda Gryzb, Jacques Derrida and the Holocaust: Cinders, Deconstruction and Excessive Responsibility, Master of Arts.
  • Gordon Hughes, Scare Marks: Towards an Ontology of Anti-SemitismMaster of Arts.
  • Christine Tetrault, All that is Sol(i)d: Cultural Capital, Private/Public Intellectuals and the Politics of Pedagogy, Master of Arts.
  • Tyler Tokaryk, Ontoepistomologies and Ethicopolitics within Canadian Multiculturalism, Master of Arts.
  • Richard van Oort, Speech-Act Theory and Generative Anthropology: The Performative Context of Language, Master of Arts.
  • Timothy Wood, The Eleventh Thesis: Strategico-Theoretical Integrations of Jean Beaudrillard & the Situationist International, Master of Arts.

1995

  • Michelle Amlin, Thoroughly Modern Millennium: Articulating Discourses of "Otherness", Master of Arts.
  • James Brouwer, Over & Over: From Derrida to Hegel and Beyond, Master of Arts.
  • Robert Diab, The Crisis of Modernity: Husserl and Heidegger, Metaphysics and Science, Master of Arts.
  • Jonathan Singer, Sign(all)ing the Subject: A Critique of the Baudrillardean SubjectMaster of Arts.
  • Linda Wayne, The War of Position in Canadian Universities, Master of Arts.
  • Karen Wirsig, Pass/Fail? Resistance and University WorkMaster of Arts.

1994

  • Lynn (Adam) Hughey, (De)Composing Derrida's Mourning, Restitution, and the SublimeMaster of Arts.
  • Jean M. Bruce, Feminism and Postcoloniality: The Postmodern Ethnographic Cinema of Trinh T. Minh-ha, Master of Arts.
  • Catherine Hobbs, Postmodern Feminist Parody: An Alternative Cultural Mode for Postmodern FeminismMaster of Arts.
  • Terry Hoople, The SM Ascetic Practice of Resistance: A Critical EthnographyMaster of Arts.
  • Matrix, Sidney (M. Reynolds), (Un)Authorized Disclosures: Lesbian: Theory, Master of Arts.
  • Kym Pruesse, Reader in Crisis: The Performative Tensions of Transgressive Theory: Theoretical Premises of Hybridization in the Work of Georges Bataille, Julia Kristeva, and Jacques Derrida, Master of Arts.
  • Mark Rozahegy, Levinas and the Architecture of AlterityMaster of Arts.

1993

  • Sheila Butler, Psychoanalysis, Agency and Androgyny: The Work of Meret Oppenheim, Master of Arts.
  • Nina Bombier, The Politics of Hermeneutics: Agency, Objectivity and Feminist Theory, Master of Arts.
  • Michael C. K. Ma, The Completely Buried Woodshed: Some Problems of Self-Reflexivity and Historicity in the Interpretation of Postmodern Visual Art Work, Master of Arts.
  • William McConnell, Figuring Paul de Man: (Literary) History and the Indeterminacy of the Reading/Writing Subject(s), Master of Arts.
  • Daniel Mellamphy, Master of Arts.
  • Susan K. Varney, Putting Love into Words: Kristeva's Heretical Ethic of Signs, Master of Arts.

1992

  • D. Grant Stirling, Psychoanalysis and Grammatology: Freud (Lacan) Derrida, Master of Arts.
  • Michelle K. Owen, Simone de Beauvoir and the Radicalization of 'Woman': Identity Politics and Politics and Political Action, Master of Arts.
  • Imre Szeman, Critics, Ironists, and Agents of Love: Richard Rorty's Intellectuals, Master of Arts.