WG Pearson

Associate Professor

MA, PhD
Department Chair - Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies
Office: Lawson Hall 3256
Phone: 519-661-2111 ext. 89211
wpearson@uwo.ca

Research

Gender and sexuality studies, including queer theory, feminist theory and critical race theory; Cultural studies; Indigenous film and media; contemporary queer Canadian culture, including Canadian cinema, Canadian popular culture, and Canadian literature; science fiction and sf history, theory and criticism

Selected Publications

Books

Ernie Blackmore, Kerstin Knopf, Wendy Gay Pearson, and Corina Wieser-Cox. “Introduction: Indigenous Filmmaking throughout the World.” Routledge Handbook of Indigenous Film. London: Routledge, Forthcoming in 2024.

Lisa Yaszek, Sonja Fritzsche, Keren Omry and Wendy Gay Pearson, eds. The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction. London: Routledge, 2023. 412pp.

Wendy Gay Pearson and Susan Knabe, eds. Reverse Shots: Indigenous Film and Media in an International Context. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2014. 392pp.

Susan Knabe and Wendy Gay Pearson. Zero Patience. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011. 181pp.

Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon, eds. Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction. Liverpool UP, 2008. Paperback issued in 2010. 285pp.

Selected Journal Articles

“Love and Excellence: Gender in Jo Walton’s Thessaly Trilogy.” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction.”When It Changed” special issue, ed. Paul March-Russell. Winter 2023: 5-18.

“Cruising Canadian SF’s Queer Futurity: Hiromi Goto’s The Kappa Child and Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl.” Bridging the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror, ed. Amy J. Ransom and Dominick Grace. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 185-202. Invited contribution.

“‘The Folk Will Continue’: Daniel Heath Justice’s The Way of Thorn and Thunder.” Aliens in Pop Culture: A Guide to Visitors from Outer Space, ed. Mike Levy and Farah Mendleshohn. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2019. 293-95.

"Detours Homeward: Indigenous Uses of the Road Movie." The Canadian Journal of Native Studies 31.1 (Fall 2011): 139-59.

Book Chapters

“‘Two Parts Broken Heart and One Part Hope’: Violence and Historical Trauma in Skins, Bearwalker and Once Were Warriors.” Routledge Handbook of Indigenous Film, ed. Ernie Blackmore, Kerstin Knopf, Wendy Gay Pearson, and Corina Weiser-Cox. New York: Routledge. Forthcoming.

Susan Knabe and Wendy Gay Pearson. “Recipes for Survival: Muffins for Granny and the Legacy of Residential Schooling.” Routledge Handbook of Indigenous Film, ed. Ernie Blackmore, Kerstin Knopf, Wendy Gay Pearson, and Corina Weiser-Cox. New York: Routledge. Forthcoming.

“Bodies, Right or Wrong: Medicine, Gender Identity, and Science Fiction’s Representation of Transgender Possibility.” Edinburgh Companion to Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities, ed. Gavin Miller, Anna McFarlane, Joan Haran, and Donna McCormack. Edinburgh UP. Invited submission. Forthcoming.

“Barbies and Celebrity Saints: Religion in John Varley’s Eight Worlds Stories.” Submitted to Religion and Outer Space, ed. Eric Michael Mazur and Sarah McFarland Taylor. New York: Routledge, 2023. 114-29. Invited contribution.

“Trans without Trans?: Gender Identity and the Relationship between Transness and Sex Changing in the Works of John Varley.” The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction, ed. Sonja Fritsche, Keren Omry, Wendy Gay Pearson, and Lisa Yaszek. Routledge, 2023. 175-82.

“Introduction” (Subjectivities). The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction, ed. Sonja Fritsche, Keren Omry, Wendy Gay Pearson, and Lisa Yaszek. Routledge, 2023. 119-23.

“Speculative Fiction and Queer Theory.” In Isaac West (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Queer Studies and Communication. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.1214. Invited contribution. Please note that this peer reviewed essay is 17,000 words. Print edition forthcoming.

“Annalee Newitz,” Fifty Key Figures in Cyberpunk Culture, ed.. Anna McFarlane, Graham J. Murphy, and Lars Schmeink. New York: Routledge, 2022. 133-38. Invited contribution.

“Charlie Jane Anders,” Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, ed. Lesley Larkin. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119431732. Invited contribution.

“Cyberpunk and Queer Theory.” The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture, ed. Anna McFarlane, Graham J. Murphy, and Lars Schmeink. New York: Routledge, 2019. 300-308. Invited contribution.

Personal Note

I work on a number of research areas that circulate around questions of identity, citizenship and belonging. My central focus is on sexuality and gender and my approach to these topics is informed by queer and feminist theory, by postmodernist and postcolonial theory, and by emerging intersectional approaches to questions of race, ethnicity and diaspora, as well as by lesbian/bi/gay and trans perspectives. I investigate these issues in a number of texts, predominantly science fiction, Canadian literature and film, and Indigenous film. While some may see these areas as disconnected, I see my interest in them as spiralling out of my central focus. I am also particularly interested in the connections between them examining Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach or Lisa Jackson's short film, Savage, for example, in the context of both science fiction and Indigenous studies; or Hiromi Goto, Nalo Hopkinson and Larissa Lai's works in terms of the relationship between sexuality, gender, race, science fiction, and queer Canadian culture; or Sherman Alexie's film, The Business of Fancydancing, in relation to both queer and Indigenous issues.

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