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
Pearson, Wendy, Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger, eds. Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction. Liverpool UP, 2008. Issued in paperback, October 2010.
Pearson, Wendy and Susan Knabe. Zero Patience. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011.
Reverse Shots: Indigenous Film and Media in an International Context. Ed. Wendy Gay Pearson and Susan Knabe. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014.
Journal Articles
“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.
"Born to be Bron: Destiny and Destinérrance in Samuel Delany's Triton." Science Fiction Studies 109 (November 2009): 461-77.
"The Pervert's Guide to Geoff Ryman: Desire, Subjectivity and Identity in Lust and Was." Extrapolation 39.2 (Summer 2008): 137-59.
"Introduction: Mundane Science Fiction, Harm and Healing the World" with Susan Knabe. Extrapolation 39.2 (Summer 2008): 1-14.
"'Whatever That Is': Hiromi Goto's Body Politic/s." Studies in Canadian Literature 32.2 (2007): 75-96.
"Post-colonialism/s, Gender/s, Sexualitie/s and the Legacy of The Left Hand of Darkness: Gwyneth Jones' Aleutians Talk Back." Yearbook of English Studies 37.3 (July 2007): 182-96."Not in the Hardware Aisle, Please: Same-Sex Marriage, Anti-Gay Activism and My Fabulous Gay Wedding." Ethnologies 28.2 (December 2006): 185-211.
"Interrogating the Epistemology of the Bedroom: Same-Sex Marriage and Sexual Citizenship in Canada." Discourse: Journal of Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 26.3 (Fall/Winter 2004): 136-165.
Book Chapters
“Memories of Cultural Dismemberment: Nils Gaup and the Re-Membering of Sámi History.” Companion to Nordic Cinema, ed. Mette Hjort and Ursula Lindqvist. Forthcoming from Blackwell, 2015.
'Once upon a Time in a Land Far, Far Away': Representations of the Pre-Colonial World in Atanarjuat, Ofelas and 10 Canoes." Reverse Shots: Indigenous Film and Media in an International Context, ed. Wendy Gay Pearson and Susan Knabe. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014. 3-39.
"Introduction: Globalizing Indigenous Film and Media." Reverse Shots: Indigenous Film and Media in an International Context, ed. Wendy Gay Pearson and Susan Knabe. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014. 143-71.
Susan Knabe and Wendy Gay Pearson. “‘Gambling with History’: Queer Kinship and Cruel Optimism in Octavia Butler’s Kindred.” Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler, ed. Nisi Shawl and Rebecca Holden. Seattle: Aqueduct Press, 2013. 51-78.
Susan Knabe and Wendy Gay Pearson. “‘Bash Back, Baby, Your Life Depends on It!’: Pedagogical Responses to Anti-Gay Violence in John Greyson’s The Making of ‘Monsters.’”The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson, ed. Thomas Waugh, Brenda Longfellow and Scott MacKenzie. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2013. 383-407.
"Ursula K. Le Guin." Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction. Ed. Marc Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts and Sherryl Vint. London: Routledge, 2009. 135-39.
"Queer Theory." Routledge Companion to Science Fiction. Ed. Marc Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts and Sherryl Vint. London: Routledge, 2009. 298-307.
"Towards a Queer Genealogy of Science Fiction." Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction. Ed. Wendy Pearson, Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008. 72-100.
"How Queer Native Narratives Interrogate Colonialist Discourses." Colonialism and Commerce: Economies of Representation, 1790-2000. Ed. Leigh Dale and Helen Gilbert. London: Ashgate, 2007. 169-82.
"(Re)Reading James Tiptree's And I Awoke and Found Me...." Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Justine Larbalestier. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. 2006. 168-189.
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.
