Kim Verwaayen

headshot

Associate Professor

MA, PhD
Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies
Office: Lawson Hall 3236
Phone: 519-661-2111 ext. 84684
kjverwaa@uwo.ca

Research

Feminist theory, particularly feminist literary theory, and postmodern, poststructuralist, and postcolonial feminisms; women's life-writing; feminist historiography and historiographic metafiction; representation, subjectivities, sexualities; intersubjectivity and (other) theories of relation; Canadian literature, especially contemporary Canadian women's writing; Indigenous women's writing; feminist pedagogy; internationalization; trauma studies

Publications

  • "Ethical Relations, Intertextuality, and the Im/Possibilities of an 'Intersubjective Third' in Margaret Atwood's The Journals of Susanna Moodie." Forthcoming in Contemporary Women's Writing.
  • "Appropriate Appropriations: Reading Responsibility in Joan Crate's Pale as Real Ladies." Forthcoming in Canadian Literature 215 (Winter 2013).
  • "Folding Back the Skin of Text: The Fugitive Pieces of Trauma and Testimony in Anne Michaels." Forthcoming in A/B Studies 27.2 (2012).
  • "Losing/Standing Ground as We Speak: Land, Nation, and Indigenous Women's Testimony in Canada's Acts of Abocide. "Forthcoming in Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien / Journal of Canadian Studies (2012).
  • "Bildung [sic] Words to Push Them Down: Roots, Rhizomes and Metacritical De/Construction in Isabella Valancy Crawford's Malcolm's Katie." Feminist Studies in English Literature 19.3 (2011): 177-209.
  • "The P(r)ose of Madness: Subversion/Containment and/as Cryptomimesis in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper." Creativity, Madness and Civilization. Ed. Richard Pine. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars' Press, 2007. 126-139.
  • "Re-Membering the (W)Holes: Memory, Counter-Memory, and Bergsonian Time in Anne Michaels' Miner's Pond." Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews. 46 (2000): 69-85.
  • "Region/Body: In? Of? And? Or? (Alter/Native) Separatism in the Politics of Nicole Brossard." Essays on Canadian Writing. 61 (1997): 1-16 (Winner of the George Wicken Prize in Canadian Literature.)
  • "Re-examining the Gaze in the Handmaid's Tale." Open Letter: A Canadian Journal of Writing and Theory. 9th ser. 4. (1995): 44-55.

Edited Collections

Co-editor (with Wendy Pearson: UWO, Ernie Blackmore: U of Wollongong, and Renee Bedard: UWO): First Women and the Politics of Looking: Gender, Indigeneity and Representation. Anthology in process. (Book proposal accepted by UBC Press; review process yet to be undertaken.)

Recent Presentations

  • Upcoming: "Against Canada's Cannibal Consumption of Alterity: Writing Wendigo." Theory and Literary Criticism: The Western Fascination with Cannibalism. Northeast Modern Language Association, 21-24 March 2013, Boston, USA.
  • Invited: Losing Ground as We Speak: First Nations Women's Testimony Considered in Canada's Acts of Abocide. Landscapes of Difference Conference: 33rd Annual Conference of the GKS. International Council for Canadian Studies, 24-26 February 2012, Grainau, Germany.
  • Invited: Panelist. Closing Remarks. Landscapes of Difference Conference: 33rd Annual Conference of the GKS. International Council for Canadian Studies, 24-26 February 2012, Grainau, Germany.
  • They forced someone like me to take it through the courts: Speech, Silence/ing, and Surplus Value in Aboriginal Women's Testimony in Canada. The Future of Testimony Conference. 11-12 August, 2011, University of Salford, Manchester, UK.
  • In absentia; paper read by Dr. Wendy Pearson. Trauma, Testimony, and the ?Fugitive Pieces of Memory: Anne Michaels and Ruptured Autobiography. Echoes of Trauma Conference. 3-5 March, 2011, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA.

Selected Awards and Achievements

RESEARCH:

  • Carl F. and Margaret E. Klinck Prize: "most original and outstanding Ph.D. thesis on Canadian Literature in English" U.W.O. (2005)
  • TEACHING:
  • Marilyn Robinson Award for Excellence in Teaching (2009)
  • Bank of Nova Scotia, U.W.O. Alumni Association and University Students' Council Award of Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2004-05)

Personal Note

Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies at Western has been like home to me since I first began teaching here. Working with the active, conscientious, highly engaged students of this discipline (both learning from them and further encouraging their passion for knowledge and critical inquiry) across all levels of our programs, from first-year classes to grad courses, has been the drive and reward of my training as an academic.