Dr. Kailin Wright

Associate Professor
404
Nicholson Tower
(902) 867-3362
kwright@stfx.ca

Degrees:

  • Ph.D. (University of Toronto)
  • M.A. (University of Toronto)
  • B.A. Honours (University of Toronto) 

Research Interests and Teaching Interests: Canadian theatre; Canadian literature; social justice; identity; gender; race; Indigenous literatures; political theatre; performance studies; feminism; adaptation; Shakespeare adaptation; film and television adaptation; dystopia; reproductive justice; digital humanities; and children's literature. I am interested in working with Honours and Advanced Major students in any of these areas.

Current Activities: I am actively involved with Theatre Antigonish and I am currently working on a project about the treatment of motherhood and the future in Canadian theatre (funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Development Grant).

Courses taught:

  • ENGL 491 Selected Topics: Canadian Adaptations (2016-2017)
  • ENGL 366 Special Topics in Canadian Literature I: Canadian Drama (2013-2014; 2012-2013)
  • ENGL 338 Canadian Drama
  • ENGL 264 Canadian Literature II:The 20th Century and After
  • ENGL 263 Canadian Literature I: 18th and 19th Centuries
  • ENGL 233 Children's Literature: 1865 to the Present
  • ENGL 111 Literature and Academic Writing I
  • ENGL 100 Introduction to Literature and Critical Writing

 

Honors

2020-2023 Jules Lèger Research Scholar in Humanities and Social Sciences.
2020-2023 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Partnership Grant. Theatre as a Bridge to Empathy and Healing: Learning from Queer Birth Stories. Principal Investigator: Lisa Goldberg. Co-Investigator.
2018-2022 SSHRC Insight Development Grant. "No Baby, No Future: Performing Pregnancy Loss in Canada." Principal Investigator.
2019, 2021  Association of Atlantic Universities (AAU) Teaching Award Nominee.
2017 StFX University Outstanding Teaching Award.
2013-2015 SSHRC Strategic Knowledge Cluster Grant. Editing Modernism in Canada (EMiC), Principal Investigator: Dean Irvine. Co-applicant.

 

Recent Publications

Books: Monograph

Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020.

No Baby, No Future: Performing Motherhood and Loss in Canada. In progress.

 

Books: Critical Edition

The God of Gods: A Canadian Play by Carroll Aikins. University of Ottawa Press, Canadian Literature Collection, 2016.

 

Articles and Book Chapters

“Everyone is Happy!: Performing Adaptation, Irony, and Gender in The Millennial Malcontent.” Voices of a Generation. Ed. Michelle MacArthur. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, in press, 2021.

“Untold Stories of Slavery: Performing Pregnancy and Racial Futurity in Beatrice Chancy.” The Other Side(s) of 150: Untold Stories and Critical Approaches to History, Literature, and Identity in Canada. Ed. Linda Morra and Sarah Henzi. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2021.

“The Death of the Mother and Rural Futurity in Still Stands the House.” Rethinking Motherhood. Ed. Karen Bamford and Sheila Rabillard. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, invited and submitted, 2020.

“Performing This is for You, Anna as #MeToo: Sexual Harassment and Performance-Based Activism on a University Campus.” Canadian Theatre Review, forthcoming, 2019.

“Failed Futurity: Performing Abortion in Merrill Denison’s Marsh Hay.” Canadian Literature 232 (2017): 100-116.

“Dispublics: Popular Yet Political Spectatorship in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiadand Erin Shields’s If We Were Birds.” Theatre Journal 69.2 (2017): 213-34.

“Making Radio, Making History: Merrill Denison’s Alexander Mackenzie.” Past Lives: Performing Canada’s Histories. Ed. Heather Davis-Fisch. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2017. 189-196.

“Bringing the Text to Life: Editing the Modernist Canadian Play The God of Gods.” Making Canada New: Editing, Modernism, and New Media. Ed. Dean Irvine et. al. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017. 189-211.

“‘Who’s There?’: Slings & Arrows’ Audience Dynamics.” Shakespeare and Canada: Remembrance of Ourselves. Ed. Irene Makaryk and Kathryn Prince. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2017. 79-95.

“Performing Cultural Crossroads: The Subject-Making Functions of ‘I am’ Declarations in Daniel David Moses’s Almighty Voice and His Wife.” Theatre Research in Canada/Recherches théâtrales au Canada 35.2 (2014): 80-105.

“Politicizing Difference: (Re)Claiming Canadian Theatre History and ‘Les Sauvages’ in Le Théâtre de Neptune en la Nouvelle-France and Sinking Neptune.” Studies in Canadian Literature 38.1 (2013): 8-28.