Campus
- Mississauga (UTM)
Fields of Study
- World Literatures in English
Areas of Interest
- Theories of space and environment
- Psychogeography and urban studies
- Territorial and economic dispossession
- Migration and displacement
- Contemporary dystopian and weird fiction
- Postcolonial literature and theory
- Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature
Biography
My work explores space and urban environments in contemporary dystopian fiction, postcolonial literatures and diasporic/migrant literatures, focusing on the interplay between social space and spatial imagination. I examine figures of marginalization in and against dominant political ideologies as they are reflected in the social organization of space and its impact on conceptualizations of identity. Marxist, psychogeographic and heterotopian approaches to space inform my understanding of dystopian, weird and neo-gothic literatures, which are at the center of my current research. My training and long-standing interest in postcolonial studies (primarily of the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean) continue to permeate my approach to spatial theory by directing my attention to questions of social normativity, class structures and mechanisms of marginalization. How we territorialize our ideological claims or contest them spatially is central to my approach to contemporary literature.
Publications
Books
Locating the Destitute: Space and Identity in Caribbean Fiction, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press (New World Studies Series), 2014.
Articles
“Creole Language and Space in Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco,” Nottingham French Studies 56.2 (2017): 139–150.
“‘A Rose by Any Other Name’: Naming and Location in Caribbean Literature,” A Companion to Inter-American Studies, edited by Wilfried Raussert, pp. 160-169, London and New York: Routledge 2017, 160-167.
“The Performance of Communal Intimacy and the Limits of Ownership in the Caribbean Yard Narrative,” The Global South 10.1 (2016): 40-55.
“Outside Within: Natural Environment and Social Place in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca,” Ecocriticism and Geocriticism: Overlapping Territories in Environmental and Spatial Literary Studies, edited by Robert T. Tally and Christine M. Battista, Palgrave Macmillan 2016, 137-153.
“V.S. Naipaul,” The Literary Encyclopedia, 13 October 2014.
"Savors of place: V.S. Naipaul’s Enigma of Departure," Journal of Postcolonial Writing (2014): 1-13. DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2014.959205.
“A House for Mr Biswas.” The Literary Encyclopedia. 11 June 2014.
“On the Threshold: ‘Terrain Vague’ as Living Space in Andrey Tarkovsky’s Stalker.” In Terrain Vague: Interstices at the Edge of the Pale, edited by Patrick Barron and Manuela Mariani, 114-129. Routledge, 2013.
“Buried Stars in Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet.” Special Issue: Locations of Stardom. Ed. Lisa Patti and Stanka Radović. Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture 12.1 (March 2012): n. pag.
“Editors’ Introduction” (with Lisa Patti). Special Issue: Locations of Stardom. Ed. Lisa Patti and Stanka Radović. Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture 12.1 (March 2012): n. pag.
“Evicting The Tenant,” Film International 9.5 (2011): 6-13.
“The Spaces of Postcolonial Literature (Prostori postkolonijalne književnosti).” Matica Crnogorska 48 (Winter 2011): 191-200.
“The Birthplace of Relation: Edouard Glissant’s Poétique de la relation.” Special Issue: Callaloo and the Cultures and Letters of the Black Diaspora. Callaloo 30.2 (2007): 474-81.