Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
Areas of Interest
- Canadian Literature
Office Hours
Wednesdays 4:10 – 5:00 p.m. and Thursdays 1:30 – 5:00 p.m.
Biography
Vikki Visvis teaches courses in English-Canadian literature. Her research has focused on contemporary Canadian fiction, with particular attention to trauma theory, sound studies, and rhetoric. She has published scholarly articles on Canadian and American fiction by Frances Itani, Elizabeth Hay, David Bergen, Dionne Brand, Joseph Boyden, Michael Ondaatje, Kerri Sakamoto, Eden Robinson, and Toni Morrison. Since 2009, she has also taught courses for the Writing and Rhetoric Program at Innis College. She was the recipient of ASSU's Ranjini (Rini) Ghosh Excellence in Teaching Award in 2012-13 and the Margaret Proctor Award for Writing Instruction in 2022.
Publications
Journal Articles
"Deaf Canada: Disability Discourses and National Constructs in Frances Itani's Deafening." Canadian Literature, vol. 243, 2020, pp. 81-100.
"The Sounds of North: Political Efficacy and the ‘Listening Self' in Elizabeth Hay's Late Nights on Air." Canadian Literature, vol. 225, no. Summer, 2015, pp. 29-45.
"Postcolonial Trauma in David Bergen's The Time in Between." ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 44, no. 2-3, 2013, pp. 169-94.
"Traumatic Forgetting and Spatial Consciousness in Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here." Mosaic, vol. 45, no. 3, 2012, pp. 115-31.
"Culturally Conceptualizing Trauma: The Windigo in Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road." Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en littérature Canadienne vol. 35, no. 1, 2010, pp. 224-43.
- - -. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 393, Gale Cengage, 2016, pp. 146-55.
"Traumatic Representation: The Power and Limitations of Storytelling as ‘Talking Cure' in Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient." ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 40, no. 4, 2009, pp. 89-108.
"Alternatives to the ‘Talking Cure': Black Music as Traumatic Testimony in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon." African American Review, vol. 42, no. 2, 2008, pp. 255-68.
"Trauma Remembered and Forgotten: The Figure of the Hysteric in Kerri Sakamoto's The Electrical Field." Mosaic, vol. 40, no. 3, 2007, pp. 67-83.
"Beyond the ‘Talking Cure': The Practical Joke as Testimony for Inter-Generational Trauma in Eden Robinson's ‘Queen of the North.'" Studies in Canadian Literature/Études En Littérature Canadienne, vol. 29, no. 2, 2004, pp. 37-61.
Edited Entries
"Joseph Boyden." Contemporary Literary Criticism, general editor, Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 393, Gale Cengage, 2016, pp. 123-185.