Abby Lacelle

PhD Candidate
abby.lacelle@mail.utoronto.ca

Campus

  • Downtown Toronto (St. George)

Fields of Study

  • American Literature
  • Critical Race Studies
  • Gender and Sexuality Studies
  • Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Literature

Areas of Interest

  • Reproductive Justice
  • Affect Theory

Biography

I am a second year PhD student whose research investigates feminist literature, reproductive justice, and specifically the affective and political resonances of reproductive loss in contemporary North American texts. I hold a BA in English with a minor in Women and Gender Studies from Brock University and a MA in English with a collaborative specialization with the Women and Gender Studies Institute from the University of Toronto.

List of Publications

  • Lacelle, Abby. Book Review: “Home is… Figuring Home in Literature of the Anglophone Transnational,” The English Languages: History, Diaspora, Cultures, edited by Carol Percy and Ruth Maddeaux, vol. 8, December 2022.
  • Forthcoming: ---. "I Libel Dick: Privacy and Libel, the Self, and Feminist Genres," De Gruyter: Law and Literature.

Conference Papers

  • Lacelle, Abby. “My daughter could be anyone’: Pregnancy-Loss, Mourning, and Materiality in Daniel Raeburn’s ‘Vessels,’” IAMAS: Mothering and Motherhood on the Home/Front, March 2023. 
  • Lacelle, Abby. “[All Wailing]: Safety and Collective Grieving in Ari Aster’s Midsommar,” FOOT31: We Live Together, February 2023.
  • Lacelle, Abby. “‘I have witnessed’: The Self, the Other, and a Praxis of Witnessing in Karen Connelly’s Travel Memoir, Burmese Lessons,” Destinations and Departures, Dalhousie, 2022.
  • Lacelle, Abby, “‘Waver when we feel sure’: Uncertainty as Feminist Praxis,” FOOT30: Hopeful Positions, or Playing in Precarity, Toronto, 2022.
  • Lacelle, Abby. Pregnancy-Loss, Mourning, and Materiality in Daniel Raeburn’s ‘Vessels,’” NeMLA, March 2024.
  • Lacelle, Abby. “[All Wailing]: Safety and Collective Grieving in Ari Aster’s Midsommar,” FOOT31: We Live Together, February 2023.