Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
Areas of Interest
- African American Literature
- American Literature
- Psychoanalytic Theory
- Affect Theory
Biography
Jasleen Singh (she/her) is a 6th-year PhD Candidate who graduated with Combined Honours and High Distinction in Journalism and English from Carleton University, and received her MSc by Research in Postcolonial literature from the University of Edinburgh. Her dissertation seeks to identify the language and categories that will allow us to more fully understand the way humour functions in African American literature and culture, and more broadly in American literature. Jasleen’s research focuses on a range of Black American writers (Paul Beatty, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, among others) and Black stand-up comedians including Richard Pryor and Jackie "Moms" Mabley. In additional to receiving funding from SSHRC and OGS, she is also the recipient of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Top Doctoral Fellowship (FAST) at the University of Toronto. She was also sponsored by the Department of English to participate in the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University in 2023.
Selected Conference Presentations
“‘One Thing that Kinda Aggravates Me’: Irritation and Seething Anger in the Black Feminist Comedy of Jackie ‘Moms’ Mabley,” American Literature Association, May 2023
“Never Tell the Same Joke Twice: Reliving the Humor of Corrothers’s The Black Cat Club through Beatty’s Tuff,” American Comparative Literature Association, Mar. 2023
“Activating Critical Race and Social Justice Pedagogies in the Classroom,” Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, June 2022
“‘He Who Policed It Released It:’ Gimmicky Humour in Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle,” Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English, May 2022
“Please Hold for the Next Available Persona: Satirizing the ‘White Voice’ in Sorry to Bother You,” Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, Apr. 2022
Selected Panels Organized & Chaired
“Tall Tales and Urban Legends in American Literature,” Canadian Association for American Studies, Sept. 2023
“Failure in/and American Literature,” American Literature Association, May 2023
“The Present is the Future in Motion: Afropresentism as Verb and Aesthetic,” Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (at Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences), May 2023
“Serious Laughter: African American and African Humor,” Northeast Modern Language Association, Mar. 2023