Matt MacDonald

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Foucault, Power, and the Heterotopia; Fantasy, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Graphic Literature; Versimetrical Poetics; Film and Television; Anthropology (Sociocultural, Biological, Archæological, and Linguistic) and the Anthropocene; Science and Technology; Colonialism and Decolonization; How To Work My Cell Phone Camera

CURRENT RESEARCH:
My research focuses on the purposes and functions of physically impossible heterotopias in fiction. In Foucaut’s writings, heterotopias are places where the nature of power relations between individuals is rearranged and transformed: the hospital, for example, separates people into categories like doctor, patient, nurse, and visitor, with different roles having different rights and responsibilities, especially in relation to other roles. Heterotopias can also exist in media like books and film, so reading a story or watching a movie that takes place in a hospital produces the same relations as the real place. But what about heterotopias that can’t exist in our current world? The flying castle, the colony ship, the pocket dimension, the dream and the nightmare? These places are heterotopias, too, but because they can’t exist in our present, their function is adapted or invented. What are they doing with power relations in the text that can’t be done by physical sites in the real world? How can this knowledge help us analyze the appearance of these strange places in our literature? And who is the mysterious and hungry Neanderthal living in the west wing of the Caf? Stay tuned to find out!

TEACHING EXPERIENCE:
– University of Winnipeg, RHET-1102: Academic Writing for the Social Sciences, Fall 2023
– Brandon University, ENGL 30:145: Contemporary Literature, Winter 2024 (and don’t mess around with AI!!! ಠ_ಠ )