Janice Schroeder

My research interests cover a wide range of topics, including nineteenth-century print and oral media, voice studies, Victorian women’s and feminist writing, and contemporary adoption narratives. Together with my colleague Barbara Leckie, I recently published a selected edition of Henry Mayhew’s mid-nineteenth century survey of urban poverty, London Labour and the London Poor for Broadview Press. I am the author of two recent articles on emotional labour in Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South, and am working on a book on transnational adoption narratives.

My teaching is closely connected to my research. I am currently leading a fourth-year seminar on adoption narratives, where we study texts from orphan fairy tales to the 60s Scoop to adoptee blogs. In connection with my research on Mayhew, I have taught graduate seminars on scholarly editing, as well as seminars on prison writing, women and labour, the Victorian schoolroom, nineteenth-century vocal cultures, and the Victorian periodical press.

I am co-supervising a dissertation on remediation and London Labour and the London Poor, and I would be happy to receive proposals for doctoral research on most aspects of Victorian literature and cultural, critical voice studies, and/or adoption narratives. Between 2020 and 2023, I am serving as Chair of the Department of English at Carleton.

Selected Recent and Forthcoming Publications

Co-editor, with Barbara Leckie. London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew. Broadview 2020.

“‘A Thousand Petty Troubles’: Margaret Hale’s Emotional Labour in North and South” in Women’s Writing 27 (2020).

“Clearing the Air: Emotional Labour and Environmental Denial in North and South” in Nineteenth Century Gender Studies (Winter 2020).

“Working with Mayhew: Collaboration and Historical Empathy in Precarious Times.” With Barbara Leckie and Jenna Herdman. Victorian Culture and Experiential Learning. Ed. Kevin Morrison. Palgrave. Forthcoming.

“Inside Voice: Talk, Silence, and Resistance in the Victorian Prison.” Victorian Review (Spring 2020).

“Detachment Theory: History, Story, and Language in Maurice Mierau’s Detachment: An Adoption Memoir.” Journal of Mennonite Studies 36 (2018).

Conferences

North American Victorian Studies Association, Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies, Northeast Victorian Studies Association, Mennonite/s Writing, ACCUTE.

Graduate Supervisions

Doctoral co-supervisor for “The Remediated Mayhew” by Jenna Herdman. In progress.