{"id":370,"date":"2009-06-30T15:00:43","date_gmt":"2009-06-30T19:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/?page_id=370"},"modified":"2025-11-10T14:53:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T19:53:29","slug":"birkwood-susan","status":"publish","type":"cu_people","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/people\/birkwood-susan\/","title":{"rendered":"Susan Birkwood"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"mb-6 cu-pageheader cu-component-updated md:mb-12\">\n    <h1 class=\"cu-prose-first-last font-semibold !mt-2 mb-4 md:mb-6 text-3xl md:text-4xl lg:text-5xl lg:leading-[3.5rem] relative after:absolute after:h-px after:bottom-0 pb-5 after:w-10 after:bg-cu-red after:left-px\">\n                    \n             \n                \n            <\/h1>\n\n    \n    <\/header>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Research Interests<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Indigenous and Canadian literatures<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Nineteenth-Century British Literature<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Historical fiction<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Travel literature<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Current Research <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many years ago, my doctoral dissertation study of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century exploration and travel accounts of Canada led to research and teaching interests in Indigenous literatures and Canadian historical fiction, interests which have now expanded to include counter-narratives by Indigenous visual artists. That early study entailed considerations of genre, aesthetic conventions, gender, class, and ethnicity; however, it also paid particular attention to the theory of social development associated with the Scottish Enlightenment that posited a four-stage progression from savagery to civilisation based on modes of subsistence (from hunting and gathering through herding, agriculture, and commerce). This theory, one that informed European texts in the areas of economics, history, early ethnography, and literature, among others, was the filter through which British explorers and travellers observed North America, and its lexicon shaped not only literary representations of Indigenous peoples and of the settler-invader society but government policy as well. We live with its legacy still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Initially intrigued by the ways in which some contemporary Canadian writers of historical fiction were engaging with the colonial past, I began to look at issues of genre as well as the implications of the relationship between past and present in texts that Herb Wyile characterised as \u201cspeculative fictions.\u201d Since then, I have brought the work of commentators such as Wyile and Jerome de Groot to bear upon these contemporary texts while considering earlier discussions of the historical novel and its connections to the Bildungsroman in the works of critics such as Mikhail Bakhtin and Georg Luk\u00e1cs. But if the historical novel is a \u201cform of commentary,\u201d \u201ca way to build the imagined community of a nation,\u201d and \/ or, \u201ca journey towards . . . redemption . . . and revelation\u201d (de Groot), what is the relationship of the fiction that brings particular regions, peoples, and moments to imaginative expression to the larger Indigenous and Canadian realities\u2014especially given the history of government policies and practices steeped in \u201cshame and prejudice\u201d to quote the title of a recent exhibition by Kent Monkman?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Honours and Awards<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Professional Achievement Award 2017<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Professional Achievement Award 2010<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>FASS Teaching Award 2009<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Books<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Knight, Ann Cuthbert. <em>A Year in Canada<\/em> (1816). Ed. Susan Birkwood. London: Canadian Poetry Press, 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 id=\"recent-publications\" class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Recent Publications<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernhumanitiesreview.com\/fall-73-3-spectral-cities\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Shifting the Narrative of Winnipeg\u2019s North End in Katherena Vermette\u2019s <em>The Break<\/em>.<\/a>\u201d <em>Western Humanities Review<\/em>. 73.3 (Fall 2019), pp. 17-49.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.degruyterbrill.com\/document\/doi\/10.51644\/9781771120159-007\/html?licenseType=restricted&amp;srsltid=AfmBOoo5gd189AZ6PZTGPUAcV77ppm4WMVWQmK0zLRCBb2o5Swt9bqNA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Is It Still a Cinch? The Transformational Properties of Objects in Guy Vanderhaeghe\u2019s <em>The Last Crossing.<\/em><\/a><em>\u201d<\/em> <em>Material Cultures in Canada<\/em>. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2015. 107-27.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/septentrio.uit.no\/index.php\/nordlit\/article\/view\/1161\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">From \u2018<strong>naked country\u2019 to <\/strong>\u2018sheltering ice\u2019: Rudy Wiebe\u2019s revisionist treatment of John Franklin\u2019s first arctic narrative.<\/a>\u201d <em>Nordlit<\/em> 23 (Spring 2008): 25-38.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAnna Brownell Murphy Jameson.\u201d <em>The Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopaedia<\/em>. Vol. 2. London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003. 637-39.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cTrue or False: Anna Jameson on the position of women in European and Anishinaubae society.\u201d <em>Nineteenth-Century Feminisms<\/em> 2 (Spring 2000): 32-47.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 id=\"recent-presentations\" class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Recent Presentations<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>June 2019.&nbsp;\u201c[T]he \/ syllabled fur\u201d; or, Portrait of the poet as \u201cmutt.\u201d ACQL \/ ALCQ. Congress. Vancouver, BC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>November 2018.&nbsp;\u201cShifting the Narrative of Winnipeg\u2019s North End in Katherena Vermette\u2019s <em>The Break<\/em>.\u201d Spectral Cities Conference. Calgary Institute for the Humanities. Calgary, AB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>May 2017. \u201cA Youth Detained and the Past Arrested in Katherena Vermette\u2019s <em>The Break<\/em>.\u201d ACQL Annual Conference at Congress. Ryerson University. Toronto, ON.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>May 2016. \u201cThe Legacies of Armed and Cultural Conflict in Guy Vanderhaeghe\u2019s <em>The Last Crossing.<\/em>\u201d ACCUTE at Congress. University of Calgary. Calgary, AB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>August 2014. \u201cThe \u2018Wretched Animals,\u2019 the \u2018Humble Beasts\u2019: Timothy Findley\u2019s <em>The Wars<\/em> and Joseph Boyden\u2019s <em>Three Day Road<\/em>\u201d Canadian Literature of World War I. Ottawa, ON.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>July 2011. \u201c[N]ew ideas of the Indian character suggest themselves\u201d: Anna Jameson as explorer and cultural observer in <em>Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada<\/em> (1838). <em>Travel in the Nineteenth Century: Narratives,&nbsp;Histories and Collections<\/em>. University of Lincoln, Lincoln, U. K.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>May 2011. \u201cIs it still a cinch? The circulation of clothing and accessories across geographical and social boundaries in Guy Vanderhaeghe\u2019s <em>The Last Crossing<\/em>.\u201d <em>Canadian Literature Symposium: Material Cultures.<\/em> University of Ottawa. Ottawa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>February 2008. \u201cFrom \u2018naked country\u2019 to \u2018sheltering ice\u2019: Rudy Wiebe\u2019s revisionist treatment of John Franklin\u2019s first arctic narrative.\u201d <em>Arctic Discourses<\/em>. University of Troms\u00f8, Norway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27679,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cu_people_first_name":"Susan","cu_people_last_name":"Birkwood","cu_people_initials":"SB","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_people_type":[22],"cu_people_expertise":[],"class_list":["post-370","cu_people","type-cu_people","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_people_type-professors"],"acf":{"cu_people_job_title":"Associate Professor, Teaching Stream","cu_people_degree":"B.A. Honours, M.A., Ph.D. (University of Western Ontario)","cu_building":"","cu_people_office_num":"","cu_people_pronoun":"","cu_people_designation":"","cu_people_email":"susan.birkwood@carleton.ca","cu_people_phone":"","cu_people_phone_ext":"","cu_people_linkedin":"","cu_people_bluesky":"","cu_people_twitter":"","cu_people_instagram":"","cu_people_facebook":"","cu_people_website":"","cu_people_orcid":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_people"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27584,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/370\/revisions\/27584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_people_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people_type?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"cu_people_expertise","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people_expertise?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}