Dr. Jennifer Chambers

Jennifer Chambers is a Professor of Literary Studies and Creative Writing in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Alberta, with a focus on Canadian literature. Her M.A. is in English and Creative Writing from the University of Windsor, where she worked with great Canadian writer Alistair MacLeod, and wrote a collection of short stories, All the Rage. As an undergraduate at Western University, she won the Lillian Kroll Convocation Prize for Creative Writing for her collection of short stories, Tales from Ferris Ave. She researches, writes and publishes academic articles mainly on early Canadian women writers, gender, sexuality and cultural history. She is working on a manuscript on two early Canadian women poets, the history of sexuality in Canada, and their dialogue of love in poems. She has an ongoing writing practice creating poems, short stories, and currently, is working on a novel. In teaching literature and creative writing, she thinks there is a lot to learn about critical interpretation, literary effect, and the mechanics and melodiousness of writing good dialogue.

Selected Published Works

• Diversity and Change in Early Canadian Women’s Writing, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.
• “Wetherald, Ethelwyn.” The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women Writers. Ed. Lesa Scholl. Palgrave MacMillan, Cham. 2020. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-030-02721-6_8-1

• Chapter 11: “Voices of Diversity in Canadian Literature.” ReThinking Who We Are: Critical Reflections on Human Diversity in Canada. Eds. Jessica Pulis and Paul Angelini. Fernwood Press: 2019. 287-316.

• “Who’s In and Who’s Out: Recovering Minor Authors and the Pesky Question of Critical Evaluation.” Home-Ground, Foreign Territory: Essays on Early Canadian Writing. ReAppraisals Series. Ottawa: U of Ottawa Press, 2014.
• “In All Proper Fear and Humility”: Susan Frances Harrison’s Presentation of Self, Narration, and Canadian in Crowded Out! And Other Sketches.” Crowded Out! And Other Sketches. Ed. Tracy Ware. Canadian Critical Edition Series. Ottawa: Tecumseh Press, 2010. 258-71.
• “You Woman-Hearted, Poet-Brained Wonder Worker!”: The Poetic Dialogue of Love between Ethelwyn Wetherald and Helena Coleman.” Canadian Poetry special issue “Queer Desire.” 57 (Fall/Winter 2005): 65-85.
• “Bad Men Who Love Jesus.” (poem) The New Quarterly 86 (Spring 2003): 199."