Student Profiles

Melissa Brennan is a doctoral candidate at Wilfrid Laurier University in the English and Films Studies Program, researching self-reflexivity and social media in new media storytelling and visual style. She hails from New Brunswick, where she completed her Hon Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in English from the University of New Brunswick. Her Master’s thesis analyzed contemporary Young Adult Dystopian science-fiction and Gothic fairy tales in relation to modern constructions of adolescence, entitled: “Without Killing the Child: The Gothic Fairy Tales of Adolescence Depicted in The Hunger Games and Divergent Trilogies.”

Melissa's current dissertation research project involves analyzing transmedia narratives and the use of social media as a self-reflexivity narrative strategy that produces active spectatorship and participation through a study of their fandoms. Her dissertation aims to establish self-reflexive transmedia narratives as an emergent visual genre defined by a set of stable conventions that generate active spectatorship and media participation from its fans.

Dissertation Title (tentative): “Excursions Across the Divide: Self-Reflexive Transmedia Storytelling and Participatory Fandom in Contemporary Media Studies.”

Supervisor: Sandra Annett

Roxanne completed her BA at York University with a double major in dance and creative writing.  She then went on to complete her MA at Wilfrid Laurier University in their English and Film program.  While completing her MA, Roxanne rediscovered her passion and interest in dance film by using mainstream psycho-feminist film theory to critically analyse dance films, challenging traditional University dance pedagogy.  Roxanne’s interdisciplinary pursuits have led her to pursue a PHD at Wilfrid Laurier University, where she will complete a dissertation that will analyse movement as a narrative strategy in dance films.  She will analyse films that challenge heteronormativity and traditional gender representations because they use movement as a narrative strategy in constructing subversive stories and representations.  Gender representation is a pertinent area of dance studies because dance and sexuality are metonymically linked, dance provides a stage in which the politics of sexuality are acted out through the body’s representation of femininity and/or masculinity.  Roxanne will engage with the question of whether dance films challenge or enforce hegemonic gender representations and how dance can continue its development and become a more diverse and inclusive art form.

Dissertation Title (tentative): Communicative Bodies: A Narrative Analysis of Subversive Sexual and Gender Representation in Dance Film.

Supervisor: Andrea Austin

Deborah Hernandez is a first year PhD student whose doctoral research will centre marginalized forms of knowledge to investigate intersections of gender, class, and education in the practice, transmission, and suppression of cultural teachings from the Philippines and their various expressions. Her project aims to focus on the meaningfulness of these teachings for diasporic communities, and how they are experienced even as practitioners face marginalization within dominant cultural frameworks and narratives. As a member of the Filipino diaspora, she will also examine how physical displacement figures into the dis/continuation of these beliefs and ways of accessing these cultural teachings.

Deborah completed her Bachelor of Journalism at Ryerson University and her Master of Arts in English at McMaster University, where her research focused on transnational Asian literatures and cultures through the lenses of intersectionality and cultural studies.

Advisor: Dr. Eleanor Ty

David Jackson is a third year PhD candidate whose research interests concern the cinematic sublime, early cinema, cinemas of the global south and popular genres, especially science fiction and horror. He completed a BA at the University of Manitoba and an MA in Film Studies at Carleton University. His master’s thesis is The Atomic Infinite: Aesthetics of the Sublime in 1950s Science Fiction Film. One chapter of this thesis became the article “Landscape and Science-Fiction Film”, published in Science Fiction Studies. He’s authoring another article on genre and ecology, this time concerning Alex Garland’s work that is forthcoming in Quarterly Review of Film and Video. His dissertation explores the history of the cinematic sublime and its relationship with the Anthropocene in speculative fiction film.

Supervisor: Katherine Spring

Allison Koopman is a first-year Ph.D. whose research will focus on the depiction of sexual violence onscreen with the aim of understanding the narrative importance and cohesion of these graphic scenes. Her project is a cross-cultural study of Hollywood, French and Asian cinema (focusing more narrowly on Hong Kong and South Korean cinema) that takes into account each cinema's unique history and styles. To understand how and why filmmakers choose to depict graphic assaults onscreen, research into societal norms, rape culture and rape myths, and gender issues is a necessity. As of now, she is looking at films with rape narratives through the lens of temporal shifts, such as flashbacks. One of her major research questions is: do flashbacks that “reveal” the truth and circumstance of the sexual violence invite empathy for viewers, or does the lead-up to the “truth” invite morbid curiosity and audience participation?

Allison Koopman received both a BFA and an MFA in Screenwriting from York University. Her past projects have focused on intersectional feminism, LGBTQ+ representation, and violence onscreen. Her MFA thesis was an original eight-episode series that explored religious trauma, sexual abuse, and sapphic representation. She is using her unique knowledge of filmic narrative and plot conventions to explore issues of rape narrative and rape culture in film.

Advisor: Jing Jing Chang

Will Kummer completed his BA in English with a Major in Writing, Rhetoric and Discourse Studies at Brock University, during which time it was not unlikely to discover him haunting the hallways of Mackenzie Chown and basking in the beauty of the Niagara escarpment. Following this, he completed his MA in English and Film at Wilfrid Laurier University, where he remains to this day. This degree culminated in a Major Research Paper on Ali Smith’s Autumn, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Brexit and the French Revolution, written under the guidance and with recourse to the wisdom of Dr. Lynn Shakinovsky.

Will’s current interests include but are not limited to: nationalism, xenophobia, mediated selves, life writing, contemporary film, music, poetry, literary journalism, creative nonfiction, and seeking the elusive topic that combines each of these things.

Advisor: Dr. Eleanor Ty

Daniel T. Moore completed his BA with honors in History and English at McMaster University in Hamilton, followed by an MA in Literature and Critical Theory at the same institution. His Master’s thesis focused on Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, and offered a critical analysis of the age-oriented power dynamics in that trilogy. That thesis was entitled "Rewriting the Fall: Lyra Belacqua’s Resistance to Adult Ideology in His Dark Materials.” Daniel spent several years teaching ESL abroad: two years teaching elementary and high school students, and one year lecturing at Siyuan University in Xi’an China. He has officially taught every age range from kindergarten all the way through to the second year of university. Daniel is currently a first year PhD student at Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo campus and will be pursuing further ESL teaching qualifications during his studies. In his time at Wilfrid Laurier he will focus on the application of queer theory to the unique power dynamics of adult-child relationships, and the importance of adolescence as a liminal space in various works of YA literature.

Supervisor: Katherine Bell

Heather Olaveson holds Master's degrees in Music Composition (UVic) and English (WLU), and is currently a SSHRC-funded doctoral candidate (ABD) in English specializing in Canadian literature. Her research interests include Indigenous literature, historiography, postmodernism, gender studies, and theories of identity formation and subjectivity. She currently lives in Kitchener and does part-time work as a piano teacher and music director. You can also find her at Writing Services, where she is a graduate writing tutor.

Dissertation Title (tentative): Remediating History: Gender and Historiography in Canadian Postmodern Biographical Poetry

Supervisor: Tanis MacDonald

Mazin Saffou completed his MA in Media Studies as well as BAs in Film Studies and in English (with a Concentration in Creative Writing) at the University of Regina. His MA thesis, “American Dreams: Portrayals of Race, Class, and 21st Century Capitalism in David Simon’s and Ed Burns’ The Wire” focused on how detrimental neoliberal ideological frameworks of late capitalism are internalized by the characters in the critically acclaimed television series, The Wire—from various spheres of urban life, from the police to the justice system to the drug trade—leading to instances of tragedy and severe institutional and social dysfunction in the pursuit of the ever increasingly elusive American Dream. Mazin is a second year PhD student researching contemporary dystopian fiction in film, television, and literature as a response to current ecological crises.

Supervisor: Andrea Austin

Denise (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in the department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. She thinks, writes, and rambles on about literature for young readers as a realm in which to imagine and build meaningful and sustainable relationships with ourselves, others, and the more-than-human world. Her dissertation examines the Queer(ing) potentials of polyphonic narration techniques in 21^st Century YA texts such as The Twelve Days of Dash & Lilly, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, The Silence Between Us and The Tiger Flu to name a few.

Denise received her Combined Honors Bachelor of Arts in English and Women’s and Gender Studies with a minor in Youth and Children’s Texts and Contexts from Laurier in 2018. From 2018-2019, Denise completed her Master of Arts degree at Laurier, culminating in her major research project entitled “Since When is the Person You Want to Screw the Only Person You Get to Love?’: Exploring the Queer Potentiality of Friendship, Intimacy and Love in Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and Will Grayson, Will Grayson. 

Denise is grateful to have the support of her supervisor, Dr. Katherine Bell, as well as the support of a Canadian Graduate Scholarship for her project.  As Denise works through the PhD process, she strives to live by the words of Miss Frizzle: Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!

Dissertation Title [tentative]: Diverse Voices and Queer Trajectories: Exploring the Potentialities of Polyphony in 21^st Century Young Adult Literature.

Supervisor: Katherine Bell

Using diaspora studies, affect theory (specifically, Sara Ahmed’s theory of affective objects and mobilizing unhappiness), Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak’s subaltern, Dina Georgis’s politics of storytelling, and debates surrounding Canadian multiculturalism as her theoretical framework, Sanchari Sur’s research highlights how South Asian Canadian women writers use deterritorializing writing practices in order to subvert the current global vision of Canadian multiculturalism as a picture of happiness. Her project also intersects with other areas of research such as disability theory and trans theory. She is a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow in fiction, and her work has been published in Toronto Book Award-shortlisted The Unpublished City (Toronto: Book*hug, 2017), Prism International, Arc Poetry Magazine, Room, and elsewhere. She is also the curator/cofounder of Balderdash Reading Series (est. Jan 2017).

Dissertation title: (Un)Happy Frictions: Mobilising (Un)Happiness through Subaltern Bodies in South Asian Canadian Women’s Literature

Supervisor: Mariam Pirbhai

Alek is a first year PhD student researching the intersections between crime fiction narratives and the limited series in the age of internet streaming. He is particularly interested in how the network-broadcast model that dominated Western television has been superseded by internet streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon over the last decade, in turn granting crime narratives and the television medium several affordances not previously available; these affordances include expanded runtimes, narrative pacing, internet accessibility, altered modes of advertising or lack thereof, and increasingly explicit content. Historically intertwined with the genre, issues of gender, race, class, social justice, and criminality as they surface in new crime narratives of last decade will also be explored. Alek will also investigate how the streamed limited series grapples with notions of seriality in the absence of traditional television ephemera, and explore how internet streaming platforms and their original programming have influenced changes in television production, aesthetics, and narrative form within the realm of crime fiction.

Alek completed his BA at Nipissing University in English Studies, and went on to complete his MA at Wilfrid Laurier University in English and Film Studies. He also completed a practicum as part of the MA with the Grand River Film Festival, aiding in their hybrid delivery for 2022 and producing a digitized archive of pamphlets, memorabilia, posters, and festival guides for future online exhibition.

Advisor: Dr. Philippa Gates

Anton Bergstrom, “Holy Estrangement: The Poetics of Estrangement in John Donne's Divine Poems and Sermons.” Supervisor: Dr. Anne Russell. Successfully defended: January 2020.

Grace McCarthy, “'Not Shap'd For Sportive Tricks': Representations of Disability in Film and Digital Broadcast Cinema Adaptations of Early Modern Drama.” Supervisor: Dr. Russell Kilbourn. Successfully defended: January 2020.

Michael McCleary, “Never Seen Before-Again: Aesthetic Adaptation and Transmedia Storytelling Networks in the Age of Digital Cinema.” Supervisor: Dr. Russell Kilbourn. Successfully defended: October 2018.

Sarah Rangaratnam, “Girls’ Voices of the Eighteenth Century: The Development of a Genre for Young Female Readers, 1749-1800.” Supervisor: Dr. Eleanor Ty. Successfully defended: September 2018.

Murrielle Michaud, "'A Meruelous Thing!': Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina the Astonishing, and Performative Self-Abjection in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 114." Supervisor: Dr. Robin Waugh. Recipient of the Award for Outstanding Work at the Graduate Level. Successfully defended: January 2018.

Victoria Kennedy, "Narrative Pleasures and Feminist Politics: Popular Women’s Historical Fiction, 1990-2015." Supervisor: Dr. Andrea Austin. Successfully defended: March 2017.

Anders Bergstrom, "In Search of Lost Selves: Memory and Subjectivity in Transnational Art Cinema." Supervisor: Dr. Russell Kilbourn. Successfully defended: December 2016.

Susan Hroncek, "Volatile Compositions: Chemistry and its Occult History in Victorian Speculative Fiction."  Supervisor: Dr. Lynn Shakinovsky.  Successfully defended: August 2016.

Katherine Quanz, "The Struggle to be Heard: Toronto's Postproduction Sound Industry, 1968 to 2005."  Supervisor: Dr. Katherine Spring. Successfully defended: July 2016.

J. Coplen Rose, "Laughing for a Change: Dramatic Criticism of National Crises in Second Interregnum South Africa." Supervisor: Dr. Mariam Pirbhai. Successfully defended: December 2015.

Justin Shaw, "'Falling Men' in Post 9/11 American Fiction." Supervisor: Dr. Tamas Dobozy. Successfully defended: November 2014.

Ada Sharpe, “Polish or Work? Four Women Novelists and the Professionalization of Accomplishment, 1796-1814.” Supervisor: Dr. Eleanor Ty. Successfully defended: August 2014. Recipient of Gold Medal for Academic Excellence, Faculty of Arts, Fall 2014 Convocation. SSHRC Postdoctoral grant, September 2014, Harvard University: “The Miniature Domain: Place-making and the Amateur Arts in British Women’s Writing, 1790-1825.”  Supervisor: Dr. Deirdre Lynch.

Patrick-Laurent Faubert, "'Perfect Picture Material': History, Adaptation, and the Formation of a Studio Identity at Warner Bros., 1934-1941." Supervisor: Dr. Paul Tiessen. Successfully defended: September 2013. Recipient of Gold Medal for Academic Excellence, Faculty of Arts, and Governor General's Award, Fall 2013 Convocation.

Elizabeth Clarke, “War and the Sexes: Gender and American Film, 1898-1927.” Supervisor: Dr. Philippa Gates. Successfully defended: August 2013. SSHRC Postdoctoral grant, September 2013, University of California at Santa Cruz: “Writing Women in Film History: Women Screenwriters of the Silent Era.” Supervisor: Dr. Shelley Stamp.

Sylvia Terzian, “Arab Pluralities and Transnationality: The ‘Crisis of Diasporic Consciousness’ in Arab American and Arab Canadian Fiction.” Supervisor: Dr. Mariam Pirbhai. Successfully defended: December 2012.

Jenny Wills, “Aporetic Origins: North American Narratives of Transnational, Transracial Asian Adoption.” Supervisor: Dr. Eleanor Ty. Successfully defended: August 2012.

Stefan Sereda, “Cinema in Scare Quotes: Postmodern Aesthetics and Economics in the American Art Cinema.” Supervisor: Dr. Russell Kilbourn. Successfully defended: January 2012. Recipient of Gold Medal for Academic Excellence, Faculty of Arts, Spring 2012 Convocation.

Miriam Raethel, “Witnessing From a Distance: Postwar Literary Representations of the Holocaust.” Supervisor: Dr. Lynn Shakinovsky. Successfully defended: August 2010.

Lisa Funnell, “The Warrior Women of Transnational Cinema: Gender and Race in Hollywood and Hong Kong Action Films.” Supervisor: Dr. Philippa Gates. Successfully defended: April 2010. Recipient of Gold Medal for Academic Excellence, Faculty of Arts, Spring 2010 Convocation.

Michael Ackerman, “Phantoms of Old Forms: The Gothic Mode in the Dramatic Verse of Tennyson and Browning.” Supervisor: Dr. Michael Moore. Successfully defended: August 2009.

Lisa Butler, “Mis-Education and the Crisis in Male Subjectivity: William Godwin’s Middle Novels, 1799-1817.” Supervisor: Dr. Eleanor Ty. Successfully defended: August 2008.