Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta’s Department of English and Film Studies, Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and now a resident in Victoria/Saanich (W̱SÁNEĆ), British Columbia.
My academic heart lay, and lies, in teaching and supervision, but I’ve done administrative work too. I’ve been an Associate Dean for Research. I’ve been a judge for the Commonwealth Literature Prize. From 2005-08 I was Director of the U of A’s Canadian Literature Centre/Centre de littérature canadienne. From 2009-12 I served on the Executive Committee of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and as Chair of the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program’s Academic Council. In 20012-14 I acted as President of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English.
My academic research pertains to postcolonial literatures and theory, with specific interests in global englishes and the literature of imperial management. My essays on postcolonialism, its possibilities, and its various discontents, have appeared in the usual discipline-specific journals, and in anthologies and collections. I’ve linked to some of them in the “Publications” post below.
My most recent research work pertains to ways in which mountaineering has been represented in literature, in national histories, and in film and image. The larger goal is to imagine what a postcolonial mountaineering future grounded in environmental sustainability, gender equity and cross-cultural mutuality might have to look like. Several of the essays are co-authored with mountaineering historian Zac Robinson. We have just completed a book for the University of British Columbia Press, entitled Beyond the Ranges: A History of Early Mountaineering in the Canadian Rockies.
Stephen Slemon 