Here is a selection of alumni who completed their MA thesis at Acadia University. The list includes people we were able to contact. If you wish to add your name and accomplishments to the list, please contact the Coordinator of the graduate program at [email protected]
Benjamin Barootes (2007) holds a PhD from McGill (2015). He held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Medieval Studies and the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies (Toronto), and was a Harrison McCain Visiting Fellow at Acadia University (2018-19). Recent publications include “‘In fourme of speche is chaunge’: Final –e in Troilus and Criseyde II.22–28.” The Chaucer Review 53.1 (2018): 102–11. His MA thesis, Fallen Away: Post-lapsarianism in Tolkien’s Saga of Jewels and Rings, was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal.
Rebecca Caissie (2016) is currently a Contract Instructor and a PhD Candidate at the University of New Brunswick. The title of her MA thesis is Malory’s Trinity in “The Tale of the Sankgreal” section of The Morte Darthur.
John H. (Jackie) Cameron (2003) holds a PhD from Dalhousie University. He now teaches English literature at St. Mary’s University and German literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He has published articles on Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Robert Louis Stevenson, and postcolonial literature. He is the co-author (with Goran Stanivukovic) of Tragedies of the English Renaissance: An Introduction (Edinburgh UP, 2018). He is currently completing monographs on Comedies of the English Renaissance and History Plays of the English Renaissance for Edinburgh UP. The title of his MA thesis is Reveling in and Rebelling against the Folly of the World: King Lear’s Clowns.
Michelle Damour (2009) is a lecturer in the Department of English and Theatre at Acadia University. Her research interests include Canadian Literature, Postcolonial studies, travel and migration narratives, and creative writing. The title of her MA thesis is Homeward “Bound”: Discourse, Space, and Reconciliation in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan and Daphne Marlatt’s Ana Historic.
Jennifer Drouin (2000) holds a PhD from McGill University (2005), where she was also a postdoctoral fellow in Digital Humanities (2005-08). She taught in English and Women’s Studies at Allegheny College (2008-09) and was a tenured Associate Professor of English at the University of Alabama (2009-17). Most recently she taught in McGill’s Faculty of Law, where she earned BCL and LLB degrees in civil law and common law. She currently works as a legal vulgarizer and translator at Éducaloi, a non-profit organization that communicates the law to citizens in plain language. She is the author of numerous articles and of Shakespeare in Québec: Nation, Gender, and Adaptation (UTP 2014). She is currently working on a bilingual, open- access database and critical anthology entitled Shakespeare au/in Québec, and her volume Shakespeare/Sex: Contemporary Readings in Gender and Sexuality (Bloomsbury 2020) is forthcoming. The title of her MA thesis is “Sigh no more, ladies”: Marriages of Submission in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado about Nothing.
Katerina Hirschfeld (2019) is pursuing a LLB degree at Dalhousie University. The title of her MA thesis is Failing at Happiness: Queer Time in Rubyfruit Jungle, Stone Butch Blues, and Tomboy Survival Guide.
Madeleine Killacky (2019) is currently a PhD student at the Centre for Arthurian Studies at Bangor University. Her research focusses on the cultural and political role of Malory’s Morte Darthur in the Wars of the Roses. She also works as an Assistant Housemistress and Assistant Teacher at Moreton Hall, the UK’s academically highest achieving non-selective boarding school for girls. The title of her MA thesis is Kingship and Warfare in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur.
Myles McNutt (2010) holds a PhD in Communication Arts (University of Wisconsin, 2015). He is now an Assistant Professor of Communication & Theatre Arts at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, while also writing television criticism as a contributor to The A.V. Club and at his personal blog Cultural Learnings, which he started while an Acadia student. He is the author of Game of Thrones: A Guide to Westeros and Beyond, The Complete Series (Chronicle Books, 2019). The title of his MA thesis is But I’m not sure it means the house, the village: The Nation in the Small Town in Canadian Literature and Television.
Andrew Steeves (1996) is the co-founder of Gaspereau Press, an award-winning literary publisher that is internationally recognized for the excellence of both its editorial content and design. Steeves is an editor, typographer, letterpress printer, and author of several books of poetry and essays. His most recent publication is the limited-edition letterpress book Literarum Ex Arboribus: An Exuberant Showing of the Wood Type at Gaspereau Press. The title of his MA thesis is Alden Nowlan’s Letters to Raymond Fraser: 1961-1977.
Daniel Scott Tysdal (2006) is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto (Scarborough) and the ReLit Award winning author of The Writing Moment: A Practical Guide to Creating Poems (Oxford UP, 2014). You can check his TEDx talk on “Everything You Need to Write a Poem (and How It Can Save a Life)” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0BUYzMypi8. He has published three books of poetry: Fauxccasional Poems (2015), The Mourner’s Book of Albums (2010), and Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method (2006). The title of his MA thesis is David Foster Wallace’s Stories of the Mediated Self.