Alice Brittan Associate Professor, Department of English Dalhousie University Halifax, NS [email protected] ____________________________________________________________________________________ Education Ph.D., English Literature, University of Pennsylvania, 2002 Dissertation: "Writing and Portage: The Novel and the Movement of Things" M.A., English Literature, University of Toronto, 1996 B.A., English Literature, with High Distinction, University of Toronto, 1995 Employment 2021- present: Associate Professor, World Literature, Dalhousie University 2003- 2021: Assistant Professor, World Literature, Dalhousie University (Jan. 2005- Jan. 2006: Maternity Leave) (Jan. 2007- Jan. 2008: Maternity Leave) 2002-2003: Visiting Assistant Professor, Postcolonial Literature and Theory, Connecticut College Research Interests • Contemporary Global Fiction • World Literature • Creative Non-Fiction • Public Theology • The Personal Essay ____________________________________________________________________________________ Writing and Talks Academic Essays and Reviews 1 “Michael Ondaatje Tricks the Eye.” Modernism, Postcolonialism, and Globalism: Anglophone Literature, 1950 to the Present. Ed. Richard Begam and Michael Valdez Moses. Oxford UP, 2019. 297-313. “At the Verge.” Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies. 14.3 (2013): 277- 281. “The Return of Imagination.” Review Essay. Contemporary Literature. 53.3 (2012): 573-584. “Death and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.” Contemporary Literature. 51.3 (2010): 477-502. “Peter D. McDonald. The Literature Police: Apartheid Censorship and its Cultural Consequences.” Review. Review of English Studies. 61.248 (2010): 163-165. “Australasia.” The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial Studies. Ed. John McLeod. Routledge, 2007. 72-82. “War and the Book: The Diarist, the Cryptographer and The English Patient.” PMLA. Special Issue: The History of the Book and the Idea of Literature. 121.1 (2006): 200-213. “Loot: National Violence and the Art Object.” Perspectives on Endangerment. Ed. Graham Huggan and Stephan Klasen. Georg Olms Verlag, 2005. 151-159. "Reading Sex and Violence in André Brink’s Rumours of Rain and A Dry White Season" Tydskrif vir Letterkunde/Journal of Literary Studies. 42.1 (2005): 55-77. “A Ghost Story in Two Parts: Charles Dickens, Peter Carey, and Avenging Phantoms.” Australian Literary Studies. 21.4 (2004): 40-55. Re-published in book form: Who's Who? Hoaxes, Imposture and Identity Crises in Australian Literature. Ed. Maggie Nolan and Carrie Dawson. U of Queensland P, 2005. 40-55. “Mark Sanders’ Complicities: The Intellectual and Apartheid.” Review. New Formations. 52 (2004): 142-143. “B-b-british Objects: Possession, Naming, and Translation in David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon.” PMLA. 117 (2002): 1158-1171. Public Writing, Talks, and Podcasts The Art of Astonishment: Reflections on Gifts and Grace. Bloomsbury, Forthcoming 2022. 2 Mikol, Carmel, narrator. “Ep. 5: Looking for Beauty.” Hyacinth Podcast. January 2020. https://www.hyacinthpodcast.com/episodes MacKay, Paul, narrator. “Ep. 12: A Study in J.M. Coetzee.” Bookings: The King’s Co-op Bookstore Podcast. April 2019. https://soundcloud.com/user-461897218 “Elena Ferrante and the Art of the Left Hand.” Open Letters Monthly: An Arts and Literature Review. September 2015. Online. “Are you Living or Dead? Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant.” Open Letters Monthly: An Arts and Literature Review. May 2015. Online. “Outrunning the Constables: Karl Ove Knausgaard.” Open Letters Monthly: An Arts and Literature Review. February 2015. Online. “A Long Time in the Making. Colm Tóibín’s Nora Webster.” Open Letters Monthly: An Arts and Literature Review. December 2014. Online. “Dream-to-Desk. Michael Cunningham’s The Snow Queen.” Open Letters Monthly: An Arts and Literature Review. July 2014. Online. “Modern Magi.” The Dalhousie Review. 93.1 (2013): 21-35. “A Visit from the Prince. Michael Cunningham’s By Nightfall.” Open Letters Monthly: An Arts and Literature Review. February 2011. Online. “Apartness: Nadine Gordimer’s Life Times: Stories, 1952-2007.” Open Letters Monthly: An Arts and Literature Review. December 2010. Online. “Coetzee and the Censor.” Freedom to Read Week. Spring Garden Public Library. Halifax NS. February 2009. “Doris Lessing.” Nobel Night at Dalhousie. Dalhousie University. Halifax NS. October 2007. Selected Academic Conferences “My 21 Grams: Why Am I Dead to the Writers I Love?” Keynote address. Defiance: An Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference. Dalhousie University English Department. Halifax, NS. August 2017. “The Secret vs. the Boundary Stone: Radical Power in the Writing of Elena Ferrante.” Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA). Harvard University. Boston, MA. March 2016 3 “Money and the Person.” Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language (CACLALS), ACCUTE, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON. May 2015. “What is a Miracle?” Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA). University of Toronto. Toronto, ON. April 2013. “The Gifts of Hermes.” Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA). Brown University. Providence, RI. April 2012. “Grace.” English Department Speakers’ Series. Dalhousie University. Halifax, NS. November 2011. “Before the Law.” World Literature/Comparative Literature: Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA). Vancouver, BC. April 2011. “What is the Analogy for Death?: David Malouf and the Problem of the Postcolonial.” The Languages of Modernism: Annual Meeting of the Modernism Studies Association (MSA). Montréal, QC. November 2009. “Death and Disgrace.” English Department Speakers’ Series. Dalhousie University. Guest Lecture: Contemporary Studies 4000. University of King’s College. Halifax, NS. March 2009. “Death and Disgrace.” Obsolescence and the Culture of Human Invention. Interdisciplinary Symposium. Halifax, NS. May 2008. “Empathy and Disgrace.” The Human and Its Others: Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA). Princeton University. Princeton, NJ. March 2006. “Loot: National Violence and the Art Object.” Perspectives on Endangerment. University of Munich. Munich, DE. November 2003. “Nadine Gordimer and the Imagination of Scale.” Ethnohistory Workshop. University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, PA. March 2004. “The Diarist, the Cryptographer, and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient.” Craft, Critique, Culture: Imagining Readers and Writers. University of Iowa. Iowa City, IA. April 2002. Fellowships and Awards Collaborator, Obsolescence and the Culture of Human Invention, SSHRC research/creation grant in Fine Arts (2007-2010) Research and Development Grant, Dalhousie University, 2003-2006 Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 2000-2001 University Dissertation Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 1999-2000 Ontario Graduate Scholarship, University of Toronto (declined), 1997 4 University of Toronto Open Fellowship (declined), 1997 Jolliffe Gold Medal in English, Victoria College, University of Toronto, 1995 Lucy Ingram Morgan Gold Medal, Victoria College, University of Toronto, 1995 __________________________________________________________________________________ Teaching Dalhousie University, 2003-present: ENGL 1000, Introduction to Literature ENGL 1020, Introduction to Poetry and Drama ENGL 1010, Introduction to Prose Fiction ENGL/CRWR 1030, Reading & Writing Stories ENGL 2212, now 2005, The Stranger: World Literature ENGL/CRWR 2010, The Personal Essay ENGL 3085, now 3086, Un-Imagination: Postcolonial Literature and Theory ENGL 3235, Contemporary British Novels ENGL 3239, Fiction of the Later-Twentieth Century ENGL 3260, Contemporary Global Fiction CTMP 3311, Culture, Politics, and the Postcolonial Condition ENGL 4811, Is Beauty Just? ENGL 4021, J.M. Coetzee in Context ENGL 5917, Writing and Ethics ENGL 5700, South African Literature in a Century of Struggle ENGL 5919, Postcolonial Studies in the New Millennium Connecticut College, 2002-03: ENGL 150, Seminar in Literary Interpretation ENGL 208, Expatriates and Exiles: The New British Novel ENGL 302, South African Literature in a Century of Struggle ENGL 357, Topics in Postcolonial Literatures and Theory ____________________________________________________________________________________ Graduate Supervision MA Thesis Supervision, 2003-present: Kate Cassaday, “Authenticity in Nadine Gordimer’s Reception” (Passed 2004) Charlene Davis, “Falsity, Fronting, Future: Race in Everett’s Erasure, Brand’s What We All Long For and Smith’s Fires in the Mirror” (Passed 2009) Shauna Hall-Coates, “Imagining the Lives of Others: Revisioning Cosmopolitanism in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, and Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist” (Passed 2009) 5 Leif Schenstead-Harris, “Representing the Library” (Passed 2010) Emily Corrie, “Post-literate Nostalgia in Speculative Visions of the Future” (Passed 2012) Georgia Grundlingh, “Folklore and ‘Truth’ in Michael Crummey’s Galore and Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish” (Passed 2014) Grant Curtis, “Representing Afghanistan” (Passed 2016) Nicole Gerber, “This is Only a Love Story: Defining Love and Its Political Implications in Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion” (Passed 2017) Grace MacDonald, “Symbols and the Soul: Hyperreality, Dissensus, and Sacred Humanism in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition” (Passed 2017). Winner: Malcolm Ross Thesis Award Areej