Born in Scotland, I emigrated to Canada as a child. I studied French and English literature at the undergraduate level at the University of Western Ontario, and continued to work between the French and English departments at Western to complete an M.A. in comparative Canadian literature. At York University, I did a Ph.D. in English with specializations in Canadian literature and literary theory. My dissertation considered intertextual relations between two contemporary women writers (Nicole Brossard and Lola Lemire Tostevin) and two writers from the first half of the century (Gertrude Stein and Djuna Barnes). In 1993, I joined the editorial collective of Tessera, a magazine whose feminist interventions in culture take the forms of visual art and writing, both critical and creative.

Hired by Université de Montréal in 1993, I was delighted to find myself in an English department in a Francophone university, an institutional location which allows me to move between languages. Living in Quebec also intensifies a sense that I have always had (as an immigrant, as a woman, and as a student of languages) of unstable national belonging. I am very interested in the ways in which such linguistic and identitary instability manifests itself in literary texts. Perhaps for this reason, I work on various forms of cross-border writing including fiction theory, bilingual writing, franco-Ontarian and anglo-Quebec writing. I am currently working on a book-length study of English-language writing in Quebec. In a feminist context, I am interested in intertextual relations between women writers across national borders, in contemporary feminist appropriations of aesthetics of movement and ambivalence such as the baroque, and in understandings of writing, history, ethics, and politics which do not require that the subject adopt a single identity.

Chapitres de livres

• Avec Catherine Leclerc, "Negotiating Literatures in Contiguity: France Daigle in / and Québec", Trans/acting Culture, Writing and Memory: Essays in Honour of Barbara Godard, dir. Eva Karpinski, Jennifer Henderson, Ian Sowton et Ray Ellenwood, Waterloo, ON, Wilfrid-Laurier UP, à paraître en 2013
• "(Dés)articuler l'identité, la langue, la culture et le territoire dans six nouvelles anglo-québécoises", Autres voix du dedans: la littérature anglo-québécoise, dir. Martine-Emmanuelle Lapointe et Catherine Leclerc, Québec, les Presses de l'Université Laval, à paraître en 2013
• "Histoires littéraires décousues: le cas de la littérature (anglo-) québécoise", Transmission et héritages de la littérature québécoise, dir. Karine Cellard et Martine-Emmanuelle Lapointe, collection "Espaces littéraires", Montréal, Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 2011, p. 47-70
• "Reading A.M. Klein's 'The Mountain' alongside the Montreal poems of J.I. Segal",Failure'sOpposite: Listening to A.M. Klein, dir. Sherry Simon et Norm Ravvin, Montréal, McGill-Queen's UP, 2011, p. 129-141
• "'Pointing beyond frame': Gail Scott Lectrice de Gertrude Stein", Contemporanéités de Gertrude Stein,Comment lire, traduire et écrire Gertrude Stein aujourd'hui, dir. Jean-François Chassay et Éric Giraud, Paris, Éditions des archives contemporaines, 2011, p. 139-149
• "Discontinuity, Intertextuality, and Literary History: Gail Scott's Reading of Gertrude Stein", Wider Boundaries of Daring: The Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women's Poetry, dir. Di Brandt et Barbara Godard, Waterloo, ON, Wilfrid-Laurier UP, 2009, p. 163-187
• "Acts of Citizenship: Erin Mouré's O Cidadán and the Limits of Worldliness", Trans.Can.Lit: Resituating the Study of Canadian Literature, dir. Smaro Kamboureli et Roy Miki, Waterloo, ON, Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2007, p. 111-128
• "Global / local : Montreal in the Poetry of Robyn Sarah, Mary di Michele and Erin Mouré", Language Acts: Anglo-Québec Poetry, 1976 to the 21stCentury, dir. Jason Camlot et Todd Swift, Montréal, Véhicule, 2007, p. 254-271
• "Sex of a Clown: Gail Scott's My Paris", Un certain genre malgré tout. Pour une réflexion sur la différence sexuelle à l'oeuvre dans l'écriture, dir. Catherine Mavrikakis et Patrick Poirier, Montréal, Éditions Nota Bene, "Convergences", 2006, p. 157-173

Rédactrice en chef d'un numéro spécial d'une revue ou directrice d'un dossier dans une revue

• Rédactrice en chef d'un numéro spécial sur la Littérature de langue anglaise au Québec, Revue d'études canadiennes, à paraître 2013
• Rédactrice en chef, Gail Scott: Sentences on the Wall, numéro spécial sur l'écrivaine anglo-montréalaise Gail Scott, Open Letter, no. 14, vol. 9, été 2012, 144 pages
• En collaboration avec Gillian Lane-Mercier d'un dossier qui regroupe les textes de Simon Harel, Jane Everett, Linda Leith, Catherine Leclerc, Robert Majzels, Gail Scott et Robert Schwartzwald, "Textes, territoires, traductions: (dé)localisations / dislocations de la littérature anglo-québécoise", Québec Studies, vol. 44, printemps 2008, 101 pages

Articles dans des revues scientifiques et professionnelles

• "Contesting Home and Native Land: Tessa McWatt'sOut of My Skinand Drew Hayden Taylor's 'A Blurry Image on the Six O'Clock News'", RANAMRecherches anglaises et nord-américaine, Université de Strasbourg, à paraître 2013
• Avec Catherine Leclerc, "Littératures en contiguïté: France Daigle au Québec, France Daigle et le Québec", Voix et images, 111 printemps-été 2012, p. 127-143
• Avec ClaireHuot et Robert Majzels, "'The public reading is a matter of the public reading': the 85 Project",Open Letter, no. 13, vol. 7, automne 2008, p. 14-39
• "Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism and Citizenship: Robert Majzels' City of Forgetting", Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies, no. 64, été 2008, p. 123-138
• "Introduction: Conflict in Contiguity", Québec Studies, no. spéc. "Textes, territoires, traduction: (dé)localisations/dislocations de la littérature anglo-québécoise", vol. 44, printemps 2008, p. 1-20
• "Writing the Montreal Mountain: 'Below the thresholds at which visibility begins'", Canadian Literature, dossier, "The Contemporary Gabrielle Roy" préparé par le Groupe de recherche sur Gabrielle Roy, Université McGill, no. 192, printemps 2007, p. 45-66
• "Les 'prétendues deux solitudes': à la recherche de l'étrangeté", Spirale, dossier "Write Here. Write Now. Les écritures anglo-montréalaises",no. 210, septembre-octobre 2006, p. 16-18
• "Local-global: Montréal dans la poésie de Robyn Sarah, Marydi Michele, et Erin Mouré", Voix et images, dossier "La littérature anglo-québécoise", no. 30, vol. 3, printemps 2005, p. 113-132