Heather Love

Assistant Professor
Photo of Heather Love.

PhD, Indiana University
MA, Queen’s University
BA, University of Victoria
​BMus, University of Victoria

Extension: 42555
Email: heather.love@uwaterloo.ca

Biography

I grew up in a small B.C. town on the western edge of the Rocky Mountains, spent five years on the West Coast completing a BMus in Piano Performance (2005) and BA in Honours English (2006) at the University of Victoria, and then moved to Ontario for my MA (Queen’s University, 2007) and to the Midwest for my PhD (Indiana University, 2015). After three years at the University of South Dakota, I joined the University of Waterloo’s Department of English Language and Literature in 2018.

My background is in transatlantic modernist literary studies, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches that bring literary texts into conversation with concepts, writers, and discourses related to science, technology, and health. My first book, Cybernetic Aesthetics: Modernist Networks of Information and Data (Cambridge UP, 2023) reads experimental modernist literature as a cultural precursor to the technical and mathematical disciplines of information management that crystallized around World War II; it was a finalist for the 2023 British Society for Literature and Sciences book prize. My more recent projects analyze early twentieth-century literary, media-based, and medical texts about obstetrics, and investigate how humanities approaches can be incorporated into STEM educational contexts.

In my scholarship, teaching, and service, I advocate for the importance of humanities perspectives in STEM contexts. To this end, I have held several leadership roles with the IEEE’s Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT); I am an IEEE TechEthics Global Ambassador; and I am IEEE society representative to the National Institute for Engineering Ethics.

Selected Publications

Books

Love, Heather. Cybernetic Aesthetics: Modernist Networks of Information and Data. Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Journal Articles

Sanderson, Jerika and Heather A. Love. “‘The highest in each class was a twilight baby’: scientific motherhood, twilight sleep and the eugenics movement in McClure’s Magazine.” Medical Humanities Published Online First: 17 May 2024. doi: 10.1136/medhum-2023-012859.

Love, Heather A. and Lea Pao. “Introduction, Literary Cybernetics: History, Theory, Post-Disciplinarity.” New Literary History, vol. 54, no. 2, 2023, pp. 1193-1205, doi: 10.1353/nlh.2023.a907164.

Love, Heather A. and Jerika Sanderson. “‘Modern neurotic women’ and the pains of childbirth: staging medicalized maternity in Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal.” Feminist Modernist Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, 2023, pp. 173-190, doi: 10.1080/24692921.2022.2154558

Love, Heather A. and Lisa Mendelman. “Modernism and Diagnosis.” Modernism/modernity Print+ Platform, vol. 6, cycle 2, 23 June 2021, doi: 10.26597/mod.0198

Love, Heather A. “Newsreels, Novels, and Cybernetics: Reading the Random Patterns of John Dos Passos’s U.S.A.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 40, no. 2, 2017, pp. 112–31. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2979/jmodelite.40.2.07.

Love, Heather A. "Cybernetic Modernism and the Feedback Loop: Ezra Pound’s Poetics of Transmission." Modernism/modernity, vol. 23 no. 1, 2016, p. 89-111. Project MUSE, doi.org/10.1353/mod.2016.0020.

Book Chapters

Love, Heather A. “Cybernetics.” Johns Hopkins Guide to Cultural and Critical Theory, edited by Martin Kreiswirth, Imre Szeman, Cymene Howe, and Andrew Pendakis. Forthcoming 2025.

Polmear, Madeline, Tom Børsen, Heather A. Love, and Amir Hedayati. “Literature review of teaching methods: Trends and ways forward to support engineering ethics instruction.” The Routledge International Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education, edited by Shannon Chance, Tom Børsen, Diana Martin, Roland Tormey, Thomas T. Lennerfors, and Gunter Bombaerts, Routledge. Forthcoming 2024.

Love, Heather A. “Cybernetics.” Understanding Flusser, Understanding Modernism, edited by Aaron Jaffe, Rodrigo Martini, and Michael Miller, Bloomsbury, 2021, pp. 279-282.

Peer-Reviewed Conference Papers

J. Lajoie, J. S. Kim and H. A. Love, “The importance of grant funding for growing engagement in ethical engineering education,” 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS), 2021, pp. 1-4, doi: 10.1109/ISTAS52410.2021.9629199.

Truax, C., A. Orchard and H. A. Love. “The influence of curriculum and internship culture on developing ethical technologists: A case study of the University of Waterloo.” 2021 International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS), 2021, pp. 1-8, doi: 10.1109/ISTAS52410.2021.9629124.

Lajoie, J., A. Orchard, and H. Love “Ethical Tech Pedagogy for Public Good: A Review of Educational Initiatives and Approaches.” 2020 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS), 2020, pp. 29-32, doi: 10.1109/ISTAS50296.2020.9462181.

Other (Guest Editorials; Reports; Invited Commentaries)

Love, H. A. "On Aerial Perspective, Socio-Technical Systems, and Interdisciplinarity: Reading Modernism Alongside Cybernetics." IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 35-41, Dec. 2023, doi: 10.1109/MTS.2023.3340245.

B. Caron, M. Cheong, J. S. Kim, J. Lajoie, H. A. Love and K. Schmitt, “Technological Stewardship and Responsible Innovation: A Mindset, an Ethos, and an Interdisciplinary Undertaking.” IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 22-28, Sept. 2022, doi: 10.1109/MTS.2022.3197113.

Love, Heather A., Jason Lajoie, and Jennifer Boger. “Ethical Tech Innovation: Uniting Educational Initiatives and Professional Practice.” Knowledge Synthesis Report and Evidence Brief prepared for SSHRC’s “Skills and Work in the Digital Economy” series, August 2021/May 2022.

Love, Heather A. “Modernism, Cybernetics, and Systems Theory: disciplinary relevance in a STEM-focused world.” Modernism/modernity Print+ series on “The Discipline,” edited by Kate Stanley, November 2020.

Love, Heather A. “The Cluster as Interpretive Gesture.” thresholds, vol. 2, March 2018, openthresholds.org/2/clusterasinterpretivegesture

K. Michael, H. A. Love and J. Wajcman, “Speaking Out Against Socially Destructive Technologies: Norbert Wiener and the Call for Ethical Engagement [Guest Editorial].” IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, vol. 36, no. 2, June 2017, pp. 13-26, doi: 10.1109/MTS.2017.2705779.

Love, Heather A. “The Ikehara Correspondence: Norbert Wiener’s Japan Connections.” IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, vol. 36, no. 2, June 2017, pp. 44-49, doi: 10.1109/MTS.2017.2697062.

P. Hall, H. A. Love and S. Uesugi, “21CW: Norbert Wiener in the 21st Century [Guest Editorial].” IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 33-34, Sept. 2015, doi: 10.1109/MTS.2015.2461174.

Fellowships & Awards

Awards

  • 2024 IEEE Society on Social Implications of Society Brian M. O’Connell Distinguished Service Award
  • British Science and Literature Association 2023 Book Prize Finalist (for Cybernetic Aesthetics: Modernist Networks of Information and Data, Cambridge UP, 2023)

Grants

  • “NEATO: Narrative Engagement for Adoption of Technology by Older Adults.” University of Waterloo Interdisciplinary Trailblazer Grant; co-PI with Jesse Hoey; 2022 – 2025
  • “ISTAS21 Security & Privacy Programming.” University of Waterloo Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute Seed Grant; co-PI with Jason Lajoie; 2021 – 2022
  • “Technology, Equity, and Social Justice: Cross-Disciplinary Conversations @ ISTAS21.” SSHRC Connection Grant; PI with co-applicants Jason Lajoie, Rozita Dara (U of Guelph), and ANK Zaman (Conestoga College), and collaborator Ketra Schmitt (Concordia University); 2021 – 2023
  • “Ethical Tech Innovation: Uniting Educational Initiatives and Professional Practice.” SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant; PIwith co-applicants Jason Lajoie and Jen Boger and collaborators Marcel O’Gorman and Neil Randall (English) 2021 – 2023
  • 2020 – 2023, “The Rhetoric of Techno-­Mediated Maternity in Early 20th­Century Literature, Media, and Medicine.” SSHRC Insight Development Grant; PI; 2020 – 2023
  • “Norbert Wiener’s Modernist Connections: MIT Archive Work.” UW-SSHRC Explore Grant; PI; 2019 – 2020

Current Research

I continue to work on projects related to literature and cybernetics, though more recently, I have turned to medical humanities approaches. As part of a SSHRC-funded project titled “The Rhetoric of Techno-Mediated Maternity,” I am exploring intersections between literary, media, and medical texts that engage with new developments in obstetrics care that emerged in the early-twentieth century.

In addition, in collaboration with colleagues in critical media studies, engineering education, and computer sciences, I am part of interdisciplinary research teams investigating more applied projects related to responsible innovation, engineering ethics, and computational/rhetorical analysis in STEM fields.

Areas of Graduate Supervision

  • Twentieth-century literature
  • American and transatlantic modernism
  • Interdisciplinary approaches to literary study
  • Literature, science, and technology
  • Literature and medicine/medical humanities
  • Humanities approaches within STEM pedagogy