PhD, Western
MA, Guelph
BA, Waterloo
Extension: 43203
Email: dhadfield@uwaterloo.ca
Biography
My Waterloo story starts on the student side of the classroom: I first arrived here from the Niagara Peninsula for an English co-op degree in the mid-1980s--one of the best moves I could have made. With BA in hand and 6 busy workterms at IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and the UWaterloo archives on my resume, I moved down the highway to the University of Guelph, spending a few years as a designer and writer in the Public Relations & Communications unit there before diving into graduate work. When my former thesis supervisor invited me to help collect materials for the theatre archives at Guelph, I was literally stopped in my tracks by the experience of holding memory in my hands, and spent the rest of grad school back in the climate-controlled conditions of archives, exploring how and why history preserves some authors, plays, and literary works while others disappear. These days, whether I'm teaching literary analysis, academic writing, or business genres, I try to help students explore what makes communications meaningful and memorable.
I've always been a bit of a computer nerd (as a Waterloo undergrad, I submitted my English essays through a computer terminal in MC), so in addition to teaching, I'm delighted to co-ordinate the department's online learning program. The question always on my mind is how we can use technologies to help support learning rather than substitute for it.
Selected publications
“Beyond Married Love: Renegotiating Gender and Power Between the Wars.” Shaw: Marriages and Misalliances, ed. Bob Gaines. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 159-74.
Critical Shaw: Theatre. Editor, Rosettabooks, 2016.
“Shaw and Feminism.” Shaw in Context. Ed. Brad Kent. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015. 215-21.
Shaw and Feminisms: On Stage and Off. Editor and contributor. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013.
“‘The Web of Our Life is of a Mingled Yarn’: The Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project, Humanities Scholarship, and ColdFusion” (with Daniel Fischlin, Gordon Lester, and Mark McCutcheon). College Literature 36.1 (Winter 2009): 77-104.
Re: Producing Women’s Dramatic History: The Politics of Playing in Toronto. The New Canadian Criticism Series. Ed. Frank Davey. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2007.
“What runs (in) the Family: Iterated Retellings, Gender and Genre in You Never Can Tell and Major Barbara.” SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 26. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 2006. 58-78.
“The Role Power Plays in George F. Walker’s Detective Fiction.” George F. Walker, Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English 4, ed. Harry Lane. Playwrights Canada Press, 2006.
Canadian Drama and the Critics. (Assoc. Ed.) Revised Edition. Ed. L.W. Conolly. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1995.
Fellowships & awards
-
University of Waterloo Outstanding Performance Award (2024, 2021, 2018)
- University of Waterloo: Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement (LITE) grant (2013-14).
- Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences: Aid to Scholarly Publications Program publishing subsidy for Re: Producing Women’s Dramatic History (2004).
- University of Western Ontario: Carl F. and Margaret E. Klinck Dissertation Prize (Best Dissertation in Canadian Literature, 1999).
Current research
As part of my work with our online program, I am researching how we can use technologies to create engaging teaching and learning environments for online English courses. Beyond the online learning focus, I am also working on a biographical reconsideration of Charlotte Frances Shaw and her influence on the work of her husband, playwright George Bernard Shaw.
Research areas
- Canadian Drama and Theatre
- Fin-de-Siecle literature and drama (British and Canadian)
- Historiography and politics of literary and theatrical production
- Online pedagogy and learning