PhD,
Alberta
MA,
Guelph
BA,
Guelph
Email: lwarley@uwaterloo.ca
Biography
I was born in England and immigrated with my family to Canada in 1970. Trudeaumania, Bill 101 (the law that made Quebec officially French), Margaret Atwood’s writing and Joni Mitchell’s music were all part of my introduction to Canadian culture. I lived in Guelph, Ontario for several years and then began a phase of working, travelling, and sometimes going to university. It took me twelve years to get an Honors BA in English, studying at three different Canadian universities and mainly part-time, but once I finished that degree I did not look back and completed an MA (U of Guelph 1989) and a PhD (U of Alberta 1994). After a year as a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at Queen’s University, Kingston, I took up my appointment at the University of Waterloo.
From July 1 2012 to June 30 2020 I served as Associate Dean, Graduate Studies, Faculty of Arts.
Selected publications
“Before ‘Secret Path’: Indian Residential School Memoirs from the 1970s.” The Other Side of 150. Ed. Linda Morra and Sarah Henzi. Waterloo: WLUP, Forthcoming.
“Mar and Me: Following the Traces.” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 33.3 (2018). 534-41
"Entangled Memories of Expulsion and Resettlement in Post-1945 Germany and Poland: Dialogue in Two Voices." Co-authored with Eva C. Karpinski. Women's Narratives and the Postmemory of Displacement in Central and Eastern Europe. Ed. Simona Mitroiu. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 87-106.
Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives (WLUP 2016), co-edited with Candida Rifkind, won the 2016 Gabrielle Roy prize for the best work of Canadian literary scholarship in English.
“Visual Silence and Graphic Memory: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Two Generals.” Co-authored with Alan Filewod. Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives. Ed. Candida Rifkind and Linda Warley. Waterloo: WLUP, 2016.
“Remembering Poverty: Bannock, Beans and Black Tea, a Tale of Two Lives.” Canadian Literature and Cultural Memory. Ed. Eleanor Ty and Cynthia Sugars. Oxford UP, 2014. 134-50.
“Flucht und Vertreibung and the Difficult Work of Memory.” Life Writing 10.3 (2013): 329-50.
“Is This the Indian You Had in Mind? The Reception of Thomas King.” Co-authored with Renée Hulan.” Thomas King: Works and Impact. Ed. Eva Gruber. European Studies of North American Literatures series. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2012.
“The Reception of Indigenous Life Stories: The Case of The Days of Augusta.” SAIL (Studies in American Indian Literature). 22.3 (2010): 45-71.
Current Research
My teaching and research focus on mid-to-late 20th-century and contemporary Canadian literature. I have particular interests in postcolonial approaches to Canadian literary studies, Auto/biography Studies and the analysis of diverse kinds of life writing texts (including digital and graphic), and First Nations and Metis literatures in all genres. Recently I have been researching and writing about my own family's life stories, which include experiences of being expelled from East Germany in 1945. My co-edited (with Candida Rifkind) book Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives, was published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in 2016. Much of my scholarship is collaborative.