Jade Ferguson

Education 

PhD English, Cornell University

MA English, Cornell University

BA English, University of British Columbia

Research and Teaching

My research interests include 19th to mid-20th century Canadian literature, Civil Rights Movement literature and photography, New Southern Studies, and Critical Race Theory. I am working on two monographs: the first is a cultural history of anti-black mob violence in Canada, Lynching in Canaan: Race, Violence, and Cultural Memory in Canada, and the second examines cultural representations of segregation and civil rights activism in Canada in literature, film, and photography, Jim Crow Canada: Segregation and Civil Rights in Canadian Literature and Art.

I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in early and contemporary Canadian literatures, including courses with community-engaged learning components (for example, https://blackpastinguelph.com). I work with and supervise MA and PhD students in the areas of Canadian and US literature, critical race theory, and environmental literary studies. Funded by the Learning Enhancement Fund and the EDI Enhancement Fund, I run the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience. SURE provides Students of Colour with the opportunity to develop their academic skills as researchers and fosters a sense of confidence as scholars. With its inclusive learning enivronment and community-engaged component, SURE provides a space for students to affirm their racial identities, experiences, and communities in their praxis-orineted research. I was awarded the College of Arts Faculty Teaching Excellence Award in 2016 and 2020. 

Currently, I am the Associate Dean, University Academic Equity and Anti-Racism and the Director, Interdisciplinary Programs, in the College of Arts.  My teaching is in Interdisciplinary Programs, where I am core faculty in the Sexualities, Genders, and Social Change program and the Black Canadian Studies program. I will not be taking on any new English graduate supervisions (MA and PhD) in 2024/25 and 2025/26.

Refereed Journal Articles and Chapters (selected)

"'This is our Alabama': Racial Segregation, Discrimination, and Violence in Tamio Wakayama's Signs of Life." The Global South 9.1 (Spring 2015): 124-146. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/623199/pdf

"Discounting Slavery: The Currency Wars, Minstrelsy, and 'The White N****r' in Thomas Chandler Haliburton's The Clockmaker." Parallel Encounters: Culture at the Canada-US Border. Editors Gillian Roberts and David Stirrup. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2014. https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/P/Parallel-Encounters2