Faculty

Ceilidh studies literatures in Canada from their earliest beginnings in English to contemporary writing.  She has a particular interest in early print culture, in women’s writing, in poetry, and in the work literary scholars do in the classroom.  She is currently working on a project exploring the role of the City Poet in Canada, and recently travelled to Poland to teach as an Erasmus+ exchange scholar.

BA - University of Western Ontario
MA - University of Ottawa
PhD - University of Toronto

I teach literatures in Canada broadly, from their earliest beginnings in English to contemporary writing. I am particularly interested in connecting recent Canadian literature to its 19th-century precursors and exploring with students the important conversations between texts that result. I have a passion for poetry, especially contemporary poetry, and I bring that into the classroom too. In all my teaching, I remain committed to the goals of Indigenization.

Courses Taught:

• Academic Writing
• Introduction to Literature
• Introduction to Literary Critical Methods
• Introduction to Canadian Literature
• Canadian LIterature: Beginnings to 1920
• Modern Canadian Literature
• Canadian Poetry
• Cowboys, Outlaws, and Spirits of the West: Representations of ‘the West’ in Canadian Literature
• Urban Literatures in Canada
• New Writing in Canada

My doctoral research focused on nineteenth-century women’s writing and print culture. My interest in early literary culture in Canada and in periodical publishing continues, and I am increasingly interested in the echoes of these things in contemporary culture. For example, my current work extends the consideration of poetry as an opportunity for public engagement and the poet as a public figure by addressing twenty and twenty-first century examples, such as Sachiko Murakami’s online Project Rebuild and CBC Radio’s House Poet position.

2021-2022 SSHRC Institutional Grant

Most recent presentations  (2022-2023)

• “Teaching the City Onboard the Ship: Poetry in The Emigrants Soldiers' Gazette,” Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English, May 2023.
• “The Canadian City Poet,” American and Canadian Studies for Intercultural Communications and Diplomacy, University of Silesia, Poland, May 2023.
• “Shipboard Papers and the Ideal City,” Popular Culture Association, April 2023.
• “Mapping the City and Unsettling Home in Contemporary Vancouver Poetry,” Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English, May 2022.

Most recent publications:

• “The Work of Reading Sachiko Murakami’s Rebuild: Community-Engaged Learning in the Classroom.” Studies in Canadian Literature, vol 47, no 1 (2022).
• “‘That city, that self’: Tracing a Historical Trajectory of the City Writer in Canada.” Authorship, vol 10, no 1 (2021). 
• CanLit Guides: The 2018 Edited Collection: Open-Access Resources for Teaching and Learning in Canadian Literature. Ed. Kathryn Grafton, Ceilidh Hart, Laura Moss, Shannon Smryl. Canadian Literature, UBC, 2018. 
• “Early Print Culture and the Periodical Press in Canada.” CanLit Guides. May 2018.