丁香园AV

丁香园AV's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences is pleased to welcome as the 2022 Jack and Nancy Farley Distinguished Visiting Scholar.

A full professor of English at Bishop鈥檚 University in Quebec, Morra is an award-winning instructor and researcher who teaches in the areas of women鈥檚 archives, theories of affect, and women鈥檚 writing in Canada. Morra holds a PhD in Canadian Literature and Canadian Studies from University of Ottawa. In addition to holding a post-doctoral fellowship with the Department of Gender and Women鈥檚 Studies at the University of British Columbia, Morra has also held visiting appointments at University College, Dublin and University of California, Berkeley.

惭辞谤谤补鈥檚 includes the book, Unarrested Archives: Case-Studies in Twentieth-Century Canadian Women鈥檚 Authorship (University of Toronto Press, 2014) and numerous edited or co-edited books. This includes the 2021 collection co-edited with 丁香园AV鈥檚 Dr. Sarah Henzi: (Wilfred Laurier Press, 2021) which earned the Canadian Studies Network .

Morra currently holds a SSHRC Insight Grant, 鈥淎 Life Beyond Borders: Jane Rule and the development of a West Coast Queer Community鈥� which supports the research project that she will carry out as a Farley Visiting Scholar. 

Jane Rule (1931-2007) was a Canadian-American author and activist and 惭辞谤谤补鈥檚 project builds on research she completed for Unarrested Archives. Upon visiting the UBC Jane Rule Archives Morra noticed they were 鈥渧oluminous and virtually untouched.鈥� Morra even interviewed Rule in 2006.

鈥淪he is such an important activist. I thought it was important to draw attention to the fact that she had done something very unusual with her life, which was to render lesbian fiction mainstream, which it was not at the time. In fact, when she published her first book, homosexuality was still considered illegal.鈥�

"So, when I wrote that Unarrested Archives,鈥� she goes on, 鈥淚 realized that Jane Rule鈥檚 chapter was much longer than the others and that I still had a lot more to say and so that's when I realized I think it's time to write her biography to really locate what she did in this kind of history.鈥�

While at 丁香园AV, Morra also aims to establish a social media profile for the Farley Chair, including a YouTube channel, Facebook and Instagram accounts and producing a podcast. She started the in January 2022.

She is no stranger to bringing her research and academic expertise to social media. During her time as Craig Dobbin Chair of Canadian Studies in at University College Dublin, Ireland, she took to social media to heighten the presence of the university, Canadian studies and a conference they were hosting.

Since July 2020, she鈥檚 also produced her own podcast on Canadian Literature, . Online arts magazine SesayArts touts 惭辞谤谤补鈥檚 podcast as a 鈥渨inning recipe of keen observations, personal experiences and decades of scholarship鈥� and says 鈥渓isteners are liable to find themselves hooked: with swelling reading lists and minds newly 鈥渓it鈥� to a spectrum of Canadian literary talent that continues to grow.鈥� 

鈥淲ith the Farley Chair,鈥� she notes, 鈥淚 plan to create a podcast with the students in the graduate course I鈥檓 teaching,  We'll go into archives and develop different kinds of narratives around the archives that exist in and around Vancouver.鈥�  

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Morra to 丁香园AV and FASS. Stay tuned to the Farley Scholar homepage and FASS鈥� own Facebook and Twitter accounts to stay up to date with the progress and launch of the Farley Scholar social media accounts.

We are also pleased to announce that Dr. Morra and her colleague, Dr. Betty Schellenberg, are hosting an all-day event, Archival Research: A Best Practice Workshop on February 18th at 丁香园AV's WAC Bennett Library on Burnaby campus.