Education

Ph.D.: English Literature, University of Toronto, defended June 1998.                                            

Dissertation: “Fields of Rye: Theorizing the Serious Laughter of Humour in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American and English-Canadian Fiction.”  After formalizing the concept of serious laughter (which combines pleasure and pain) and considering how serious laughter complicates the links between national borders eand styles of humour, this study examines the relationship of humour to nation in four texts by Mark Twain, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Toni Morrison, and Thomas King.  

Co-supervisors: Linda Hutcheon and Russell Brown.  Committee Member: Jill Matus. 

External Examiner: Arnold Davidson, Duke University.

Special Field Examinations: American and English-Canadian Literature (novels, poetry, and drama), 1945-1995.  Passed with distinction. 

Comprehensive Examinations: English Literature from Medieval to 1700; English Literature from 1700 to the present.   

M.A.: English Literature, University of Toronto, 1994.  

B.A., Honours: English Literature, McGill University, 1993.