Lissa Paul

Professor and Graduate Program Director, PhD Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities

Lissa Paul

GLA 135
905 688 5550 x5198
lpaul@brocku.ca

Lissa Paul is the director the PhD Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities at Brock University. Her attention to the small and the overlooked has resulted in high-impact projects in multiple disciplines including poetry for children, the foundational scholarly apparatus for studies in children’s literature, the recovery of histories of 19th century Barbadian fugitive enslaved people, and the transnational life and letters of forgotten 18thcentury British author and teacher Eliza Fenwick.

ENGL 4V76: The Literary History of the Picture Book (Fall 2023)

ENGL 2P45: Poetry and Poetics (Winter 2024)

HUMA 7P02: Fields of Interdisciplinary Study (Winter 2024)

HUMA 7P31: PhD Culture and Identity

EDUC 5P01: Developing a Critical Language

EDUC 5P09: Theories of Literacy

EDUC 5P11: Culture, Pedagogy and Identity

EDUC 5P19: Children’s Literature and Literary Theory

EDUC 5P25: Gendering Educational Histories

EDUC 5Q97: Culminating Seminar

Interests:
  • Children’s literature, literary theory
  • 18th century, gender studies
  • Post­colonial discourse
Activities:
  • SSHRC-funded research on British author and teacher, Eliza Fenwick (1766-1840), who lived and taught in Niagara and Toronto in the 1830s. As she migrated from late-Enlightenment Britain to Upper Canada, via Barbados, New York and New Haven, I’m also involved in migration studies. Eliza Fenwick: Early Modern Feminist is to be published in early 2019 by the University of Delaware Press. I’m currently working on a scholarly volume of her letters.
  • History of Resistance by Enslaved People in Barbados in the late 18th and early 19th centuries My work on Eliza Fenwick led me to research on colonial  Barbados in the early 19th century, a discovering a mine of history-changing information in deteriorating microfilm copies of the Barbados Mercury Gazette. A grant received from the British Library Endangered Archives Programme to digitize the newspapers opens a new vein in researching the history of the island.
  • Keywords for Children’s Literature, 2nd Edition to be published in 2019 by New York University Press. As the first edition, published in 2011, with my co-editor, Philip Nel, was successful, we are working, with a third co-editor, Danish scholar, Nina Christensen, on a new more international volume, containing 60 essays.
  • Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. I was a founder of the award in 2005, and have been a judge for the last five years, an co-writer of the award essay on the year’s work in poetry for children.

British Library Endangered Archives Programme Grant. £27,170 ($45,029) Funding to Digitize the Barbados Mercury Gazette. Co-applicant with Ingrid Thompson and Amalia Levi. Granted 4 October 2017.

GRAD Fund. Funding to support a graduate student to work on copy editing of Keywords special issue of Brock Education. 60 hours. Granted May 2017.

BSIG Grant. Subvention funding to cover permissions for use of letters in the New-York Historical Society. $663.00. Granted June 2017. 1 Year.

SSHRC Insight Grant: Hunting for Mrs. Fenwick 1766-1840: Her Life and Letters ($103,548). Lissa is using the award to complete her biography of Eliza Fenwick and to produce a scholarly edition of her letters. Both to be Published by the University of Toronto Press. Granted 2016. Five Years: 2016-2021.

Faculty of Education Research and Development Grant ($1100). Subvention funding for indexing Children’s Literature and Culture of the First World War. New York: Routledge, 2016.

BSIG/BUAF ($350).
SSHRC IG 4A Funding Support ($3500). Granted summer 2015. Support for new SHHRC insight grant application. Subvention funding for indexing Children’s Literature and Culture of the First World War. New York: Routledge, 2016.

Books

Eliza Fenwick: Early Modern Feminist. Newark DE, U of Delaware P 2019.  In press.

Children’s Literature and Culture of the First World War.  Ed. Lissa Paul (lead editor), Rosemary Ross Johnston and Emma Short. New York: Routledge, 2016.

The Children’s Book Business:  Lessons from the Long Eighteenth Century.  New York: Routledge, 2011.

Keywords for Children’s Literature.  Ed.  Philip  Nel and Lissa Paul.  New York: New York University Press, 2011.

Parts of Books

“To Communicate Energy: Eliza Fenwick Cultures the New-World Child.” Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century and the Child. Ed. Andrew O’Malley. London: Palgrave, 2019. In press.

“Writing for Children,” Ted Hughes in Context. Ed. Terry Gifford. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2018.

Poems in the Nursery,” co-authored with Andrea Immel, Oxford Handbook of British Poetry. Ed. Jack Lynch.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016: 88-107.

Special Issues of Scholarly Journals

Education Gone Bad: Cautionary Tales from the United States. Children’s Literature in Education 49, 1 (March 2018): 1-85. Co-edited with Elizabeth Marshall. Co-written  introduction 1-5.

Keywords for Children’s Literature and Education. Brock Education 27, 2 (April 2018) Co-edited with Philip Nel.   Co-written introduction. 1-74

Scholarly Articles

“Panning for Gold: The 2017 Lion and the Unicorn  Award for Excellence in North American Poetry.” Lion and the Unicorn 41, 3 (September 2017): 386-403. Co-written with Richard Flynn and Joseph T. Thomas.

“Missing in Action.” Review essay of The War Poems of Robert Graves. Ed. Robert Mundye. Bridgend: Seren, 2016. Gravesiana: The Journal of the Robert Graves Society. 4: 2 (Spring 2017): 441-8.

“The Quick and the Dead; The 2016 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. Co-written with Richard Flynn ad Kate Pendlebury. Lion and the Unicorn 40:3 (Fall 2016): 329-46.

“Eliza Fenwick: Writing Life and Literature in Cork.” Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies. August 2016.

“Ted Hughes and the Environmental Imagination: Brought to You by the Letter R.” The Ted Hughes Society Journal V, 1 (January 2016): 18-24.

A New Parliament of Fouls: The 2015 Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. “ Co-written with Kate Pendlebury and Craig Svonkin. Lion and the Unicorn 39: 3 (Fall 2015): 331-351.

Old Guard <Avant Garde < Kindergarde: Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry.” Co-written with Donelle Ruwe and Craig Svonkin.  Lion and the Unicorn 38:3 (Fall 2014):  380-400.

“Approaching War: Australian and Canadian Culture and the First World War:  Childhood in the Past  7.1 (May 2014): 3-13. Co-written with Rosemary Ross Johnston.  

Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge University UK. Visiting Fellow Fall 2013.

Simmons College.  Taught a series of graduate seminars on children’s poetry one weekend a month (February-May 2008).