Neta Gordon

Professor

PhD Queen’s
2011 Brock University Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, Humanities

Office: GLA 149
905 688 5550  x3863
ngordon@brocku.ca

Teaching Areas: Contemporary Canadian Fiction, World War I Narratives, Short Story Collections, Ann-Marie MacDonald

Neta Gordon wrote her dissertation on Canadian women writing genealogical narratives, and has published on SKY Lee, Ann-Marie MacDonald, and Barbara Gowdy’s work within this context. She has researched contemporary Canadian literature about the Great War, culminating in Catching the Torch: Contemporary Canadian Literary Literary Responses to World War I. She has also published a book-length thematic introduction to the comic book series, Fables. Neta’s recent research focused on contemporary Canadian short story collections by male authors, exploring how such texts interact with changing conceptions of masculinity in a globalized world. In 2022, her book Bearers of Risk: Writing Masculinity in Contemporary English-Canadian Short Story Cycles was published by McGill-Queen’s UP. Most recently, Neta returned to research on Ann-Marie MacDonald, focusing on the author’s decades-long invitational approach to making space for marginalized voices. See https://www.ammbibliography.com/ for an ongoing searchable list of critical works on MacDonald.

Also, see this episode of the Faculty of Humanities Podcast “Foreword” to hear more about Neta’s work https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-qswhp-1341121.

Bearers of Risk: Writing Masculinity in Contemporary English-Canadian Short Story Cycles. McGill-Queen’s UP, 2022.

A Tour of Fabletown: Patterns and Plots in Bill Willingham’s Fables. Jefferson, NC: McFarlard & Company Press, 2016.

Catching the Torch: Contemporary Canadian Literary Responses to World War I. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014.

Chalykoff, Lisa, Neta Gordon, and Paul Lumsden, eds. The Broadview Introduction to Literature. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2013; second edition 2018.

“Lily’s Route: Cognitive Mapping, Strategic Unmappability, and Disability Studies in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees.” Literary Geographies 9.2 (2023): 309-324.

“‘That’s Our Word’: National Identity in Vaughan and Skroce’s We Stand on Guard.” Canadian Review of American Studies 50.3 (2020): 399-412.

“Putting Ann-Marie MacDonald in the Closet: The Reception of Adult Onset.” Studies in Canadian Literature 44.1 (2019): 81-99.

“ ‘The Enemy is The Centre’: The Dilemma of Normative Masculinity in Darwyn Cooke’s  DC: The New Frontier.” Men and Masculinities.

“Portability and Pedagogy: The bounded short stories in Stephen Marche’s Shining at the Bottom of the Sea.” Journal of Short Fiction in Theory and Practice. 4.2 (2014).

“White Masculinity and Civility in Contemporary Canadian Short Stories: the Fantasy of Reterritorialization and Return.” Men and Masculinities 17.2 (2014).

” ‘Of inkling, of implication’: John Gould’s Kilter: 55 fictions as a short story cycle.” The Journal of the Short Story in English, Les Cahiers de la Nouvelle 54 (2010).

“Time Structures and the Healing Aesthetic of Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road.” Studies in Canadian Literature 33.1 (2008).

“Sacrificial Pets and Maternal Instinct in Gloria Sawai’s ‘Mother’s Day’ and Barbara Gowdy’s Falling Angels.” Atlantis: A Women’s Studies Journal 33.1 (2008).

“Charted Territory: Canadian Literature by Women, the Genealogical Plot, and SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Cafe.” Narrative 14.2 (2006).

“Symbol, Postmodern Allegory and the Sacred Witness in Barbara Gowdy’s The White Bone.” Canadian Literature 85 (2005)

“Twin Tales: Narrative Profusion and Genealogy in Fall on Your Knees.” Canadian Review of American Studies 35:2 (2005)