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Margaret Reeves, PhD
(She, Her, Hers)Associate Professor
English, English and Cultural Studies
Other Titles: Associate Dean, College of Graduate StudiesOffice: OM2 Building, 1161 Alumni Avenue
Phone: 250.807.9639
Email: Margaret.Reeves@ubc.ca
Graduate student supervisor
Research Summary
Early modern women’s writing; children’s literary cultures (early modern to contemporary); early modern childhood and youth; Milton and early modern political theory; satiric fiction; women’s literature; Medieval and Renaissance studies; 16th and 17th-century literature; history of the novel; auto/biographical discourse; speculative fiction; feminist and queer theory.
Courses & Teaching
ENGL 151: Critical Studies in Literature; ENGL 212: Studies in Children’s Literature; ENGL 349A: Early Modern Women’s Writing; ENGL 349B: The Poetry and Politics of John Milton; ENGL 349C: Race and Gender in 17th-Century Literature and Culture; ENGL 423A/521E: Gender, Narrative, and Political Thought in 17th-Century English Culture; ENGL 521/416: Feminist Forerunners: Early Modern Women’s Literature and Contemporary Theory; ENGL 522/497: Politics of Innocence: Myths of Innocence, Identity, and the Impossibility of Children’s Fiction
Biography
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at the University of British Columbia (Okanagan), and an Associate Member of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program at UBCO. I earned a B.A.(Hons) and M.A. in English Literature at York University in Toronto, and received my Ph.D. in English at the University of Toronto in 2004. While in the doctoral program I completed the Collaborative Graduate Program in Women’s Studies at U of T. I taught English literature and Humanities at York University before joining the English Program at UBC Okanagan in 2007. I served on the Board of the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies / Société canadienne d’études de la Renaissance for ten years (as Vice-President, President, Past-President, and Treasurer). Within FCCS, I have served as the Program Coordinator for the Individualized Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies Program and the Acting Coordinator for the English Program. I am currently a member of the UBCO Senate’s Academic Policy Committee and a UBCO Senator.
Degrees
B.A. (Hons), York University, M.A. English, York University, Ph.D. English Literature / Collaborative Graduate Program in Women’s Studies, University of Toronto
Research Interests & Projects
My research on early modern women’s writing and literary history investigates the relationship between literary texts and the social and political cultures in which fictive and historical narratives are produced. I examine early modern women’s written interventions in public politics in a variety of literary forms and genres, including romance, utopian, autobiographical, allegorical, and historical narrative. I contextualize this research within the broader recuperative project central to feminist literary studies that continues to recover, document, and revalue the contributions of English women writers to the literary, cultural, and political histories of Western culture. I also conduct research on the history of children’s literature and literary cultures from the early modern period to the present, as well as the social and political significance of ideas of childhood and youth in seventeenth-century English culture and literature. These areas have been the subject of two recently completed research projects on children’s literary cultures in England prior to the 1740s and on conceptions of female youth in seventeenth-century British culture. Currently, I am conducting research on seventeenth-century political narratives and I am co-editing a critical edition of Margaret Cavendish’s Orations.
Selected Publications & Presentations
Books
Cohen, Elizabeth S. and Margaret Reeves, eds. The Youth of Early Modern Women. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. View online in OAPEN Library.
Crane, Mark, Richard Raiswell, and Margaret Reeves, eds. Shell Games: Studies in Scams, Frauds, and Deceits (1300-1650). Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004.
Articles and Chapters
“Children’s Literary Cultures in Early Modern England (1500-1740).” Literary Cultures and Medieval/Early Modern Childhoods. Ed. by Naomi J. Miller and Diane Purkiss. New York: Palgrave, 2019 (read more).
“‘A Prospect of Flowers’: Concepts of Childhood and Female Youth in Seventeenth-Century British Culture.” The Youth of Early Modern Women. Ed. by Elizabeth S. Cohen and Margaret Reeves. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 35-57.
Cohen, Elizabeth S. and Margaret Reeves. “Introduction.” The Youth of Early Modern Women. Ed. by Cohen and Reeves. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 11-31.
Reeves, Margaret and Louise Frappier. “CSRS/SCÉR (1976-2014): Une brève histoire de la Société canadienne d’études de la Renaissance / A Brief History of the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies.” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme. 37.3 (2014): 95-125. Republished here: https://csrs-scer.com/history-histoire/
“Writing to Posterity: Margaret Cavendish’s ‘A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding and Life’ (1656) as an ‘Autobiographical Relazione.’” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme. Special Issue: Things Not Easily Believed: Introducing the Early Modern Relation. Ed. by Tom Cohen and Germaine Warkentin. Intro. by Natalie Zemon Davis. 34.1-2 (2011): 183-206.
“History, Satire, and Fiction by British Women Writers in the Seventeenth-Century. “History of British Women’s Writing. Vol. 3 (1610-1690). Ed. by Mihoko Suzuki. New York: Palgrave, 2011. 204-218.
“From Manuscript to Printed Text: Telling and Retelling the History of Edward II.” The Literary Career and Legacy of Elizabeth Cary, 1613-1680. Ed. by Heather Wolfe. New York: Palgrave, 2007. 125-44.
“History, Fiction, and Political Identity: Heroic Rebellion in Aphra Behn’s Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister and Oroonoko.” 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 8 (2003): 269-94.
“Telling the Tale of The Rise of the Novel.” Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 30.1 (Fall 2000): 25-49.
“Textual, Contextual, and Ideological Contradictions in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford.” English Studies in Canada 23.4 (December 1997): 389-407.
“Simone de Beauvoir and the Writing of Contemporary Feminist Theory: Rich, Butler, and The Second Sex.” Simone de Beauvoir Studies: Simone de Beauvoir and Women Writers throughout the Centuries 10 (1993): 159-64.
Prize-Winning Essays
“Elizabeth Cary’s Extant Manuscript Histories of Edward II.” Presented at the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies, CFHSS Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Carleton University, Ottawa. May 25, 2009. Winner of the 2009 CSRS Montaigne Prize.
“Running on ‘with public voice’: Inscribing the Political in Elizabeth Cary’s Edward II.” Presented at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference. San Antonio, Oct. 26, 2002. Winner of the 2002 SSEMW (Society for the Study of Early Modern Women) Award for Best Graduate Student Paper.
Professional Services/Affiliations/Committees
Associate Member, Gender and Women’s Studies Program, UBC Okanagan
Member, Society for the Study of Early Modern Women
Member, Margaret Cavendish Society
Graduate Supervisions
Current Primary Supervisions
Anne-Bénédicte Claret, Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies. Dissertation Research: “The Refurbishment of Myth and Folklore in Fantasy by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.”
Claire Halston, M.A. English. Independent Research Project: “The Literary Fairy and Discussions of Morality.”
Completed Primary Supervisions
Samuel Fraser, M.A. English. Thesis 2023: “‘A Black Writing upon the Sky’: The Interplay of Knowledge, Discourse, and Power in Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.”
Rachel Stubbs, M.A. English. Thesis 2020: “Dear Mr. Dumbledore: Handwritten and Printed Intraliterary Texts in Lewis Carroll’s Alice Series and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series.”
Gwen Pierce, M.A. English. Thesis 2019: “Fashioning the Gothic: Interpreting the Proto-gothic Mode in Thomas Lodge’s A Margarite of America.”
Rebecca Jane Francis, M.A. English Thesis 2018: “Instruction within Entertainment: Explicit and Implicit Religious Teachings in Children’s Literature in the Nineteenth Century.”
Max Dickeson, M.A. English Thesis 2014: “The Alien and the Magically Strange: Responses to Stereotypes of Race and Gender in Recent Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature.”
Natalie Ingram, M.A. English Thesis 2013: “Cultural Conversations: The Politics of Myth and History in Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven and Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death.”
Kyla Ayers, M.A. English Major Research Paper 2012: “A Foot in Two Worlds: Mythic Innocence, Agency, and Double-Dealing in His Dark Materials.”
Undergraduate Honours Supervisions
Darren Paterson, Honours English Thesis 2018: “What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?: An Exploration of the Representations of Adulthood in J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.”
Laura Savoie, Honours English Thesis 2017: “Reassuring Cisgender Supremacy: An Analysis of Ideology and Agency in Representations of Trans People in Young Adult Fiction.”
Mark Buchanan, Honours English Thesis 2014: “A Song of Fantasy Traditions: How A Song of Ice and Fire Subverts Traditions of Women in Tolkienesque Fantasy.”
Max Dickeson, Honours English Thesis 2010: “‘Too Deeply Hurt’: The Textual Importance of Melancholy in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter.”
Natalie Ingram, Honours English Thesis 2010: “From Convention to Invention: Mythology and Archetypes in the Works of Neil Gaiman and Guy Gavriel Kay.” Completed April 2010.
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