Melissa Jacques, PhD

Associate Professor of Teaching

English, English and Cultural Studies

Office: CCS 172
Email: melissa.jacques@ubc.ca

Research Summary

Trauma theory, queer theory, affect theory and psychoanalysis; popular culture (crime fiction, vampires, and graphic memoir); experimental life writing and creative non-fiction; the scholarship of teaching and learning; narrative medicine/medical humanities.

Courses & Teaching

English; composition and rhetoric; life writing; critical theory; cultural theory; popular culture; graduate studies (ENGL and IGS)

Biography

As a first-generation university graduate who grew up in an isolated community in Northern Manitoba, Melissa Jacques understands both the value of a university education and the challenges faced by many students entering the academy. This dual perspective informs both her teaching and her research. During her PhD, she wrote a dissertation that read experimental representations of the Holocaust through the lens of memory studies and trauma theory. She has taken her interest in trauma and its aftermath into her research and her teaching of popular texts, including vampire narratives and crime fiction. In addition to her academic work, she also writes and publishes creative nonfiction. She is the recipient of four teaching awards.

Degrees

PhD, English, University of Alberta; MA, English, UBC Vancouver; BA, English, UBC Vancouver

Selected Publications & Presentations

“Acting Out or Working Through: Trauma, Pedagogy and Feminist Crime Fiction.” Crime Fiction Studies, vol 7, no. 1, 2026, pp. 34–50.

“Decomposition as Pedagogy: Notes Towards a Practice of (un)Becoming.” Canadian Literature, no. 263, 2025, pp. 221-242.

“Metastases.” The Contemporary Journal, no. 4, December 2022.

“Metastases: Writing Grief in the Midst of a Pandemic.” Wellcome Trust Centre for the Cultures and Environments of Heath, Exeter University, May 2022. (Supported by the Exeter-UBC Humanities Collaboration Fund)

“Call and Response.” Malahat Review, no. 170, 2010, pp. 29-34. (Winner of the Open Season Award for nonfiction; nominated by Malahat Review for a National Magazine Award.)

“Authentic Imposters: Molding the Mini-Me.” On Site, no. 23, 2010, p. 26. (Cultural Criticism)

“Making, Cruising, Dwelling: Motion as Shelter in the Work of David Wojnarowicz.”Performance Research, vol. 10, no. 4, 2005, pp. 155-169.

“Marrow: 1-9.” Tessera, nos. 33/34, 2003, pp. 71-80. (Creative Nonfiction)

“The Indignity of Speaking: The Poetics of Representation in Erin Mouré’s ‘Seebe.’” Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews, no. 47, 2000, pp. 70-83.

Recent Conference Presentations

“Gender, Life Writing, Vulnerability: Violence and Difference in the Post-Secondary Classroom.” Canadian Association for Studies in Discourse and Writing/Association Canadienne de Rédactologie (CASDW), Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, UQAM, Montreal. June 2024.

“Ekphrasis, Gender, and Transformation in Lars Horn’s Voice of the Fish.” ACCUTE, Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, York University. May 2023.

“The Wavering Line: Relational Embodiment in the Work of Margaret Kilgallen.” International Comics Conference: “Isolation, Arts, Engagement,” hosted in collaboration with PULSE: Centre for the Medical and Health Humanities of The CLUE+ Interfaculty Research Institute for Culture, Cognition, History and Heritage, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, October 2022.

“Trauma, Affect, and Rupture in Multimodal Texts: Teaching Graphic Medicine in the Arts and Humanities.” Teaching Life Writing Conference: A Virtual Conference on Nonfiction and Pedagogy, University of Alberta, December 2020.

“After the End: Interminable Grief in the Graphic Memoirs of Anders Nilsen.” Chronicity and Crisis, Montclair State University. October 2019.

“Maureen and Melancholia: Violence, Misogyny, and Power in the Garnethill Trilogy.” Captivating Criminality 4, Bath Spa University, July 2017.

Graduate Supervisions

Alana Firedancer, “Re-imagining Death: Indigenous Speculative Fiction as a Practice of Care and Healing,” MA Thesis, IGS, co-supervised with Dr. Allison Hargreaves, 2024-Present.

Nida Firdaus, “Kamathipura Counterpublics: Sex Work, Resistance, and Ambiguous Empowerment.” MA IRP, 2025-Present.

Kyla Morris, “Mirrors, Medusas, and Mad Mothers: Theorizing Heterotopic Motherhood in Angela Carter,” MA Thesis, co-supervised with Dr. George Grinnell, 2019-21.

Grace Cleveland, “Unsettling Pedagogies,” MA IRP, co-supervised with Dr. Allison Hargreaves, 2014.

Undergraduate Supervisions

Nimrat Dhaliwal, “The Revolution Will Be Cringe: The Weaponization and Radical Reclamation of Cringe,” 2025-26.

Alyssa Rexin. “Beyond Tea and Sympathy: Narrative Empathy in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.” 2025-26.

Kyra Larsen. “’Different Things Can Be Sad, It’s Not All War’: Gendered Pain in Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women and Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, 2024-25.

Maren McIntosh. “Afterlives of Inanimate Women: The “Pygmalion” Narrative in Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things, 2024-25.

Leanne Smeltzer. “Inclined to Embroider: Narrative Structures and the Battle for Truth in Alias Grace,” 2023-24.

McKenna King. “‘Luckily, he kept a journal’: Family as Collective Autobiography,” 2023-24.

Madeline Grove. “Sex and Power in Erotic Fiction: A Threesome Fairytale.” International Undergraduate Research Award, FCCS. Summer 2023.

Gillianne Hardy-Legault, “Creating Culture through Commodities: Identity Formation in High Fidelity and Confessions of a Shopaholic,” 2018. English Honours.

Alexandria Hofer, “Genre, Gender, and Trauma in Marvel’s Jessica Jones,” 2017. English Honours.

Selected Grants & Awards

2015 FCCS Award for Excellence in Teaching, UBC Okanagan

2010 The Malahat Review’s Open Season Award for Creative Nonfiction

2009 William Hardy Alexander Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, University of Alberta (one granted per year, across the university)

2009 Faculty of Arts Contract Instructor Teaching Award, University of Alberta

2003  Faculty of Arts Graduate Student Teaching Award, University of Alberta

2000-2001 Province of Alberta Graduate Fellowship, University of Alberta

1998-2000 SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, University of Alberta

1998-2000 Honorary Izaak Killam Memorial Fellowship, University of Alberta

1998-2000 Walter H. Johns Graduate Fellowship, University of Alberta

1996-1998 Province of Alberta Graduate Fellowship, University of Alberta

1996-1998 University of Alberta PhD Scholarship

1995-1996 University of British Columbia Graduate Fellowship