Angela Waldie

PhD candidate, Graduate Teaching Fellow
Office: SS 1031
Phone: (403) 220-6196
arwaldie [at] ucalgary [dot] ca

Institutions Attended

University of Calgary - PhD, English Literature (anticipated date of completion: August 2009)
Utah State University - MA, Literary Studies (2004)
University of British Columbia - BA, English Literature, minor in Canadian Studies (2000)

Research Interests

Species extinction, ecocriticism, ecopoetics, bioregionalism, literary ornithology, interdisciplinarity, western Canadian and American literature, historiographic metafiction, postcolonial literature.

Project Description

"Histories, like species, can go extinct," writes Christopher Cokinos in Hope Is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds (12). As extinction approaches, the last surviving members of a species are increasingly studied and storied. Yet while extensive research has been conducted on extinction in the biological sciences and the field of environmental history, little research has been devoted to this subject as it resonates within literature.  My dissertation will explore literary portrayals of extinction, questioning how these depictions memorialize vanished species and the extent to which they advocate for the preservation of species currently threatened. Although my primary texts will remain within the realms of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, my research will be informed by considerations of extinction in various disciplines, including environmental history, environmental philosophy, and ecology. As I believe the stories we tell about extinction are crucial to consciousness-raising, I hope my dissertation will provide a significant contribution to exploring humankind's response to a profound and accelerating loss of biodiversity.  My supervisor for this research is Dr. Jonathan Kertzer.

Selected Publications

Articles in Books

"Challenging the Confines: Haiku from the Prison Camps." Coming into Contact: Explorations in Ecocritical Theory and Practice. Ed. Adam Sweeting, Ian Marshall, Annie Ingram, and Dan Philippon. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2007. 39-57.

Book Reviews

Review of So this is the world & here I am in it by Di Brandt, The Goose 3.1 (Fall 2007).
Review of The Inner Green: Exploring Home in the Columbia Mountains by K. Linda Kivi and Eileen Delehanty Pearkes, The Goose 2.1 (Fall 2006).
Review of Even Mountains Vanish: Searching for Solace in an Age of Extinction by SueEllen Campbell, Western American Literature, Volume 41.1 (Spring 2006): 78-79.
Review of Phantom Lake: North of 54 by Birk Sproxton, The Goose 1.2 (Spring 2006).
Review of The Nature of Home by Lisa Knopp, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Volume 12.1 (Winter 2005): 279-80. 

Awards and Honours

J. Golden Taylor Prize for the best graduate student essay presented at the Western Literature Association Annual Conference for "Klondike Raconteur: Robert Kroetsch's (Re)citation of ‘The Shooting of Dan McGrew' in The Man from the Creeks," October 2006.
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship, September 2006-August 2008.
Honorary Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship, Killam Trusts, September 2006-August 2008.
Charles R. Steele Memorial Scholarship, University of Calgary English Department, September 2005-April 2006.
Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship, Killam Trusts, September 2004-August 2006.
Dean's Entrance Scholarship, University of Calgary, 2004.
Best paper presented by a graduate student at The Art of Gender in Everyday Life Conference, Idaho State University, for "Living on a Natural Stage: The Role of the Environment in Memoir Writing," March 2004.
Research Assistant of the Year, College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Utah State University, 2003-2004.
Western American Literature Fellowship, Utah State University, August 2002-July 2004.