Assistant Professor
Office: SS 1006
Phone: (403) 220-5483
sforlini [at] ucalgary [dot] ca

Professional Description

My primary area of research and teaching is late Victorian literature and culture, but my interest in science, thing theory, and techno-culture (the ways in which our use of new technologies transforms our world) often leads me to examine earlier Romantic texts and to look for resonances in late twentieth-century popular literature, especially gothic and/or science fiction.  I am particularly interested in cultivating a cross-disciplinary and historically-comparative approach to fiction that engages with scientific and/or technological discourses as a means of interrogating shifting understandings of materiality.

Beginning in the 2008-2009 academic year, I will broaden my work in material culture by exploring the figure of the collector through Bob Gibson's illustrated anthologies of collected science fiction stories (part of U of C's special collections) and through the examination of the increasingly popular material practice known as steampunk-a practice that defamiliarizes past and present in its refurbishing of contemporary technological objects so that they resemble Victorian objects.  My secondary interests include critical theory, nineteenth and twentieth-century environmental writing, and recent Canadian women's writing.

Beyond ensuring that students develop a solid base knowledge of a wide range of literary texts, theoretical orientations, and the social, political, and aesthetic concerns of literary studies, I hope to foster historical sensitivity and a profound appreciation for literature and to encourage students to adopt a critical stance towards past and present cultural production. I enjoy teaching in a variety of areas, including critical theory, Romantic, Victorian, and contemporary literature.

Institutions Attended

PhD, MA - Simon Fraser University
BA, BSc - McGill University

Selected Publications

Articles:

"Modern Narratives and Decadent Objects of Exchange: R.L. Stevenson's The Dynamiter (1885), Arthur Machen's The Three Impostors (1895), and K.W. Jeter's Infernal Devices (1987)." Modernism/modernity (forthcoming September 2009).
"The Machinic-Human Body and Charlotte Mew's Aesthetic of (Dis)embodiment." Gothic Studies 5.1 (May 2003): 111-120.
"The Drama of the Open Mouth: The Quest for Punishment in Haggard's She." Borderlines: Studies in Literature and Film. Ed. Waclaw Osadnik and Andrzej Pitrus. Kraków: Rabid, 2003.
"What's the Matter with the Mother?: Interrogating the Mother-as-Sign in Gail Scott's Heroine and Nicole Brossard's Mauve Desert." Intercultural Journeys: Collected Papers of Comparative Canadian Literature Conferences, Université de Sherbrooke.  Ed. Natasha Dagenais and Joanna Daxell.  Baldwin Mills (Québec): Les Éditions Topeda Hill, 2003.

Book in preparation:

Decadent Things: Literature and Science at the Fin-de-Siècle.

Grants, Awards & Honours:

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship (2003-2006)

(Image of steampunk laptop keys: datamancer.net)