Clara Joseph

Clara A.B. Joseph is professor of English at the University of Calgary with specializations in postcolonial studies, literary theory, and literature and religion. Her monograph, Christianity in India: The Anti-Colonial Turn, was published by Routledge in 2019. Her previous monograph, The Agent in the Margin (Wilfrid Laurier UP 2008), won the Aid [Awards] to Scholarly Publications Program of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and SSHRC; her articles have appeared in journals such as English Studies in Canada, World Englishes, and Research in African Literatures. She co-edited Global Fissures: Postcolonial Fusions (Rodopi, 2006), Theology and Literature: Rethinking Reader Responsibility (Palgrave MacMillan, 2006), and two journal special issues of World Literature Written in English (2002-2003) on postcolonial studies. Her books of poetry include the Levinasean long poem, The Face of the Other (IP, Brisbane 2016), and the collection of philosophical poems, Dandelions for Bhabha (IP, Brisbane 2019).  

Graduate Teaching and Supervision:

Dr. Joseph is winner of a 2012 Students' Union Teaching Excellence Award.  She has often been nominated for Graduate Supervisory and Teaching awards. She helps Graduate and Undergraduate students regularly with planning proposals for admissions, grant applications, and professionalization in general. Some of the graduate students have published in peer-refereed academic journals. This is what a student had to say about her teaching on a USRI: “Dr. Joseph goes out of her way to help students as much as possible in all areas, such as advice about scholarships and thesis topics. She pushes her students very hard, and the result is excellence for all.”

Dr. Joseph has supervised to timely and successful completion six BA Honours theses, four MA theses, and two PhD dissertation theses. Undergraduate students she mentored have gone on to win SSHRC grants and admission to graduate studies at prestigious universities.

Dr. Joseph’s classes highlight the relevance that literature and theory have for issues of universal Justice. Her teaching methodology, in general, involves lectures (accompanied by cool powerpoint presentations) and in-class and on-line discussions. Students who attend her classes have testified to having gained critical and communication skills and, even more, an enthusiasm for the subject on account of its relevance for their own ambitions and passions.

She will be interested in meeting with students who wish to work with her in the areas of Creative Writing, Postcolonial Studies, Ethics and Literary / Cultural Studies, Literary and Cultural Theory, Globalization, Religion and Literary/Cultural Studies, Feminism, South Asian Literature/Culture, Literatures in English or in Translation from India, Diasporic Literatures, etc.

• Courses