Laura Moss (BA, U of Toronto; MA U of Guelph, PhD Queen’s U)

(pronouns she/ her/ hers) is Professor of English at UBC where she teaches Canadian and African literatures. She is currently the Associate Dean, Students, in the Faculty of Arts.

Trained as a postcolonial theorist and a specialist in world literature written in English, her research concerns the contemporary literatures of Canada and South Africa. Her current research project is on “Climate Warnings: The Power of Canadian Environmental Art, Literature, and Creative Activism.”

She held the Brenda and David McLean Chair in Canadian Studies at UBC from 2019-21. Having been an associate editor of the journal Canadian Literature between 2004 and 2015, Moss became the editor-in-chief of the journal in 2015 and served until 2020. She was also a contributing editor to the Canlitguides.ca project for nine years. Other leadership positions include being the academic director of Congress 2019 (the Congress of Social Sciences and Humanities), held at UBC and boasting over 10,000 attendees, and serving as Chair of the UBC Canadian Studies Program and of the International Canadian Studies Centre from 2008-2011.

In addition to five edited books, Moss has published articles on the work of M.G. Vassanji, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood, Chinua Achebe, Rohinton Mistry, and Antje Krog, among others, and has written on narrative competence in medicine, literary pedagogy, public arts policy in Canada, and public memorials in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. She was awarded the UBC Killam Teaching Prize for 2013.

Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review
The journal strives to publish the top articles, poems, and opinion pieces in Canadian literary criticism. Its website quarter of a million http://canlit.ca/

CanLit Guides, contributing editor; member of collaborative team.CanLit Guides is an open-access online educational resource on the subject of Canadian Literature approached through the discourses of the journal. http://canlitguides.ca/

Selected Publications

• “Modified Seeds and Morphemes: Going from Farm to Page.” The Other Side(s) of 150. Ed. Sarah Henzi and  Linda Morra. Waterloo : Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2021. 66-79. Collection awarded the  2021 Prize for the Best Edited Collection in Canadian Studies by the Canadian Studies Network.
• “Infinitely Surveying CanLit.” Surveying CanLit: A Presentation-Interview Panel on Course Syllabi. Edited by Manina Jones and Laura Moss. Canadian Literature web, canlit.ca. (2020).https://canlit.ca/resources/special-projects/surveying-canlit-a-presentation-interview-panel-on-course-syllabi/#LauraMoss
• “25 Ways to Increase Your Chances at Publication.” Inside Higher Ed. Opinion. May 2019. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2019/05/15/how-increase-your-chances-getting-your-work-published-scholarly-journal-opinion.
• “On Not Refusing CanLit”  Refuse: CanLit in Ruins, Ed. Hannah McGregor, Julie Rak, and Erin Wunker. Toronto: Book*hug, Fall 2018. 146-148.
• CanLit Guides: The 2018 Collection. Co-edited by Kathryn Grafton, Ceilidh Hart, Laura Moss, and Shannon Smyrl. 16 new, peer reviewed chapters.  http://canlitguides.ca/chapter-categories/2018collection/ (Awarded the 2019 Scholarly and Research Communication Journal Innovation Award).
• “On Refugees, Running, and the Politics of Writing: An Interview with Lawrence Hill.” Laura Moss, Brendan McCormack, and Lucia Lorenzi. Canadian Literature 232 (Winter 2017): 11-27.
• * “‘Beyond the Hungry Edge’: An Interview with Daphne Marlatt.” Laura Moss and Gillian Jerome.  Studies in Canadian Literature 41.1 (2016): 248-65.
• * “From haa-huu-pah to the Decolonization Imperative: Responding to Contemporary Issues through the TRC.” Learn, Teach, Challenge: Approaching
• *“’A Science of Uncertainty’: Bioethics, Narrative Competence, and Turning to the ‘What If’ of Fiction.” Studies in Canadian Literature, Fall 2015. (forthcoming, 8000 words)
• “Tracking CanLit” Issue. L. Moss, Editor. Canadian Literature 220 (Spring 2014). Editorial “Auditing, Counting, and Tracking CanLit.” 6-15; “Contested Migrations” Issue, L. Moss, Editor. Canadian Literature 219 (Winter 2014). Editorial “Sustaining the Humanities.” 6-13; “Gendering the Archives” Special Issue, L. Moss, Editor. Canadian Literature 217 (Summer 2013). Editorial “Intro: Guy-Guys, CWILA, and Going Down the Hall to the Archives.” 6-16…
• *“Is Canada Postcolonial? Re-Asking Through ‘The Forgotten’ Project.” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, (Spring 2012, # 27). 47-65.
• *“Song and Dance No More: Tracking Canadian Multiculturalism Over Forty Years.” Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien 59, 2011. 35-57.
• Leaving the Shade of the Middle Ground: The Poetry of F.R. Scott. Selected and Edited by Laura Moss with a scholarly Introduction by Laura Moss and an Afterword by George Elliot Clarke, Wilfrid Laurier University Press Poetry Series, Waterloo: WLUP. 88 pp.
• Canadian Literature in English: Texts and Contexts (Volume 1: 1534-1920) (Volume 2: 1920-2008). Laura Moss and Cynthia Sugars, eds. Toronto: Pearson Education/ Penguin Academics, 2009.
• *”Reconsecrating Hybrid Ground in Wole Soyinka’s The Beatification of Area Boy.” The Postcolonial Lamp: Essays in Honour of D. S. Izevbaye. Eds. Aderemi Raji-Oyelade & Oyeniyi Okunoye. Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2008.
• *”Between Fractals and Rainbows of Truth: Criticizing Canadian Criticism.” Tropes and Territories: Short Fiction, Postcolonial Readings, Canadian Writing in Context, ed. Marta Dvorak & W.H. New. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2007: 17-32.
• Is Canada Postcolonial? Unsettling Canadian Literature. Laura Moss, ed. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2003. 368 pp. (2nd printing 2004)
• Brooke, Frances. The History of Emily Montague. Laura Moss, ed. Canadian Critical Editions Series, Ottawa: Borealis Press, 2001. 500 pp. (350 pp corrected edition of the novel, 150 pp. of scholarly apparatus). Includes preface (xi-xiii).

Laura Moss has taught classes on: Literary Economy, Multicultural Canadian Literature, Canadian Literature to 1967, Canadian Literature after 1967, World Literature Written in English, English Literature (1798-2000), Genre, Contemporary Canadian Literature, Canadian Studies, Postcolonial Studies, African Literatures, South African Literature, South African Theatre, J.M. Coetzee, South Asian Literature, Caribbean Literature, and Environmental Literature.

Moss has supervised and served on the committees of graduate students working on a wonderful range and eclectic mix of topics such as: Post-multiculturalism; the Newfoundland diaspora; Anglo-Indian Romance novels and the Raj Revival; Public Readers and Blogs; South Asian Canadian Literature; South African Protest Writing; Nineteenth-century Women’s Nature Writing; Yoruban Missionary Translations; the archives of J.M. Coetzee, Ryerson Press, and the Vancouver Poetry Society (not all together); Urban Writing in Vancouver; Asian North American Writing; Gothic Fiction; War Art; Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside; Canadian Modernism; Orality and Orature; Danish Postcolonialism; Mennonite Writing; and Canadian Englishes.