Margery Fee
Wall Associate
Professor Margery Fee has shaped national understanding of Canadian literature, culture and regional and national forms of Canadian English usage. She has also become an influential figure within global indigenous and postcolonial studies, as measured in her numerous publications, research grants, editorships and plenary addresses.
Dr. Fee completed her doctorate in English at the University of Toronto in 1981. Since taking up her position at The University of British Columbia (UBC) as an Associate Professor in 1993, she has held a number of prominent administrative positions in the Faculty of Arts at the same time as maintaining her role as a highly productive and innovative scholar.
Primary Recipient Awards
Co-Principal Investigator Awards
Hortense Spillers is the foremost African-American scholar in North America. She is a renown feminist scholar and a widely read critical theorist whose influence is felt across the humanities. PhD students at UBC are writing dissertations informed by her theoretical reflections in the fields of critical race studies and feminism in English and GRSJ. Faculty whose work already bears the stamp of her influence and who would be uniquely positioned to work with her to advance their own research agendas but also to forge new ones include: Dr. Denise Ferreira da Silva, who shares the field of black feminism, Dr. Phanuel Antwi, who works on black performance arts, Dr. Jeff Severs, who works in African-American literature, Dr. Chris Lee, who works in USA ethnic studies, Dr. Vanessa Androetti, whose critical education practice is indebted to postcolonial and black feminist work, Dr. Dory Nason, in FNIS and Dr. John Culbert, a writer and award-winning scholar much influenced by Spillers. The new synergy that will be the focus of our encounter is to envision the future of a critical/creative theory and practice-based research project in the Institute for Social Justice. We will explore alternatives to the revolutionary model that has dominated our field and with Dr. Spillers we will outline a set of approaches and questions to orient our thinking of social transformation through collaboration between literary practices and theoretical ones.
While Kylie Thomas is at UBC she will work together with Dr Sarah Hunt (Assistant Professor in First Nations and Indigenous Studies and in the Department of Geography) to facilitate a workshop on photography and resistance with two-spirit youth. She will also share her recent work on the contemporary student movements campaigning for the decolonisation of universities in the aftermath of apartheid, and on the powerful ways in which queer activists have responded to the rape and murder of LGBTQI people in South Africa.
She has also developed a collaborative research project with Dr. Shannon Walsh on the history of HIV and AIDS activism in South Africa, a subject that has been at the centre of both their research for close to twenty years. She met with Dr Walsh during her research visit to South Africa in August 2018 and began to work on a proposal for a collaborative book project that focuses on the visual history of the South African HIV and AIDS epidemic.
Dr. Thomas is keen to engage with students and faculty at UBC who are working on social justice issues in Canada.