Kathleen Fernando has taught in the English Department since 2006. She teaches courses in Postcolonial literature and theory, South Asian literature, Caribbean literature, and Canadian Diasporic writing. Her research investigates the intersections between middle class notions of moral hygiene and religious constructions of purity/pollution that circulated in the years preceding, and following, Indian Independence/Partition. Women, gender and sexuality are thus central to her research, much of which is concerned with the role of South Asian women in the imperial and postcolonial imagination. She is currently working on changing her dissertation into a book length project.

Areas of Expertise

Post-colonial literature

Education

PhD York University
MA University of Illinois at Chicago
BA Goshen College

Courses Taught

ENGL 103/104 Silenced Histories

ENGL 103/104 Dirt and Disorder

ENGL 103 Representations of Race, Class and Gender in Post-colonial Literature

ENGL 265 Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures

ENGL 291 Decolonization and Violence

ENGL 291 Contesting Communalism: An Introduction to the South Asian Novel

ENGL 292 House and Home in Post-colonial Women's Writing