kitdobson

Upcoming! Spring book launches for Field Notes on Listening

15 June, 7-9pm: ALECC Conference, University of Saskatchewan

                        With Tanis MacDonald and Ariel Gordon

19 June, 2-4pm: The Thirsty Scholar, Saskatoon

                        With Tanis MacDonald and Aubrey Jean Hanson

20 June, 7-8pm: Regina Public Library, Central Branch, Regina

                        With Tanis MacDonald, Aubrey Jean Hanson, and Ken Wilson

21 June, 6-7pm: McNally Robinson Booksellers, Winnipeg

                        With Tanis MacDonald and Aubrey Jean Hanson

29 June, 7-9pm: Shelf Life Books, Calgary

                        With Kyle Flemmer and Shazia Hafiz Ramji

I am happy to announce the upcoming Field Notes on Listening, set to be published by Wolsak & Wynn in June. This book, a non-fiction sequence of essays, was written in large part during the earliest days of the pandemic. It is by far the most personal project that I have yet published. In it, I return to the northern Albertan landscape on which my family settled in order to bear witness to a world in ecological distress at a time of profound change.

Field Notes on Listening has already been featured on a trifecta of “most anticipated” spring lists, including from the CBC, 49th Shelf, and Quill & Quire. Launch events will be announced in due course.

Pre-orders for the book can be made here, directly from the publisher, as well as from local bookstores.

It’s a profound pleasure to be able to announce that the book All the Feels / Tous les sens: Affect and Writing in Canada / Affect et écriture au Canada has just been published by the University of Alberta Press. You can order this book directly from the Press here.

All the Feels / Tous les sens is a bilingual collection of essays that brings together fifteen contributors to discuss and analyze the impacts of affect and emotion on literary works in Canadian, Québécois, and Indigenous contexts. Along with my co-editors Marie Carrière (U Alberta) and Ursula Mathis-Moser (U Innsbruck), I am thrilled to bring this book out into the world.

The contributors to this book are: Nicole Brossard, Marie Carrière, Matthew Cormier, Kit Dobson, Nicoletta Dolce, Louise Dupré, Margery Fee, Ana María Fraile-Marcos, Smaro Kamboureli, Aaron Kreuter, Daniel Laforest, Carmen Mata Barreiro, Ursula Mathis-Moser, Heather Milne, Eric Schmaltz, Maïté Snauwaert, Jeanette den Toonder.

The folks over at Alberta Views have just published my essay, “Listening During a Time of Pandemic,” which derives from my time in self-isolation quarantine early on during the COVID-19 pandemic. You can read the piece here. Thank you to the people at the magazine for their editorial labours!

I’m pleased to announce the publication of the book Dissonant Methods: Undoing Discipline in the Humanities Classroom, just out with the University of Alberta Press. Co-edited with my colleague Ada Jaarsma, the edited collection of essays is the culmination of five years of labour. Sponsored by Mount Royal University‘s Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, this project began in earnest as a workshop at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

The contributors to the book are Kathy Cawsey, Kit Dobson, Ada S. Jaarsma, Rachel Jones, Kyle Kinaschuk, Namrata Mitra, Guy Obrecht, Katja K. Pettinen, Kaitlin Rothberger, Ely Shipley, and Martin Shuster. Across the chapters, assembled from different disciplines in the Arts, the thinkers assembled here challenge disciplinary formations and think about how disciplines themselves animate classroom structures. The goal is to push back against neoliberal forms of education that too often view educators simply as the deliverers of content rather than the vital forces that make learning itself possible.

I welcome any inquiries about the book for reviews or interviews — or just questions. The University of Alberta Press’ webpage for the book is here. I encourage you to place orders directly with the press!

Announcing Bertrand Bickersteth‘s debut poetry collection, The Response of Weeds: A Misplacement of Black Poetry on the Prairies from NeWest Press! I served as the Press Editor for this book. I am delighted to see it now out in print. Please read more about the book here. Due to the pandemic, NeWest has temporarily suspended online orders; instead, you can order the book here from All Lit Up — or ask your local indie bookseller!

The book has gotten some early raves, including blurbs from Suzette Mayr and Kaie Kellough. A starred review from Quill & Quire appeared just the other day. This is a great collection that does important work with Black prairie history, jazz, and Alberta’s waterways. Check it out as soon as the pandemic will allow!

I have just written for for rabble.ca about the circumstances facing the post-secondary sector here in Alberta. You can find the post, entitled “Alberta’s public education system needs support, not cuts, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic,” here. In short, my view is that ongoing cuts to the post-secondary sector are having a deleterious impact upon those of us who work in it — and especially upon our students, who deserve better.

The good folks over at All Lit Up have just posted an interview with me as part of their “Read the Provinces” series. Check it out here!

Forthcoming book announcement! All the Feels / Tous les sens: Affect and Writing in Canada / Affect et écriture au Canada, edited by Marie Carrière, Ursula Mathis-Moser, and yours truly. Expected spring 2020 from the University of Alberta Press. Read the Press’ page here.

I’m thrilled about this book. All the Feels / Tous les sens presents research into emotion and cognition in Canadian, Indigenous, and Québécois writings in English and French. The emerging field of affect studies makes vital claims about ethical impulses, social justice, and critical resistance, and thus much is at stake when readers adopt affective reading practices. The essays in this collection are whip-smart and vital (if I may say so!).

Contributors: Carmen Mata Barreiro, Nicole Brossard, Marie Carrière, Matthew Cormier, Kit Dobson, Nicoletta Dolce, Louise Dupré, Margery Fee, Ana María Fraile Marcos, Smaro Kamboureli, Aaron Kreuter, Daniel Laforest, Tanis MacDonald, Ursula Mathis-Moser, Heather Milne, Eric Schmaltz, Maïté Snauwaert, Jeanette den Toonder.

I’m pleased to announce that the collection of essays Dissonant Methods: Undoing Discipline in the Humanities Classroom, edited by Ada Jaarsma and your truly, is set to be published in the spring of 2020 by the University of Alberta Press. Please find the Press’ page about the book here.

Dissonant Methods is an innovative collection that probes how, by teaching inventively, post-secondary instructors can resist the constrictions of neoliberalism. Taking up the call in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning to understand teaching as scholarship, these essays offer concrete and practical meditations on resistant and sustainable teaching. The contributors seek to undermine forms of oppression frequently practised in higher education, and instead advance a vision of the university that upholds ideals such as critical thinking, creativity, and inclusivity. Essential reading for faculty and graduate students in the humanities, Dissonant Methods offers urgent, galvanizing ideas for anyone currently teaching in a college or university.

Contributors: Kathy Cawsey, Kit Dobson, Ada S. Jaarsma, Rachel Jones, Kyle Kinaschuk, Namrata Mitra, Guy Obrecht, Katja Pettinen, Kaitlin Rothberger, Ely Shipley, Martin Shuster.