Dr. Wendy Roy is Bateman Professor in English. She works on issues of gender and culture in Canadian women's writing; her SSHRC-funded research project, Women of the Apocalypse: Writing the End of the World in Canada, focuses on apocalyptic and dystopian writing by Canadian women from the past 50 years to the present. 

The book resulting from her previous SSHRC research, The Next Instalment: Serials, Sequels, and Adaptations of Nellie L. McClung, L.M. Montgomery, and Mazo de la Roche, was published in 2019 by WLUP; it examines the cultural and social implications of serials, sequels, and adaptations of Montgomery (the Anne of Green Gables books), McClung (the Pearlie Watson trilogy), and de la Roche (the Jalna books). She has published a book on travel writing in Canada (Maps of Difference: Canada, Women, and Travel), as well as essays on Canadian writers including Carol Shields, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence, L. M. Montgomery, Nellie McClung, Mina Hubbard, and Anna Jameson, and she co-edited (with Susan Gingell) the 2012 collection Listening Up, Writing Down, and Looking Beyond: Interfaces of the Oral, Written, and Visual. See a more complete list of her publications below.

Professor Roy teaches classes in Canadian Literature, Canadian Fiction, and Canadian Drama. She has supervised PhD dissertations on Asian Canadian women's writing and on female bodies in Canadian women's short stories, and is currently supervising PhD dissertations on Atwood's dystopian novels, family in contemporary Canadian fiction, and violence in Canadian comic books. In addition, she has supervised MA projects on the novels of Carol Shields, Tomson Highway's Kiss of the Fur Queen, Mazo de la Roche's Whiteoaks of Jalna, Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy, and Anne Carson's Nox, as well as MA theses on the Indigenous presence on the land in three Canadian modernist novels, satire and revolution in Stephen Leacock's fiction, and nationalism in Canadian comic books. Professor Roy has also mentored a graduate student researcher from Brazil on a project on Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, an MA student from China researching Alice Munro's short stories, and faculty members from China researching Canadian women's short story cycles and abstract concepts in Canadian literature.

Dr. Roy won the 2009-10 Learning Communities Teaching Award, a 2015-16 College of Arts and Science Teaching Excellence Award, and a 2016 U of Saskatchewan Provost's Award for Outstanding Teaching. She is currently a member of the advisory board of Studies in Canadian Literature / Etudes en littérature canadienne; she is past-president of the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures / l'Assocation des littératures canadiennes et québecoise; and she was Head of the USask Department of English from 2017-2020.

Books:

The Next Instalment: Serials, Sequels, and Adaptations of Nellie L. McClung, L.M. Montgomery, and Mazo de la Roche. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2019. pp. 440. Finalist, Saskatchewan Book Awards Scholarly Writing Prize (2021) and Literary Encyclopedia Scholarly Book Prize (2021). 

Susan Gingell and Wendy Roy, editors and introduction. Listening Up, Writing Down, and Looking Beyond: Interfaces of the Oral, Written, and Visual. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012. pp. 388.

Maps of Difference: Canada, Women, and Travel. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005. Finalist, Saskatchewan Book Awards Scholarly Writing Prize (2005). pp. 304.

Peer-reviewed articles in books and journals:

"Trauma and the Ethics of Literary Culture in the Time of Pandemic: Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and Saleema Nawaz’s Songs for the End of the World." Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne vol. 47, no. 1,  2022, pp. 50-72.

"Advice to Writers in Carol Shields's Unless." Relating Carol Shields's Essays and Fiction: Crossing Borders, edited by Nora Foster Stovel, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2022, pp. 179-92.

“Food, Place, and Power in Timothy Taylor’s Stanley Park.” Canadian Culinary Imaginations, edited by Shelley Boyd and Dorothy Barenscott, McGill-Queen’s UP, 2020, pp. 162-82.

"Visual Arts and the Political World in P. K. Page's Brazilian Journal." Canadian Poetry 75 (2014): 61-82.

"Revisiting the Sequel: Carol Shields's Companion Novels." The Worlds of Carol Shields. Ed. David Staines. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2014. 63-89.

"Home as Middle Ground in Adaptations of Anne of Green Gables and Jalna." Special issue on Print Culture, Mobility, and the Middlebrow. International Journal of Canadian Studies 48 (2014): 9-31.

"The Literary Construction of Saskatchewan before 1905: Narratives of Trade, Rebellion, and Settlement." The Literary History of Saskatchewan. Vol. 1. Ed. David Carpenter. Regina: Coteau Books, 2013. 29-56.

"'The Power and the Paradox' of the Spoken Story: Challenges to the Tyranny of the Written in Contemporary Canadian Fiction." Listening Up, Writing Down, and Looking Beyond: Interfaces of the Oral, Written, and Visual. Ed. Susan Gingell and Wendy Roy. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012. 201-20.

Erin DeLathouwer, Wendy Roy, Ann Martin, and Jasmine Liska. "Multidisciplinary Collaboration Through Learning Communities: Navigating Anxiety." Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching 5 (2012): 27-32.

Wendy Roy and Jorge Calderon, editors and introduction. "Representations of First Nations and Métis in Canada." Special Dossier of International Journal of Canadian Studies 41 (2010): 181-312.

"The Word is Colander: Language Loss and Narrative Voice in Fictional Canadian Alzheimer's Narratives." Canadian Literature 203 (2009): 41-61.

"Misreading the Literary Evidence in Carol Shields's Mystery Plots." English Studies in Canada 34. 2-3 (2008): 113-129.

"Brenda Bowman at Dinner with Judy Chicago: Feminism and Needlework in Carol Shields's A Fairly Conventional Woman." Atlantis 33.1 (2008): 120-30.

"The Politics of Hunting in Canadian Women's Narratives of Travel." Other Selves: Animals in the Canadian Literary Imagination. Ed. Janice Fiamengo. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2007. 305-32.

"The Body of/as Evidence: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin, and the Feminist Literary Mystery." Margaret Atwood: The Open Eye. Ed. John Moss and Tobi Kozakwich. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2006. 361-71.

"Primacy, Technology, and Nationalism in Agnes Deans Cameron's The New North." Mosaic 38.2 (2005): 53-78.

"'The Ensign of the Mop and the Dustbin': The Maternal and the Material in Autobiographical Writings by Laura Goodman Salverson and Nellie McClung." Auto/biography in Canada. Ed. Julie Rak. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2005. 247-62.

"Visualizing Labrador: Maps, Photographs, and Geographical Naming in Mina Hubbard's A Woman's Way through Unknown Labrador." Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en Littérature Canadienne 29.1 ((2004) 13-34.

"'Here is the picture as well as I can paint it': Anna Jameson's Illustrations for Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada." Canadian Literature 177 (2003): 97-119.

"Autobiography as Critical Practice in The Stone Diaries." Carol Shields, Narrative Hunger, and the Possibilities of Fiction. Ed. Edward Eden and Dee Goertz. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. 113-46.

"Unless the World Changes: Carol Shields on Women's Silencing in Contemporary Culture." Carol Shields: The Arts of a Writing Life. Ed. Neil Besner. Winnipeg: Prairie Fire, 2003. 125-32.

"Anti-imperialism and Feminism in Margaret Laurence's African Writings." Canadian Literature (2001): 169: 33-57

Wendy Roy teaches classes in Canadian Literature, Canadian Fiction, and Canadian Drama.

Professor Roy has supervised PhD dissertations on Asian Canadian women's writing and on female bodies in Canadian women's short stories, and is currently supervising PhD dissertations on Atwood's dystopian novels, family in contemporary Canadian fiction, and violence in Canadian comic books. In addition, she has supervised MA projects on the novels of Carol Shields, Tomson Highway's Kiss of the Fur Queen, Mazo de la Roche's Whiteoaks of Jalna, Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy, and Anne Carson's Nox, as well as MA theses on the Indigenous presence on the land in three Canadian modernist novels, satire and revolution in Stephen Leacock's fiction, and nationalism in Canadian comic books. Professor Roy has also mentored a graduate student researcher from Brazil on a project on Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, an MA student from China researching Alice Munro's short stories, and faculty members from China researching Canadian women's short story cycles and abstract concepts in Canadian literature.

She won the 2009-10 Learning Communities Teaching Award, a 2015-16 College of Arts and Science Teaching Excellence Award, and a 2016 U of Saskatchewan Provost's Award for Outstanding Teaching.

Adaptations Apocalyptic and dystopian fiction Canada Canadian literature Feminism Popular culture Sequels Travel writing gender

Dr. Roy works on issues of gender and culture in Canadian women's writing. Her current SSHRC-funded research project, Women of the Apocalypse: Writing the End of the World in Canada, focuses on apocalyptic and dystopian writing by Canadian women from the past 50 years to the present. The book resulting from her previous SSHRC research, The Next Instalment: Serials, Sequels, and Adaptations of Nellie L. McClung, L.M. Montgomery, and Mazo de la Roche, was published in 2019 by WLUP; it examines the cultural and social implications of serials, sequels, and adaptations of Montgomery (the Anne of Green Gables books), McClung (the Pearlie Watson trilogy), and de la Roche (the Jalna books). 

She has published a book on travel writing in Canada (Maps of Difference: Canada, Women, and Travel), as well as essays on Canadian writers including Carol Shields, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence, L. M. Montgomery, Nellie McClung, Mina Hubbard, and Anna Jameson, and she co-edited (with Susan Gingell) the 2012 collection Listening Up, Writing Down, and Looking Beyond: Interfaces of the Oral, Written, and Visual. Click on the "More Information" tab for a complete list of her publications. 

Professor Roy is a member of the advisory board of Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne and is past-president of the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures / l'Assocation des littératures canadiennes et québécoise.

PhD, McGill University

M.A., University of Saskatchewan

B. Journalism, Carleton University

B.A. University of Regina