Dr. Angela Failler

Dr. Angela Failler is Chancellor's Research Chair, Associate Professor and Department Chair of Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg. She also teaches and supervises for the MA Program in Cultural Studies, and is a Research Affiliate with the Institute for Women's and Gender Studies. Her current research involves the politics of public memory surrounding the 1985 Air India bombings. She is also interested in phenomena at the intersection of culture, embodiment and psychical life and has published writings on anorexia and self-harm in this vein. Most recently, she has taken lead of a collaborative research project to encourage public engagement with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Dr. Failler teaches in the areas of communications and media, cultural studies, feminist theory and queer theory.


Website:

http://ion.uwinnipeg.ca/~afailler/index.html


Education:

PhD - York University

MA - Dalhousie University

BA - University of Saskatchewan

Teaching Schedule:

WGS 4004 (3) Feminism and Cultural Studies (Fall 2013)

WGS 3302 (3) Feminisms: Current Perspectives (Winter 2014)

Featured Courses:

Thinking through the Skin: Culture, Embodiment and Psychic Life
This seminar course is an interdisciplinary study of the significance of human skin. Observations are drawn from various theoretical perspectives including phenomenology, psychoanalysis, postcolonial theory and feminist gender studies to explore the skin’s capacity to bear multiple meanings as they materialize at the intersection of culture, embodiment, and psychic life. Alongside critical literature and examples from popular culture, creative texts including short fiction, film, and video art are used to animate class discussions. Topics for study may include racialization and the production of national skins, sexed and gendered skins, eroticized skins, aging skins, skin memories, body modification and cosmetic surgery, artificial skins, cyber-skins, traumatized/injured skins, self-harm, skin dis-ease, and “narrative skin repair.”

Queer Studies in the Global Postmodern
This seminar course introduces queer theories in the context of global postmodern culture. It builds on the premise that sex, gender, and sexuality intersect with other relations such as class, disability, race, ethnicity, citizenship, language, and religion. Course materials trace foundational texts in queer theory from feminist, poststructuralist, and gay and lesbian studies, as well as developments that have emerged in light of bisexual, transgender, indigenous, postcolonial, and diasporic critiques. This course also insists upon the relevance of queer studies for considering conflicts of national and trans-national consequence including neo-colonialism, globalization, citizenship, immigration, war, terrorism, and human rights. 

Publications:

Books:

Cavanagh, S.L., Hurst, R.A.J. and Failler, A. (Eds.) (2013).  Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis. Houndmills (UK) and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Articles and Book Chapters:

Failler, A. (2013). Narrative Skin Repair: Bearing Witness to Mediatized Representations of Self -Harm. In Cavanagh, S.L., Hurst, R.A.J. and Failler, A. (Eds.) Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis (pp.167-187). Houndmills (UK) and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Cavanagh, S.L., Hurst, R.A.J. and Failler, A. (Eds.) (2013). Introduction. Enfolded: Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis. In Cavanagh, S.L., Hurst, R.A.J. and Failler, A. Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis (pp.1-15). Houndmills (UK) and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Failler, A. (2012). “War-on-terror” frames of remembrance: the 1985 Air India bombings after 9/11. Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 27 (Spring 2012), 253-270.

Failler, A. with artwork by E. Marjara. (2010). "Remember me nought": The 1985 Air India bombings and cultural Nachträglichkeit. Public: Art/Culture/Ideas, 42, 113-124.

Failler, A. (2009). Remembering the Air India disaster: Memorial and counter-memorial. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 31(3-4), 150-176.

Failler, A. (2009). Reflective nostalgia: “Homesickness” and mourning in Eisha Marjara's Desperately Seeking Helen. Proceedings of the Eleventh Cultural Studies Symposium:“Memory and Nostalgia” (pp.27-36). Izmir, Turkey: Ege University Press.

Failler, A. (2009). Racial grief and melancholic agency. In Campbell, S., Meynell, L., & Sherwin, S (Eds.), Agency and embodiment (pp.46-57). Philadelphia: Penn State University Press.

Failler, A. (2009). Narrative skin repair: bearing witness to representations of self-harm. English Studies in Canada, 34 (1), 11-28.

Failler, A. (2009). “Too broke to answer the phone”: Reporting the “death” of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. In Trimble L. & Sampert, S. (Eds.), Mediating Canadian politics (pp.219-238). Toronto: Pearson Education Canada.

Failler, A. (2006). Appetizing loss: Anorexia as an experiment in living. Eating Disorders 14, 99-107.

Failler, A. (2005). Excitable speech: Judith Butler, Mae West and Sexual Innuendo. In Blumenfeld, W.J. & Soenser Breen, M (Eds.), Butler matters: Judith Butler’s impact on feminist and queer studies since Gender Trouble (pp.95-109). Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing. (Originally printed in International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies, 6 (1-2), 49-62.

Reviews:

Failler, A. (2002). Frances L. Restuccia’s Melancholics in love: Representing women’s depression and domestic abuse. Book review. Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society, 7 (2), 361-364.

Failler, A. (2000). Critiques of gay and lesbian cultures. In Murphy, T. (Ed.), Reader’s guide to lesbian and gay studies (pp.169-171). London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers.

Failler, A. (2000). Sexual orientation: Psychological accounts. In Murphy, T. (Ed.), Reader’s guide to lesbian and gay studies (pp.542-544). London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers.

Failler, A. (1998). Clare Whatling’s Screen dreams: Fantasising lesbians in film. Book Review. Atlantis: A Women’s Studies Journal, 23 (1), 168-169.