Jade Ferguson
Associate Professor
College of Arts, Interdisciplinary Programs
Areas of Specialization: 19th to mid-20th century Canadian literature, Civil Rights Movement literature and photography, Black Canadian Studies, Critical Race Studies.
Education
PhD English, Cornell University
MA English, Cornell University
BA English, University of British Columbia
Research and Teaching
My research interests include 19th to mid-20th century Canadian literature, Civil Rights Movement literature and photography, Black Canadian Studies, Sexuality, Gender, and Critical Race Studies. I am working on two monographs: the first is a cultural history of anti-black mob violence in Canada, Lynching in Canaan: Race, Violence, and Cultural Memory in Canada, and the second examines cultural representations of segregation and civil rights activism in Canada in literature, film, and photography, Jim Crow Canada: Segregation and Civil Rights in Canadian Literature and Art.
I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in early and contemporary Canadian literatures, including courses with experiential learning and/or community-engaged components. I am also core faculty in the Sexualities, Genders, and Social Change program and the Black Canadian Studies program. In 2016 and 2020, I was awarded the College of Arts Faculty Teaching Excellence Award. I supervise MA and PhD students in the areas of Canadian and US literatures, critical race theory, and gender and sexuality studies. I am on leave in the 2025/26 academic year.
Articles
"'This is our Alabama': Racial Segregation, Discrimination, and Violence in Tamio Wakayama's Signs of Life." The Global South 9.1 (Spring 2015): 124-146. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/623199/pdf
"Discounting Slavery: The Currency Wars, Minstrelsy, and 'The White N****r' in Thomas Chandler Haliburton's The Clockmaker." Parallel Encounters: Culture at the Canada-US Border. Editors Gillian Roberts and David Stirrup. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2014. https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/P/Parallel-Encounters2