Landscapes: places of memory, subversive spaces, and boundary crossings. Guest Editor with Dara Culhane, with editors’ Introduction. Special issue of the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies Studies / Revue canadienne d'études irlandaises 39 (2015): 276 pp.
Willeen Keough
Professor
Office: AQ 6231
Telephone: 778-782-4534
Email: wkeough@sfu.ca
Areas of Study: BRITAIN AND IRELAND, CANADA
Courses
Spring 2024
Future courses may be subject to change.
Biography
I was born on the eastern edge of the easternmost province, where iron cliff-face meets the roiling waters of the North Atlantic. I am the granddaughter of fishers, and the daughter of a one-room-schoolteacher (later, human rights commissioner) and a cooperative fieldworker/labour newspaper editor (later, cabinet minister), who met when they were working on another west coast, in a resettled community on the Port-au-Port Peninsula. My own working background has been eclectic. I've been a barmaid, a teacher of music and dance, a researcher/writer, copy-editor, legal assistant, and secondary teacher before settling into academia. I came to Simon Fraser University in 2005 and currently live in Kitsilano. I am still amazed to find myself in a place where I must face west to see the ocean and north to see the "Southside Hills."
Research Interests
Negotiations of gender and ethnicity; contested ethnic terrains and communal violence; interaction between formal and informal belief systems; cultural memory.
Books and Edited Collections
-
Gender History: Canadian Perspectives
Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2013 -
The Slender Thread: Irish Women on the Southern Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, 1750-1860
New York: Columbia University Press, 2006
Articles and Chapters
- “Sea Shepherds, Eco-warriors, and Impresarios: The Performance of Eco-masculinity in the Canadian Seal Hunt of the Late Twentieth Century.” In Making Men, Making History: Canadian Masculinities Across Time and Place. Edited by Robert Rutherdale and Peter Gossage. Chapter 10. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018.
- “‘Long looked for, come at last’: Articulations of Whiteboyism and Ribbonism in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Newfoundland.” Irish Studies Review 26, no. 1 (2018): 5-23.
- “The Creation of the ‘Irish Loop’: Ethnicity, Collective Historical Memory, and Place.” In Heritage, Diaspora, and the Consumption of Culture: Movements in Irish Landscapes, ed. Rebecca Boyd and Diane Sabenacio Nititham-Tunney. Farnham, Surry: Ashgate, 2014.
- “‘Two brothers came out from Ireland...’: Relocating Irish-Newfoundland women from the periphery to the centre of the migration narrative.” In Changing Places: Relocation and Empathy, ed. Valerie Burton and Jean Guthrie. Toronto: Inanna Press, 2014.
- “Unpacking the discursive Irish woman immigrant in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Newfoundland.” Irish Studies Review 21, no. 1 (2013), Special Issue: New Perspectives on Women and the Irish Diaspora: 55-70.
- “Good looks don’t boil the pot”: Irish-Newfoundland women as fish(-producing) wives.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 37, no. 3 (2012): 536-44.
- “(Re-)telling Newfoundland Sealing Masculinity: Narrative and Counter-narrative,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Society 21, no. 1 (2010): 131-50.
- "Contested Terrains: Ethnic and Gendered Spaces in the Harbour Grace Affray," Canadian Historical Review 90, no. 1 (2009): 29-70.
- "Creating the 'Irish Loop': Cultural Renaissance or Commodification of Ethnic Identity in an Imagined Tourist Landscape?" Canadian Journal of Irish Studies / Revue canadienne d'Ètudes irlandaises 34, no. 2 (Fall 2008): 5-24.
- "The 'Old Hag' Revisits St. Brigid: Irish-Newfoundland Women and the Spiritual Life of Southern Avalon Communities," in Weather's Edge: A Compendium of Women's Lives in Newfoundland and Labrador , ed. Linda Cullum, Carmelita McGrath, and Marilyn Porter (St. John's: Killick Press, 2006): 11-22.
- "'Now you vagabond [w]hore I have you': Plebeian Women, Assault Cases, and Gender and Class Relations on the Southern Avalon, 1750-1860," in Two Islands: The Legal Histories of Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, ed. Christopher English (Toronto: University of Toronto Press with the Osgoode Society, 2006): 237-71.
- "Ethnicity as Intercultural Dialogue in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Newfoundland." Canadian Journal of Irish Studies / Revue canadienne d'Ètudes irlandaises 31, no.1 (Spring 2005): 18-28.
- "The Riddle of Peggy Mountain: The Regulation of Irish Women's Sexuality on the Southern Avalon, 1750-1860." Acadiensis 31, no.2 (spring 2002): 36-70. Reprinted in R. Douglas Francis and Donald B. Smith, eds., Readings in Canadian History: Pre-Confederation, 7th ed. (Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2007).
- "The 'Old Hag' Meets St. Brigid: Irish Women and the Intersection of Belief Systems on the Southern Avalon." An Nasc 15 (Spring 2001): 12-25.
- "Bringing Ordinary Lives out from the Shadows: Court Records, Oral History, and Irish Women on the Southern Avalon." The Newfoundland Ancestor 15, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 181-92.
- "Essay Evocation," in 3817: gender evocations, ed. Astrid Brunner (Halifax: AB Collector Publishing, 1995), 1-4.
Blog Post
- “If a sealer talks about conservation, does anybody hear?" The Otter / NICHE, 30 November 2015.
Areas of Graduate Supervision:
Irish and Canadian history, with special interests in gender, ethnicity, immigration, oral history, cultural history, and the politics of memory.
Teaching Interests
Pre-Confederation Canadian History; Ireland from Penal Era to Partition; Religion, Ethnicity, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Northern Ireland; Conceptualizing Atlantic Canada; Gender and History; Oral History-Theories and Practices. Creation and Re-creation of the Downtown Eastside.
Awards
- Dean's Medal for Academic Excellence, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, 2016.
- Co-investigator, SSHRC Partnership Development Grant - “Reclaiming the New Westminster Waterfront” 2012-15.
- SSHRC Aid to Research Workshops and Conferences in Canada Grant, 2010.
- SSHRC Standard Research Grant, 2008-2011. "Seal Wars: Conflicting Masculinities at the Labrador Front."
- President's Research Grant, 2005-7, Simon Fraser University.
- SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship and Research Grant, 2004-5.
- Postdoctoral Fellowship and Research Grant, Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2002-4.
- Gutenberg-e Prize, American Historical Association, 2003, for doctoral thesis.
- Certificate of Recognition of Excellence, School of Graduate Studies, Memorial, 2002.
- Fellow of the School of Graduate Studies, Memorial, 2001.
- SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, 1998-2001.
- ISER Doctoral Research Grant, 1998-99.
- ISER Student Essay Prize, 2000.
- Albert George Hatcher Memorial Scholarship, Memorial, 1997-98.
- Graduate Fellowship (Ph.D.), Memorial, 1997-2000 (declined).
- Graduate Fellowship (M.A.), Memorial, 1996-97.
- University Medal for Academic Excellence in Secondary Education, Memorial, 1996.