Patricia Demers

Last updated

Dr. Patricia A. Demers, CM FRSC is a Canadian humanist and academic. She was the first female president of the Royal Society of Canada [1] serving from 2005 to 2007.

Contents

Early life and education

Demers grew up in Hamilton, Ontario, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and French and a Master of Arts degree from McMaster University. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa.

Career

After receiving her Ph.D., she taught for three years as a sessional instructor at the University of Alberta. She then became an assistant professor and is now a professor of English and Film Studies. Her research includes Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, 17th-century poetry, children's literature, and contemporary Canadian women's writing. [2]

From 1991 to 1993, she was Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, and from 1995 to 1998 she was Department Chair. From 1998 to 2002, she was Vice-President of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She was made a Fellow of Royal Society of Canada in 2000 and served as its first female president from 2005 to 2007. [3]

Selected publications

She is the author and editor of a number of scholarly publications including:

Awards and recognition

She was awarded the University of Alberta Rutherford Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the Arts Faculty Teaching Award, the McCalla Research Professorship Award, and the University Cup. [2] On June 30, 2016, Demers was made a Member of the Order of Canada by Governor General David Johnston for "her insightful contributions to the study of early works of English literature and for her service to the academic community." [4] [5]

Related Research Articles

Myrna Kostash is a Canadian writer and journalist. She has published several non-fiction books and written for many Canadian magazines including Chatelaine. Of Ukrainian descent, she was born in Edmonton, Alberta and educated at the University of Alberta, the University of Washington, and the University of Toronto. She resides in Edmonton, Alberta.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aritha Van Herk</span>

Aritha van Herk,, is a Canadian writer, critic, editor, public intellectual, and university professor. Her work often includes feminist themes, and depicts and analyzes the culture of western Canada.

Lisa Appignanesi is a British-Canadian writer, novelist, and campaigner for free expression. Until 2021, she was the Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, and is a former President of English PEN and Chair of the Freud Museum London. She chaired the 2017 Booker International Prize won by Olga Tokarczuk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nabaneeta Dev Sen</span> Indian writer and academic (1938–2019)

Nabaneeta Dev Sen was an Indian writer and academic. After studying arts and comparative literature, she moved to the USA where she studied further. She returned to India and taught at several universities and institutes as well as serving in various positions in literary institutes. She published more than 80 books in Bengali: poetry, novels, short stories, plays, literary criticism, personal essays, travelogues, humour writing, translations and children's literature. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2000 and the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1999.

Patricia Bizzell, Ph.D. is a Professor of English, emerita, and former Chairperson of the English Department at College of the Holy Cross, United States, where she taught from 1978 to 2019. She founded and directed the Writer's Workshop, a peer tutoring facility, and a writing-across-the-curriculum program. She directed the College Honors and English Honors programs and taught first-year composition, rhetoric and public speaking, nineteenth-century American literature, and women's literature. A scholar and writer, Bizzell has authored or co-authored half a dozen books, written dozens of articles and book chapters, composed more than a dozen book reviews and review essays, and presented a large number of papers at academic conferences. Bizzell is the 2008 winner of the CCCC Exemplar Award, and former president of Rhetoric Society of America.

Maggie Mary Gee is an English novelist. In 2012, she became a professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University.

Olive Patricia Dickason (1920–2011) was a Métis historian and journalist. She was the first scholar in Canada to receive a PHD in Indigenous history. She is known for writing one of the first textbooks about First Nations in Canada, Canada's First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from the Earliest Times.

Valerie Henitiuk is a scholar researching aspects of the intersection of translation studies, world literature, Inuit literature, Japanese literature, and women's writing. She is a Canadian citizen, currently Vice-President Academic & Provost at Concordia University of Edmonton. Henitiuk has been a visiting scholar at both Harvard and Columbia Universities in the US and at Kokugakuin University in Japan. She was previously Executive Director of the Centre for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence and Professor of English at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, on the faculty of the University of East Anglia (UK) and Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gail Sidonie Sobat</span> Canadian writer and international presenter (born 1961)

Gail Sidonie Sobat is a Canadian writer, educator, singer and performer. She is the founder and coordinator of YouthWrite, a writing camp for children, a non-profit and charitable society. Her poetry and fiction, for adults and young adults, are known for her controversial themes. For 2015, Sobat was one of two writers in residence with the Metro Edmonton Federation of Libraries. She is also the founder of the Spoken Word Youth Choir in Edmonton.

Madeleine Alberta Fritz was a Canadian palaeontologist. She was a professor at the University of Toronto, where she taught vertebrate studies in the department of Geology. Fritz's writing on the fossil Bryozoa along with her research on the stratigraphy of Toronto and the surrounding areas were major contributions to the geological field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patricia Jabbeh Wesley</span> Liberian professor and poet

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is a Liberian poet and writer and Professor of English and Creative Writing at Penn State University. She is a Liberian Civil War survivor who immigrated to the United States with her family in 1991, and the author of six books of poetry and a children's book, as well as an anthology editor. Jabbeh Wesley also founded, chairs, and teaches in the educational/humanitarian organization Young Scholars of Liberia.

Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo is a Nigerian author and educator, whose published work includes novels, poetry, short stories, books for children, essays and journalism. She is the winner of several awards in Nigeria, including the Nigeria Prize for Literature.

Myra Paperny is a Canadian author and former academic. After briefly reporting for the Vancouver Province and Vancouver News Herald in the early 1950s, Paperny taught creative writing at Mount Royal College and the University of Calgary between the mid 1950s and mid 1970s. Upon leaving academics, Paperny wrote multiple books between the 1970s to 2000s. Of her works, The Wooden People won the 1975 Little, Brown Children’s Book Award and the 1976 Canada Council Children's Literature Prize in the English language category.

Lorraine Janzen Kooistra is a Canadian professor of English and a member of the Yeates School of Graduate Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is the founding co-director of TMU's Centre for Digital Humanities. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2018.

Juliet McMaster is a Canadian scholar of eighteenth and nineteenth-century English literature, a specialist in Jane Austen, and Full Professor at the University of Alberta.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deanne Williams</span> Canadian author and literary scholar

Deanne Williams is a Canadian author and literary scholar. She is a Professor in York University's Department of English. A pioneer in early modern Girls' studies, she has published research on Shakespeare's girl characters and girl performers in medieval and early modern England, as well as on the influence of French culture on English literature.

Sarah Carter is a Canadian historian. She is Professor and the Henry Marshall Tory Chair at the University of Alberta in both the Department of History and Classics and the Faculty of Native Studies with noted specialties in Indigenous and women's history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patricia Phillippy</span> American professor

Patricia Berrahou Phillippy, FRHistS, is Professor of Material and Cultural Memories and Executive Director of Centre for Arts, Memory, and Communities at Coventry University. She is an expert in early modern English literature and culture, particularly early modern formulations of gender and identity.

Faye Hammill FRSE is a professor in the University of Glasgow, specialising in North American and British modern writing in the first half of the twentieth century, what is often called 'middlebrow'. Her recent focus is ocean liners in literature. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2021).

Ruth L. Collins-Nakai is a retired Canadian cardiologist, educator, researcher, physician leader, healthcare advisor, and public health advocate.

References

  1. "English professor Royal Society's first female president". University of Alberta.
  2. 1 2 Bev Betkowski (September 9, 2005). "Demers awarded University Cup". University of Alberta ExpressNews. Archived from the original on May 12, 2006.
  3. "Patricia Demers". Royal Society of Canada.
  4. Globe and Mail Staff (June 30, 2016). "Canada's Honour Roll". Globe and Mail.
  5. "Dr. Patricia Demers - Member of the Order of Canada". The Governor General Of Canada. 2017. Retrieved 2020-05-14.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
Professional and academic associations
Preceded by President of the Royal Society of Canada
2005–2007
Succeeded by