Faculty Success Stories
Student Success Stories
Recent Faculty Successes
Terry F. Robinson has won the 2024 Article Prize from the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (NCSA) for her article “Deaf Education and the Rise of English Melodrama,” from Essays in Romanticism 29.1 (April 2022)
Anna Thomas, awarded the 2024 Black Research Network's IGNITE grant.
Terry F. Robinson has won the 2023 James L. Clifford Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) for her article "Deaf Education and the Rise of English Melodrama,” published in Essays in Romanticism 29.1 (April 2022): 1-31.
This prestigious prize is awarded to an outstanding article in eighteenth-century studies published in the previous year—one that will be “interesting to any eighteenth-century specialist, regardless of discipline."
The latest issue of The Medium features a glowing feature article about our own Chris Koenig-Woodyard. Congratulations, Chris, on this terrific tribute to your influential teaching!
Avery Slater was part of an interdisciplinary panel of University of Toronto scholars at the first annual Technophilosophy September Soirée, to discuss the impacts of new technologies on the way we understand our world. Well done!
It is a pleasure to announce that our very own Daniel Wright is this year's recipients for the 2022 UTM Annual Research Prizes, which recognizes outstanding contributions of early career researchers and scholars in the Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities.
The Mystery Writers of America has nominated Richard Greene for the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Award in the Catagory of Best Critical/Biographical. Congratulation!
Maria Hupfield is co-curator of the Tree Protection Zone installation series on the future Indigenous Landscape project, by Hart House. Well done!
Melissa Gniadek’s book, Oceans at Home: Maritime and Domestic Fictions in Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Writing (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021) has been published. Congratulations!
Congratulations to Melissa Gniadek, and Terry Robinson on their tenure and promotion to Associate Professor!
On April 29, 2021 Professor Alexandra Gillespie was installed as the 10th Principal of the University of Toronto Mississauga. View a recording of the live premiere here.
Congratulations to Melissa Gniadek on publishing a book chapter, “Pym, Mammoth Cave, and (Pre)Histories of the U.S. Interior,” in Decolonizing “Prehistory”: Deep Time and Indigenous Knowledges in North America, ed. Gesa Mackenthun and Christen Mucher (University of Arizona Press, 2021), 71-88.
Melissa Gniadek’s “Sentimental Premonitions and Antebellum Spectacle” appeared in Apocalypse in American Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2020) a collection of essays edited by John Hay. Well done!
Congratulations to Jacob Gallagher-Ross and Lawrence Switzky, co-founders of the UTM Centre for New Theatre. Check out "Murder and madness: UTM students explore infamous Cecil Hotel in new audio drama" to read about a collaboration among Governor General's Award-winning playwright David Yee, Factory Theatre Artistic Director Nina Lee Aquino, and students from the TDS Program in E&D!
Congratulations to Daniel Wright on being elected to the Delegate Assembly of the Modern Language Association as regional delegate for New England & Eastern Canada, 2021-22!
Congratulations to Avery Slater on being elected to the Transdisciplinary Connections in Digital Humanities Committee of the Modern Language Association, 2021-22!
Congratulations to Jacob Gallagher-Ross on publishing a new article, "Twilight of the Idols," about the artist Deanna Bowen's art exhibition-as-theatrical-exposé, God of Gods: A Canadian Play. The article appears in Theater 50.3 (November 2020): 29-47.
Congratulations, Alexandra Gillespie, on finishing The Unfinished Book (Oxford University Press, 2021)! This collection of essays, which Alex co-edited with Deidre Lynch, includes Alex's chapter, "Turk's-Head Knots." And further congratulations on her essay, "Books and Booklessness in Chaucer's England," which has been published in The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Anjuli Raza Kolb's book Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror, 1817-2020 (University of Chicago Press, 2020) has been published. Congratulations!
Dan White's article, "The Case of the Nocturnal Amanuenses: New Evidence in the Wat Tyler Affair," came out in Modern Philology 118.2 (November 2020): 277-303. A 200-year-old mystery solved!
Congratulations to Mari Ruti on being elected to the Psychoanalysis Committee of the Modern Language Association, 2020-21!
Brent Wood has published a book on The Grateful Dead! Congratulations, Brent, on The Tragic Odes of Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead: Mystery Dances in the Magic Theater (Routledge, 2020).
Congratulations to Governor General's Award-winning poet Richard Greene, whose new biography of the novelist Graham Greene is being published in 2020 in the UK by Little, Brown as Russian Roulette: The Life and Times of Graham Greene and in North America by Norton as The Unquiet Englishman.
Chris Koenig-Woodyard's "Monsters, Mutants, and Mongrels: The Mixed-Race Hero in Monstress" appeared in Mixed-Race Superheroes, a collection of essays edited by Eric Berlatsky and Sika Dagbovie-Mullins (Rutgers University Press, 2020). Congratulations!
Huge congrats to Larry Switzky on the following publications: co-edited with Brett Gamboa, Shakespeare's Things: Shakespearean Theatre and the Non-Human World in History, Theory, and Performance (Routledge, 2019); co-authored with Veronika Ambros, "Hungry for Interpretation: Woyzeck on the Highveld and the Polyphony of Performance," Theatralia 22.2 (2019): 39-58; "Tadeusz Kantor and the Early Directorial Avant-Garde: Craig, Schlemmer, Meyerhold," in Theatermachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context (Northwestern UP, 2020), 202-16; "ELIZA Effects: Pygmalion and the Early Development of Artificial Intelligence," SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies 40.1 (2020): 50-68.
In 2019, Jacob Gallagher-Ross was the content consultant for Crash Course Theater, the wildly popular fifty-episode web series about theatre history from the Crash Course and PBS Digital Studios. These videos have been watched by hundreds of thousands of theatre fans on Youtube. Congratulations!
Holger Syme's "A Sharers' Repertory" appeared in Rethinking Theatrical Documents in Shakespeare's England (London: Arden Shakespeare/Bloomsbury, 2019), 33-51, a collection of essays edited by Tiffany Stern. Congrats!
Mari Ruti's book Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan: A Dialogue, with Amy Allen (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019) came out. Congratulations!
Congratulations to Liza Blake on her digital scholarly edition, "Margaret Cavendish's Poems and Fancies," which appeared in 2019. Read more about it here!
Chris Koenig-Woodyard's "The Bone Clocks and the Mud of Humanity: The Anthropocene Bildungsroman" appeared in David Mitchell: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, a collection of essays edited by W. Knepper and C. Hopf (London, Bloomsbury: 2019), pages 149-63.
Daniel Wright's article "Thomas Hardy’s Groundwork" appeared in PMLA 134.5 (Oct. 2019): 1028-41. Congratulations!
Fellowships and Awards
Terry Robinson, awarded a Research and Scholarly Activity Fund grant, 2021-22
Daniel Wright, awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant, 2020-23
Alexandra Gillespie, awarded a Research and Scholarly Activity Fund grant, 2020-21.
Melissa Gniadek, along with Xine Yao (UCL), who received a University College London–University of Toronto Joint Research Projects and Exchange Activities Grant on the topic “Settler Colonialism in Global Contexts,” 2019-20.
Anjuli Raza Kolb, awarded a Connaught New Researcher Award, 2019-20
Avery Slater, awarded a Connaught New Researcher Award, 2019-20
Anna Thomas, awarded a Connaught New Researcher Award, 2019-20
Alexandra Gillespie, lead investigator, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant for "The Book and the Silk Roads," 2019–21
Alexandra Gillespie, collaborator, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant for "Early Modern Map of London," 2018–21
Alexandra Gillespie, awarded a Research and Scholarly Activity Fund grant, 2018-20
Liza Blake, awarded a Folger Long-Term Fellowship, 2018-19
Larry Switzky, winner of UTM's E.A. Robinson Teaching Excellence Award, 2017
Terry Robinson, "Becoming Somebody: Refashioning the Body Politic in Mary Robinson’s Nobody," winner of the Annibel Jenkins Prize for the Best Article in Performance and Theatre Studies and the Percy G. Adams Prize for the Best Article on an Eighteenth-Century Subject, 2017
Mari Ruti, The Ethics of Opting Out: Queer Theory's Defiant Subjects (Columbia UP, 2017), nominated for a Lambda Award
Melissa Gniadek, awarded a Connaught New Researcher Award, 2016–18.
Daniel Wright, awarded the John C. Polanyi Prize for Literature by the Ontario Council of Universities, 2016
Jacob Gallagher-Ross, "Mediating the Method," winner of the American Theatre and Drama Society's Vera Mowry Roberts Award for the best article of the year, 2016
Jacob Gallagher-Ross, winner (with his colleague Miriam Felton-Dansky) of the American Society for Theater Research's Collaborative Research Award, 2016
Alexandra Gillespie, awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant for "Digital Tools for Manuscript Study," 2015-18
Alexandra Gillespie, awarded a Research and Scholarly Activity Fund grant, 2015-16
Melissa Gniadek, awarded the Richard Beale Davis Prize for the best essay published in Early American Literature, 2015 for “Mary Howard’s Mark: Children’s Literature and the Scales of Reading the Pacific,” Early American Literature 50.3, Fall 2015. 797–826.
Chester Scoville, awarded an Early Career Teaching Fellowship, 2015
Alexandra Gillespie, principal investigator, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant, 2014-15
Dan White, awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant, 2013-17
Melissa Gniadek received an honorable mention for the Norman Foerster Prize for the best essay published in American Literature, 2014 for “Seriality and Settlement: Southworth, Lippard, and The Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley,” American Literature 86.1, March 2014. 31–59.
Alexandra Gillespie, principal investigator, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant, 2013-14
Alexandra Gillespie, awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant, 2011-15
Alexandra Gillespie, principal investigator, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant, 2010-13
Richard Greene, Boxing the Compass, winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry, 2010
Alexandra Gillespie, awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Aid to Research Workshops and Conferences Grant, 2009-10
Colin Hill, awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Strategic Knowledge Clusters Grant, 2008-15
Dan White, awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant, 2008-11
Alexandra Gillespie, awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant, 2007-09
Chris Koenig-Woodyard, Recipient, Undergraduate Teaching Award, Students' Administrative Council-Association of Part-Time Undergraduate Studies, University of Toronto, 2006
Alexandra Gillespie, awarded a Connaught New Staff Matching Grant, 2005-08
Geoff Bouvier, awarded the APR/Honickman Prize for an outstanding first book of poetry, 2005
Colin Hill, awarded a Connaught New Staff Matching Grant, 2005-2006
Colin Hill, awarded a Connaught New Researcher Award, 2004-2005
Dan White, awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Standard Research Grant, 2003-2006
Dan White, awarded a Connaught New Staff Matching Grant, 2001-2002
Recent Student Successes
Congratulations to Kaitlyn Matthews, winner of the 2023 Harold Sonny Ladoo Book Prize for Creative Writing and we would like to give Sam Samuels Honourable Mention for their poetry collection, Post-Funeral Dance.
Congratulations to Mahnoor Khurram who is the 2023 University of Toronto Mississauga Student Leadership award (UTMSLA).
Congratulations to Kaitlyn Harris, winner of the 2023 University of Toronto Student Leadership Award.
Check out Who's #NextUP? An Interview with E&D graduate Shalini Nanayakkara, now working at UBC Press.
UTM alum twins publish two young adult novels after graduating. Sarena and Sasha Nanua published their latest novel Daughters of the Dawn on Sept. 6. The book is the second in the Ria and Rani duology, with the first title Sisters of the Snake, released earlier this year by HarperCollins.
U of T Mississauga Theatre and Drama alumnus Mark Crawford, Joins Cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
We are very pleased to congratulate Veronika Sizovaon as the Dean's Excellence Award winner in the category of Writing Excellence. The Committee was very impressed with her ENG273H5S essay, “The Spider of Light Defeating the Totalitarian Darkness in Danticat’s The Dew Breaker”.
Congratulations to Ayomide Bayowa, Mississauga's newest poet laureate.
Congratulations to Stevie Lambert, who has won a Dean's Excellence Award for Creative Activity for three truly remarkable poems.
Congratulations to Miranda Wiseman, who has received the Dean's Excellence Award for 2019-20 in the category of Creative Activity for "On These, I Cry," which she wrote for Professor Daniela Janes' ENG215H The Canadian Short Story.
Congratulations to Matt Maguire, who has received the Dean's Excellence Award for 2019-20 in the category of Writing Excellence for "Moon Grammar: Myth and Identity in Mann's Joseph Novels," which he wrote for an ENG390Y Individual Studies course directed by Professor Raji Soni on the subject of "The Modern Novel between Religious and Literary Criticism."
Congratulations to Alisa Samuel, who is completing a minor in Drama. Alisa wrote a lyric essay for a creative writing course taught by Professor Geoff Bouvier in 2019-20, and the essay has just been published in one of Canada's premier literary journals, The Puritan.
Congratulations to Rebecca Zseder for being the recipient of the Outstanding Program Performance Award for 2019-2020.
Congratulations to Zaynab Al-Kari for being the recipient of the 2019-20 Harold Sonny Ladoo Book Prize for Creative Writing for her collection of poems entitled "Season's of Grief."
Congratulations to Shayan Mehri for being awarded The R.W. Van Fossen Award in English (2019-2020).
Past Student Successes
Congratulations to Serah Louis on the publication of her story “Unveiling the Night” in Ricepaper Magazine’s Book Immersion: An Asian Anthology of Love, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction (2019).
Huge congrats to Arielle Kersey, winner of both the Dean's Excellence Award in the category of Writing Excellence for "Anonymous Women and Self-Abjection in Bleak House" and the President's Involvement Award, both in 2019.
Congratulations to Maryam Al-Juboori for being the recipient of the 2018-19 Harold Sonny Ladoo Book Prize for Creative Writing for her short story entitled "Fireworks."
Special Mention to Magdalena Partyka for her submission of Poems for the 2018-19 Harold Sonny Ladoo Book Prize for Creative Writing.
Commendations for the 2018-19 Harold Sonny Ladoo Book Prize for Creative Writing submissions from Mariam Hanna for her collections of poems entitled Snapshots or Nostalgia and Syeda Muhaddisah Batool for the short story entitled A Convincing December.
Congratulations to Shalini Nanayakkara on her successful application to UTM's Undergraduate Research Competition for her project entitled Elemental Criticism: Manfred and Modern Fantasy.
Congratulations to Maria Popa for being the recipient of the 2017 Harold Sunny Ladoo Book Prize for her submission of Poems.
Special Mention for the 2017 Harold Sunny Ladoo Book Prize to: Shaquille Reynolds-Pottinger for her submission of Poems and Susana Correia for her synopsis entitled "The Darkness Over Clay Hill."
Congratulations to TDS grad Mercedes Morris who won the Douglas Campbell Award to Assist in the Creation of Theatre for her work with Act Out Youth Theatre at Stratford’s Tyrone Guthie Awards event (Sept 2017).
Congratulations to Qasim Khan for winning the Jean A. Chalmers Theatre Training Award at Stratford’s Tyrone Guthie Awards event (Sept 2017).
Congratulations to Mehak Kawatra, winner of UTM's Founder's Medal for top graduating student - all disciplines - in 2017! Mehak, we are so, so, so proud of you. It couldn't be more deserved. Click here for an interview with Mehak as she reflects on her time at UTM and in the Department of English & Drama.
Congratulations to Maria Popa, E&D graduate, for winning the E.A. Robinson Medal for the best student in the humanities at UTM in 2017. What an amazing achievement Maria, congratulations! We are all extremely proud.
Congratulations to Gabriela Caballero for being selected as The R.W. Van Fossen Award in English recipient for 2016-17.
Congratulations to Mehak Kawatra for being selected as a 2017 Gordon Cressy Student Leadership Award winner! Mehak has demonstrated great leadership potential and a commitment to making the U of T community a great place.
Congratulations to Merium Khan for being awarded the V.A. De Luca Book Prize (2016) for outstanding written work entitled "'A World of Worlds, as Pendents in each Eare': Poetic Vitalism in Cavendish’s Poems, and Fancies."
Congratulations to Jessica Marie Giles for being awarded the V.A. De Luca Book Prize (2016) for outstanding written work entitled "Narrative Loop Rhizomes: Paradoxical Agency and Design in Aisle and The Stanley Parable".
Congratulations to Paul Helmut for being awarded the 2016 Harold Sonny Ladoo Book Prize for Creative Writing for outstanding written work for his "The Scheme of These Three Doors"
Congratulations to David Yee (TDS graduate) as winner of the 2015 Governor General’s Award for Drama – for carried away on the crest of a wave, first produced at the Tarragon Theatre and published by Playwrights Canada Press.
Congratulations to Julianna Chianelli for being awarded the V.A. De Luca Book Prize (2015) for "Phyllis Webb's Poetry of Resistance and its Power to Redeem the Female Poet", for ENG354Y Canadian Poetry.
Congratulations to Hailey Gillis (graduated in 2013) for being nominated in the Music Theatre Division as a key member of the amazing Ensemble in Albert Shultz's production of the new music drama Spoon River for the Soulpepper Theatre Company.
Congratulations to Chiamaka G. Ugwu (graduated in 2014) for being nominated in the Independent Theatre Division as one of the equally amazing Ensemble in the Soheil Parsa production of the Lorca classic Blood Wedding for the Modern Times Stage Company and Aluna Theatre.
Congratulations to Yasmin Jajarmi for being one of the two winners to receive the Dean’s Excellence Award for writing excellence.
Congratulations to Sarah Israr for being the recipient of the 2014 Harold Sonny Ladoo Prize for Creative Writing for the submission of The Secret Society, an engaging and, in many respects, accomplished fantasy novel!
Congratulations to Paige Maria McPhee for an Honourable Mention for the 2014 Harold Sonny Ladoo Prize for Creative Writing for a moving and subtle poem entitled The Weigh In.
Congratulations to Daniel Jeffrey Goodman for an Honourable Mention for the 2014 Harold Sonny Ladoo Prize for Creative Writing for a playful and experimental prose piece entitled Pedestrians.
Congratulations to Cherylann Cawthorn for being the recipient of the 2013 V.A. De Luca Book Prize for "Labelling 'Insanity' in How I spent My Summer Holidays by W. O Mitchell and Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje," written for ENG353Y5Y, taught by Professor Brent Wood.
Congratulations to Victoria MacFarlane for being the recipient of the 2013 Harold Sonny Ladoo Prize for Creative Writing for the submission of the novella/long story "Sparks Fly Up".
Congratulations to Luke Sawczak for an Honourable Mention for the 2013 Harold Sonny Ladoo Prize for Creative Writing for the collection of poems entitled "Mississauga in Sepia.
Congratulations to TDS Students at LA Web Fest: Jason Leaver's indie web soap opera OUT WITH DAD, featuring 2009 grad Kate Conway with current students Lindsey Middleton and Elizabeth Stuart-Morris, won special recognition at the LA Web Fest in California last weekend. Along with three other Canadian series, it will now move on to the Marseille Web Fest, the Emmys of the web series world.
Congratulations to Ms Devani Singh, one of our recent graduates who is one of only 60 international scholars awarded an extremely competitive Gates Scholarship (see p. 56!) in 2011 for graduate study at the University of Cambridge.
Congratulations to Qasim Khan (graduated in 2008) for being nominated for Outstanding Individual Performance in the Theatre for Young Audiences Division for his work in Beneath the Banyan Tree for Theatre Direct in 2009.