Jamie Paris

• ENGL 1200 - Representative Literary Works: An Introduction to the Study of Literature
• ENGL 1400 - Thematic Approaches to the Study of Literature
• ENGL 2820 - Special Topics: Whiteness and Settler Identities
• ENGL 3800 - Special Topics: Shakespeare and Intersectionality
• ENGL 4630/7840 - What is Critical Race Theory

I am a neurodiverse, mixed-race (Black, Scottish, and Métis), ghetto kid who was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I grew up in the North End and I was the first person in my family to graduate from university, and now I get paid to read books and talk about poems and plays in a university.

My teaching is student centred and I use ungrading in my upper-year classes. My classes are respect based spaces that use an anti-oppressive framework that attempts to challenge racism, sexism, homophobia, and ablism in literature and culture. My goal as a teacher is to meet students where they are in their writing and research journey and to help them get to where they want to be. 
 

• PhD (English), University of British Columbia, 2015
• MA (English), University of Regina, 2010
• BA Honours, Student of Highest Distinction (English and Philosophy), University of Winnipeg, 2006

Research interests

• Shakespeare and early modern drama
• Adaptations and appropriations of Shakespeare by Black and Indigenous authors
• Black literature and culture in Canada
• Indigenous literature and culture in Canada
• Critical race theory, critical Indigenous studies, and premodern critical race theory

Research summary

I am an early modern drama scholar with a specialization in Early Modern English drama. I study the works of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In my current book project, Clothed Villainy: Acting White In Early Modern Drama (forthcoming from the Strode Series at the University of Alabama Press), I theorize how whiteness can be read as a performative category of identity in early modern drama.

In my new project, Towards Indigenous Shakespeares, I argue that critical Indigenous studies can help us identify and understand the breakdowns in relationality with human and non-human kin in premodern drama, and I theorize how this framing can benefit contemporary Indigenous students and communities. I also analyze how Indigenous artists engage with Shakespeare. This work has been generously supported with a 2025-26 short term fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

I am also an assistant editor for the journal Early Theatre. 

Research affiliations/groups

• Research Cluster Coordinator - Ecology, Canadian Poetry and Labour, University of Manitoba Institute for the Humanities
• Editorial Team Member - The Land and Labour Poetry Collective, Our collection, I’ll Get Right On It Poems on Working Life in the Climate Crisis, was released in 2025 with Fernwood Press.

Journal articles and book chapters

• “Against Hope Labour in the Public Humanities.” Public Humanities 1 (2025): e 40.
• “Astonished and Amazed: Early Modern English Black Christianity and Respectability Politics in Middleton’s and Munday’s The Triumphs of Truth.” In None a Stranger There: England and/in Europe on the Early Modern Stage, edited by Scott Oldenburg and Matteo Pangallo. University of Alabama Press, 2025, 86–106.
• “Bad Blood, Black Desires: On the Fragility of Whiteness in Middleton’s and Rowley’s The Changeling.” Early Theatre 24, no. 1 (2021): 113–37.
• “‘Mislike Me Not for My Complexion’: On Anti-Black Racism and Performative Whiteness in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 20, no. 4 (2020): 34–61.
• “‘What Condition Will Not Miserable Men Accept?’: Hegemonic Masculinity in John Lyly’s Galatea.” Renaissance and Reformation 43, no. 1 (2020): 81–103.
• “‘Men Break When Things Like That Happen’: Indigenous Masculinities in Katherena
  Vermette’s The Break.” Canadian Literature 239 (2019): 68–84.

Creative publications

• “Orphaned Family Photographs.” Prairie Fire: A Canadian Magazine of New Writing 45, 4, 89–109.
• “I’ll Get Right on It”: Poems on Working Life in the Climate Crisis. Edited with Melanie Dennis Unrau, Jenna Buttler, Samantha Jones, and Moni Brar. Roseway Publishing, 2025.
• “Doing Reconciliation Work in Wînipêk” in  “I’ll Get Right on It”: Poems on Working Life in the Climate Crisis. Edited with Melanie Dennis Unrau, Jenna Buttler, Samantha Jones, and Moni Brar. Roseway Publishing, 2025.

Public facing scholarship on pedagogy 

• “On Teaching Jonson’s The Masque of Blackness in an Anti-racist Classroom Environment.” The Sundial: Premodern Pasts, Inclusive Futures.
• “Rethinking Masculinity: Teaching Men How to Love and Be Loved.” The Conversation. February 8, 2024.
• “On Teaching The Tempest in the Shadow of Unmarked Indian Residential School Graves.” The Sundial: Premodern Pasts, Inclusive Futures. 

• 2025-2026 - Folger Short Term Fellowship
• 2025 - Outstanding Teacher, Faculty of Arts, Students’ Teacher Recognition Reception, University of Manitoba
• 2025 - Most Inspiring Racialized Professor Award, Arts Student Body Council, University of Manitoba
• 2023 - Honourable mention for best interpretative essay published in Early Theatre
• 2015 - Student Speaker, Fall Convocation, University of British Columbia Arts Graduation