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I received my PhD in Environmental Studies (humanities stream) from York University in 2007, and hold an MA in English from the University of Victoria and a BA in English from the University of Saskatchewan.
Before coming to Laurier, I held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of English at the University of Calgary, and taught for four years in the Department of English at the University of Toronto.
Teaching is a joyful vocation for me, and I find helping students to grow in their thinking and writing skills to be deeply satisfying work. When I’m not engaged in teaching or research, I can be found walking or jogging with my dog, swimming, or working on my green thumb in the back garden.
My current research and teaching is concentrated in the area of literature and the environment, with a particular focus on Canadian, American, and Indigenous literatures. I am currently working on a project titled Points of Entry: Ecocritical Investigations Along the Canada-US Border, that examines cultural portrayals of environmental phenomena that cross the Canada-US border. I am also interested in literature's intersection with problems of infrastructure and resource extraction in the 20th and 21st centuries.
- WLU Early Career Researcher Award (2020)
- SSHRC Insight Grant (2019) for Points of Entry: Ecocritical Investigations Along the Canada-US Border
- Runner-up, Ernest Redekop Prize for Best Essay in the Canadian Review of American Studies in the Previous Year (2018)
- Finalist, Gabrielle Roy Prize (for a work of Canadian literary criticism in English published the previous year). (2011).
- SSHRC Insight Development Grant for Fences and Flows project. (2011).
I am keen to work with students researching any aspect of literature and the environment, though my particular strengths lean towards Canadian and American literatures. I further welcome opportunities to work with students interested more generally in projects in Canadian Literature, border studies and Indigenous literatures and cultures.
- Kerber, Jenny. "Tracing One Warm Line: Climate Stories and Silences in Northwest Passage Tourism." Journal of Canadian Studies 55.4 (July 2022): 271-303.
- Kerber, Jenny and Cheryl Lousley. "Literary Responses to Indigenous Climate Justice and the Canadian Settler-State." The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Climate, eds. Adeline Johns-Putra and Kelly Sultzbach. Cambridge UP, 2022. 269-279.
- Kerber, Jenny. “Corrosive Aesthetics: On the Receiving End of Oil and Gas in Who By Fire.” Canadian Literature 239 (2019): 50-65.
- Kerber, Jenny. "Romantic Ramblings, Revisited: Eco-Logics of Mobility in Sina Queyra's Expressway." ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment 25.2 (2018): 345-62.
- Kerber, Jenny. "Up from the Ground: Living with/in Petrocultures in the US and Canadian Wests." Western American Literature 51.4 (2017): 383-89.
- Kerber, Jenny. “Border Insecurity: Reading the Transnational Environment in Jim Lynch’s Border Songs.” Canadian Review of American Studies 47.1 (2017): 131-60.
- Kerber, Jenny. “Caribou, Petroleum, and the Limits of Locality in the Canada-US Borderlands.” American Review of Canadian Studies 45.3 (2015): 332-45.
- Kerber, Jenny. “‘You are Turning Into a Hive Mind’: Storytelling, Ecological Thought, and the Problem of Form in Generation A.” Studies in Canadian Literature 39.1 (2014): 317-38.
- Kerber, Jenny. “Nature Trafficking: Writing and Environment in the Western Canada-US Borderlands.” Greening the Maple: Canadian Ecocriticism in Context. (2013).
Contact Info:
Office location: DAWB 3-112
Office hours:
Thursdays 4-6pm (in person)
Languages spoken: English