Degrees: BA (McGill), MA (Hull), PhD (McGill)

Specializing in genre and 19th-century fiction and culture, Susan Johnston is currently working on adaptation and questions of fidelity, a nexus which has also led her to explore theological criticism.  She is the author of Women and Domestic Experience in Victorian Fiction (Greenwood, 2001), as well as articles and conference papers on such subjects as ethical interpretation, Margaret Atwood’s reading of Susanna Moodie, the historical picturesque in film adaptations of 19th century novels, and the idea of Christian hope in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Her teaching interests are wide-ranging, including literary theory and historiography, masculinity, and ideas of nationhood and nationalism in Victorian Britain.  In 2008 she won the Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching, and she worked extensively on questions of first-year transitions to University and undergraduate retention, as well as serving as Co-ordinator of First-Year English from 2009 to 2011, an assignment which led to extensive research on reading and college reading instruction. As an honours and graduate supervisor, she has overseen projects on the new realism, Tolkien and fantastic realism, custodial masculinity in Kipling, fantasy and masculinity, post-abjection in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, and notions of boyhood in Peter Pan and The Boy Scout Manual.