Cultural Mapping and the Digital Sphere

Ruth Panofsky is Professor of English at Ryerson University where she specializes in Canadian literature and culture. Susan Brown is a visiting Professor in English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, and Professor in English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. Patricia Demers, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies and the Comparative Literature program at the University of Alberta, teaches and researches in the area of women's writing—from the early modern period to the present. Paul Hjartarson is Professor Emeritus in English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, where he leads the Editing Modernism in Canada research group. He co-authored, with Shirley Neuman, The Thinking Heart: The Literary Archive of Wilfred Watson (2014). The Thinking Heart served as the catalogue for an exhibition of Watson's literary papers held in Bruce Peel Special Collections at the University of Alberta, and is the first book-length study of this avant-garde Canadian poet and playwright. Paul Hjartarson has also published on Baroness Elsa and Frederick Philip Grove. Margaret Mackey is Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta. She has published a wide variety of articles and chapters on the subject of young people's reading and their multimedia and digital literacies. Mackey's work is highly interdisciplinary; her numerous international presentations include talks on young people's literature, multimedia and adaptations, education and literacy, computer gaming, and more. Her interest in these topics was initiated during her youth in Newfoundland; although she grew up in the 1950s, her childhood experiences included a range of media that fed into her inveterate book-reading. She is now pursing questions about how children 's developing skills in processing a variety of media are affected by their geographic location and their understanding of landscapes, both real and fictional. Heather Zwicker is Associate Professor of English and Vice-Dean of Arts at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. She locates her work at the crossroads of postcolonialism, feminism, and cultural studies.