معرفی
Dr. Amber Dean is a Professor in the Department of English & Cultural Studies at McMaster University's Faculty of Humanities. In 2024, she became Director of the McMaster Faculty of Humanities' Centre for Community-Engaged Narrative Arts. Her work spans multiple disciplines including cultural studies, feminist and queer theory, and critical settler colonial studies.
Dr. Dean's educational background includes:
- BA in English from the University of Alberta
- MA in Women's Studies from Simon Fraser University
- Ph.D. in English from the University of Alberta
Her research focuses on public mourning, violence, and cultural memory, examining how creative forms of cultural production (fiction, art, photography, film, performance) disrupt and reframe common-sense understandings of whose lives (and deaths) matter. She investigates case studies of public mourning to consider what such mourning (or its absence) in the aftermath of mass violent death might convey about whose lives matter most. Her work also explores how creative forms of resistance, including writing, art, and activism, disrupt public tendencies to disavow or forget events of mass death.
Dr. Dean has received significant recognition for her scholarly work:
- Canadian Studies Network (CSN-RÉC)'s 2016 prize for the Best Book in Canadian Studies
- Women's and Gender Studies et Recherches Feministes Association's 2017 Outstanding Scholarship Prize (co-winner)
- 2017 Donald Shepherd Book Prize by the McMaster Faculty of Humanities
Dr. Dean is deeply committed to community-engaged and experiential teaching and learning. She teaches undergraduate courses in queer studies, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, and decolonization and resistance, and offers a graduate seminar on public mourning in Canada. Most of her courses include experiential learning, public-facing writing, or community-engaged projects. Students contribute to her website/blog on LGBTQ2S+ histories of violence. In 2026, she will begin teaching in the Walls To Bridges prison education program. She welcomes graduate students working in trauma and memory studies, feminist and queer theory, and critical settler colonial studies, particularly those focusing on public mourning, violence, memorialization, and cultural memory.
Dr. Dean actively contributes to several important community initiatives. She works on the development of the Hamilton 2SLGBTQ+ Community Archives and leads related creative projects on Hamilton's queer histories. She is leading streams on "Archival Resistance" and "Art as a Practice of Belonging and Commemoration" for a SSHRC-National Truth and Reconciliation Centre-funded research project. She also collaborates with Dr. Chandrima Chakraborty on projects commemorating the 40th anniversary of the 1985 Air India bombing.
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