Jason Haslam

Education

BA, MA (McGill)
PhD (Waterloo) 

Personal Website: http://jasonhaslam.ca

My areas of research and teaching cover American literature, “genre fiction” (specifically science fiction and the gothic) popular culture, and prison studies. Methodologically, my scholarship has generally focused on theories of identity (especially critical theories of gender and race, as well as queer theory), and I am currently working on a project concerning gothic representations of energy cultures (including electricity, petroculture, and others).

While at Dal, I’ve developed undergraduate courses in popular culture, the Beat Generation, science fiction, and seminars on prison studies, utopian literature and theory, and American gothic, among others. At the graduate level, I have supervised PhD and MA theses in the fields listed above.

Selected Recent Publications

Books

• Co-ed. with Brad Congdon. The Cambridge Companion to the Weird and Literature (Cambridge UP, in progress).
• Ed., The Broadview Anthology of Science Fiction (Broadview Press, 2025)
• Co-ed. with Julia M. Wright, Casino Royale (1953) by Ian Fleming (Broadview 2020)
• Co-ed. with Joel Faflak, American Gothic Culture: An Edinburgh Companion (Edinburgh UP, 2016)
• Gender, Race, and American Science Fiction: Reflections on Fantastic Identities (Routledge 2015) (Received an honourable mention in the Robert K. Martin Book Prize competition.)

Articles and Chapters

• Delany in Dialogue: An Ongoing Article Cycle  (This “article cycle” consists of an ongoing series of studies that place the works of Samuel R. Delany in dialogue with other authors on several topics; individual pieces are published in venues aimed at audiences within different fields and specialties. “Power Disruptions: Delany’s and Okorafor’s Lyric Energies.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, forthcoming.
• “Ellison, Delany, and the Forgetting of Things Future.” African American Review, forthcoming.
• “Samuel R. Delany, Lou Reed, and Utopia’s Queer End.” Utopian Studies 28.2 (2017): 247-67.
• “Memory’s Guilted Cage: Delany’s Dhalgren and Gibson’s Pattern Recognition.” Guilt. Ed. Joel Faflak. Spec. Issue of English Studies in Canada 32.1 (2006): 77-104. Open-Access PDF.

Other Articles and Chapters

•  “Seaweed Salvation: Herbert, Badiou, and the Terror of the Transcendent.” Science Fiction Studies, 52.2 (2025): 278–301.
• “Science Fiction.” The Cambridge Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Novel and Politics. Ed. Bryan Santin. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2023. 142-59.
• “The Call of Cthoilu: The Weird Subject of Cold Water Oil.” Cold Water Oil. Ed. Fiona Polack and Danine Farquharson. New York: Routledge, 2022, 97-115.
• “Chain Gang Gothic: The Colonel’s Dream and the Spectacular Terrors of State Punishment.” Canadian Review of American Studies 50.2 (2020): 220-40. (Received an honourable mention in the 2020 Ernest Redekop Essay Prize competition.)
• “Punishing Utopia: Whitman, Hawthorne, and the Terrible Prison.” Arizona Quarterly 73.3 (2017): 1-22.
• “Slavery and American Gothic: The Ghost of the Future.” American Gothic Culture: An Edinburgh Companion. Ed. Jason Haslam and Joel Faflak. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2016. 44-59.

Selected Professional Positions

• Co-president (with Justin Edwards, Stirling U), International Gothic Association (2017-2019)
• President, Association for Canadian College and University Teachers of English (2014-2016)
• President, Canadian Association for American Studies (2010-2012)

Recent Grants and Awards

• SSHRC Insight Grant (2024-2028)
• SSHRC Insight Grant (2015-2021)
• SSHRC Explore Grant (2022)
• SSHRC Exchange Grant (2019; 2022)