My name is April McInnes, and I am a settler PhD student of Indigenous literary studies in the Department of English at Queen’s University on Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee territory. I hold BAH, BEd, and MA degrees from Queen's, and I am a certified teacher with the Ontario College of Teachers. My research investigates decolonial approaches to Indigenous literatures and their implications and applications in secondary-level classrooms in the public education system.
Indigenous literatures; Indigenous femininities; Indigenous coming-of-age narratives; decolonization; Indigenous education; pedagogy studies; temporalities; Canadian literature; critical disability studies
Articles (Peer-reviewed)
[Accepted] “Memories, Manifestation, and Finding a Way Forward: Developing Agency through Spiraling Time in Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians.” Canadian Literature.
Conferences:
Moderator. “Challenging Archetypal Narratives and Paratext.” Queen’s Undergraduate Conference on Literature, Queen’s University. (1 February 2025)
“Environmental Terrorism: BP, Art, and Indigenous Resistance in Canada.” Crude Representations: BP and the Cultural Imagination of Oil, The University of Edinburgh, online. (24 January 2025)
“Disrupting the Dominant Discourse of Victorian Studies with Decolonial Temporality: Challenging Chronological Time and Deploying Ceremonial Time in Drew Hayden Taylor’s The Night Wanderer: A Graphic Novel.” Re-imagining and Re-engaging with the Victorians, Queen’s University, online. (18 April 2024)
Current Positions:
Research Assistant, "Honouring the Word Warriors," supervised by Dr. Heather Macfarlane, Department of English Literature and Creative Writing, 91 (February 2025 – present)
Communications Coordinator, Queen's Graduate Conference in Literature, 91 (October 2024 – present)
Writing Consultant, Student Academic Success Services, 91 (September 2024 – present)
Research Assistant, "Anishinaabemowin Language Acquisition Project," supervised by Dr. Lindsay Morcom, Faculty of Education, 91 (January 2024 – present)
Graduate Blog Writer, Student Academic Success Services, 91 (September 2023 – present)
