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Position

Full Professor

Education

• PhD (University of Tasmania)
• BA (University of Tasmania)

Contact Information

• Office: AA 3006 
• Telephone: (709) 864-8055 
• Email: fpolack@mun.ca
• Website: /faculty/fpolack/

Research Interests

Energy and Environmental Humanities, Island and Ocean Studies, Settler Colonialism, Newfoundland and Labrador Literary and Cultural Studies, Australian Literature

Selected Publications

Books and Edited Collections

• Fiona Polack and Danine Farquharson, editors. Cold Water Oil. Routlege, 2021.
• Fiona Polack, editor. Tracing Ochre: Changing Perspectives on the Beothuk. University of Toronto Press, 2018.
• Petrocultures Research Group. After Oil. West Virginia UP, 2016.

Articles and Book Chapters

• “Heading Offshore: Introducing Cold Water Oil.” Cold Water Oil, edited by Fiona Polack and Danine Farquharson. Routledge, 2021, pp.1-20.
• “Encountering the Nonhuman in North Atlantic Oil Catastrophes.” Cold Water Oil, edited by Fiona Polack and Danine Farquharson. Routledge, 2021, pp.40-60.
• “Corporate and Worker Photographs of the Offshore Oil Industry: The Case of the Ocean Ranger,” Journal of Canadian Studies, vol.53, no.1, 2019, pp. 152-77.
• “Introduction: De-Islanding the Beothuk.”  Tracing Ochre: Changing Perspectives on the Beothuk, edited by Fiona Polack, University of Toronto Press, 2018, pp. 3-29.
• “Shanawdithit and Truganini: Converging and Diverging Histories.”  Tracing Ochre: Changing Perspectives on the Beothuk, edited by Fiona Polack, University of Toronto Press, 2018, pp. 321-344.
• “Offshore Rig” (co-written with Danine Farquharson). Fueling Culture: 100 Words for Energy and Environment, edited by Imre Szeman, Jennifer Wenzel, and Patricia Yaeger, Fordham UP, 2017, pp. 252-254.
• “The Politics of Energy Sources.”  Improving Democratic Governance in Newfoundland and Labrador, edited by Alex Marland and Lisa Moore, ISER Books, 2017, pp. 311-313.
• “Juxtaposing Contemporary Writing from Canada and Australia.” Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, vol. 15, no. 3, 2015, .
• “Reading Shanawdithit’s Drawings: Transcultural Texts in the North American Colonial World.” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, vol. 14, no. 3, 2013. Project Muse, .
• “Amelia Curran’s Newfoundland Painting.” Keats-Shelley Journal, vol. 60, 2011, pp. 25-29.
• “Art in the Bush: Romanticist Painting for Indigenous Audiences in Tasmania and Newfoundland.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts, vol. 33, no. 4, 2011, pp. 333-351.
• “Memory against History: Figuring the Past in Cloud of Bone.” English Studies in Canada, vol. 35, no. 4, 2009, pp. 53-69.
• “Taking the Waters: Abjection and Homecoming in The Shipping News and Death of a River Guide.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 41, no. 1, 2006, pp. 93-110.
• “Home Births: Women and Regional Space in The Sound of One Hand Clapping and Waiting for Time.” Australasian-Canadian Studies, vol. 22, no. 2, 2004, and vol. 23, no. 1, 2005, pp. 181-208.
• “Writing and Rewriting the Island: Tasmania, Politics, and Contemporary Australian Fiction.” Message in a Bottle: Proceedings from an International Conference, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, June 28-30, 1998, edited by Laurie Brinklow, Frank Ledwell, and Jane Ledwell, Institute of Island Studies, U of Prince Edward Island, 2000, pp. 215-229.
• “Place and Space: Views from a Tasmanian Mountain.” Imagining Australian Space: Cultural Studies and Spatial Inquiry, edited by Ruth Barcan and Ian Buchanan, U of Western Australia P, 1999, pp. 145-157.

Conference Presentations and Lectures

• “Introducing St. John’s Harbour: Energy Amphitheatre,” co-presenters Rachel Jekanowski, Danine Farquharson and Dean Bavington, Energy In/Out of Place: Virtual Energy Humanities Research-Creation Workshop, 15-19 June, 2020.
• “Islanding an Oil Rig: Where is Hibernia?” International Small Island Studies Association Global Island Studies Webinar, 24 June, 2020.
• “Hibernia,” Northeast and Atlantic Region Environmental History Forum, Boston University, Boston, 22 June, 2019.
• “Offshore Oil: Local and Global,” Past, Present and Future Petrocultures in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nexus Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, ������Ƶ University, St. John’s, 5 February, 2019.
•  “Rigs and Islands,” Petrocultures 2018: Transitions, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, 2 September, 2018.
• “Archiving Loss: Photographs of the Ocean Ranger.” CROSS: Canada’s Responsibility to Our Shining Seas: Ethics, Community, Culture, 1867-2067, 12 May 2017, Dalhousie University, Halifax.
• “Is Newfoundland and Labrador a Petroculture?” Asking the Big Questions: What Might a Sustainable Post-Oil Newfoundland and Labrador Look Like?, 4 November 2016, ������Ƶ University of University, Canada.
• “Time, Risk and the Public.” Petrocultures 2016: The Offshore, 1 September 2016, ������Ƶ University of University, Canada
• “The Rhetoric of Catastrophe: Commissions of Public Inquiry into Offshore Oil.” Cultures of Energy 5 Research Symposium, CENHS, 23 April 2016, Rice University, USA.
• “Tony Birch’s Blood, and Oil.” Literary Networks Convention, 7 July 2015, University of Wollongong, Australia.
• “Oceans, Rivers, Tributaries: Comparing Settler Texts Now.” Worlds Within: Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 10 July 2014, University of Sydney, Australia.
• “Tales of Absence: Ken Pittman’s Shanaditti: Last of the Beothuks and Tom Haydon’s the Last Tasmanian.” American Association for Australasian Literary Studies 2014 Conference, 26 April 2014, Portland State University, USA.
• “Shanawdithit and Truganini: Converging and Diverging Histories.” Traces of Ochre: A Symposium, 17 June 2013, ������Ƶ University of University, Canada.
• “Regional Textualities: Interpreting Shanawdithit’s Annotated Sketches.” Contested Regional Identities: The 19th Atlantic Canada Studies Conference, 5 May 2012, University of New Brunswick (at Saint John), Canada.
• “Mirror Islands: The Colonial Histories of Tasmania and Newfoundland.” Gilbert Higgins ������Ƶ Lecture for the Newfoundland Historical Society, 23 February 2012, Marine Institute, ������Ƶ University of Newfoundland, Canada.
• “Romancing Annihilation in Nineteenth-Century Narratives of Tasmania and Newfoundland.” Reading across the Pacific: The American Association for Australasian Literary Studies 2012 Conference, 17 February 2012, The Delta Hotel, Toronto, Canada.
• “Reading Shanawdithit’s Drawings.” Aboriginal Studies Seminar Series, 29 November 2011, ������Ƶ University of Newfoundland, Canada.
• “The Currans and the Colonies: Shelley’s Circle and the Settlement of Newfoundland.” Romanticism and the Tyrannies of Distance Conference, 10 February 2011, University of Sydney, Australia.
• “Different Islands, Same Stories-Settler and Indigenous Encounters in Tasmania and Newfoundland.” 18 August 2010, Boyd’s Cove Beothuk Interpretation Centre, Canada.
• “Ambivalence in Robert Drewe’s The Savage Crows.” 12 February 2007, Department of English, ������Ƶ University of Newfoundland, Canada.
• “Of Knots and Rivers: Tasmania and Newfoundland.” Invited presentation. University of Tasmania Colonialism and Its Aftermath Seminar Series, 16 February 2001, Ross, Australia.

Current Research Projects

• Rigs and Islands, SSHRC Insight Grant-funded project on ocean-based place making
• Cold Water Oil, a collaborative research project with Danine Farquharson that examines cultural figurations of the North Atlantic offshore oil and gas industry:

Other Professional Activities

• Academic Editor, ������Ƶ University Press (https://memorialuniversitypress.ca/)

Regularly Taught Courses

Undergraduate

• English 2122: World Literature in English
• English 3009: Literature and Environment
• English 3160: Empire and After
• English 3161: Australian Literature
• English 4891: Imagining Islands

Graduate

• English 7087: Petrofictions
• English 7003: Theory for Our Times

Honours And Graduate Supervision 

Energy and Environmental Humanities, Island Studies, Ocean Humanities, Post-Colonial Literatures, Settler Colonialism, Newfoundland and Labrador Literatures and Cultures,