Joel Deshaye
Position
Full Professor
Education
- PhD (McGill University)
- MA (University of Saskatchewan)
- BA Hon (University of Saskatchewan)
Contact Information
- Office: AA 3031
- Telephone: (709) 864-8983
- Email: jdeshaye@mun.ca
- Website: /faculty/jdeshaye/
Research Interests
Canadian literature, especially fiction and poetry; metaphor; celebrity; film; genre
Selected Publications
Books
- The Contemporary Leonard Cohen: Response, Reappraisal, and Rediscovery, co-edited with Kait Pinder, WLUP, 2023.
- The American Western in Canadian Literature. University of Calgary Press, 2022.
- The Metaphor of Celebrity: Canadian Poetry and the Public, 1955-1980. University of Toronto Press, 2013.
Articles
- 鈥淔air Warning: Costs of Poetry and Its Copyrights,鈥 by Joel Deshaye and Erin Patterson, forthcoming from English Studies in Canada, 2026.
- 鈥淭he Media of Environmental Listening in Don McKay鈥檚 Songs for the Songs of Birds.鈥 Canadian Literature. no. 256, 2024, pp. 102-122.
- 鈥淭he Medium Is the Message Is the Metaphor: Cool Reason and the Young Intellectual Public of Marshall McLuhan.鈥 The Canadian Journal of Communication, vol. 44, 2019, pp. 49-68.
- 鈥淭heatrical and Self-Conscious Metaphor in Modern Realism: Ernest Hemingway and Morley Callaghan Reunited, Parts 1 and 2.鈥 The Journal of the Short Story in English, vol. 71, 2018, pp. 173-99.
- 鈥淟ate Style and Automortography in Leonard Cohen鈥檚 Circle of Public Life.鈥 Canadian Poetry, vol. 82, 2018, pp. 12-31.
- 鈥溾楧o I Feel Lucky?鈥: Moral Luck, Bluffing, and the Ethics of Eastwood鈥檚 Outlaw-Lawman in Coogan鈥檚 Bluff and the Dirty Harry Films.鈥 Film-Philosophy, vol. 21, no. 1, 2017, pp. 20-36.
- 鈥淩acialized Rooms and Technologies of Stardom in Ondaatje鈥檚 Coming through Slaughter.鈥 The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2016, pp. 1-15.
- 鈥淭om King鈥檚 John Wayne: The Western in Green Grass, Running Water.鈥 Canadian Literature, vol. 225, 2016, pp. 66-80.
- 鈥淭he Metaphor of Celebrity, Three Superheroes, and One Persona or Another.鈥 The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 47, no. 3, 2014, pp. 571-90.
- 鈥淚rving Layton鈥檚 Televised 鈥楶ublic Poetry鈥 and The Pierre Berton Show.鈥 Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews, vol. 73, 2013, pp. 32-53.
- 鈥淐elebrity and Passing in Gwendolyn MacEwen鈥檚 The T.E. Lawrence Poems.鈥 The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 46, no. 3, 2011, pp. 531-50.
- 鈥淐elebrity and the Poetic Dialogue of Irving Layton and Leonard Cohen.鈥 Studies in Canadian Literature / 脡tudes en litt茅rature canadienne, vol. 34, no. 2, 2009, pp. 77-105.
- 鈥淧arading the Underworld of New Orleans in Ondaatje鈥檚 Coming through Slaughter.鈥 American Review of Canadian Studies, vol. 38, no. 4, 2008, pp. 473-94.
- 鈥淐allimachus: Avoiding the Pitfalls of XML for Collaborative Text Analysis.鈥 Jeff Smith, Joel Deshaye, and Peter Stoicheff. Literary and Linguistic Computing, vol. 21, no. 2, 2006, pp. 199-218.
- 鈥淎ttention from Saskatchewan: The Psychedelic History of The Doors of Perception and Island.鈥 Aldous Huxley Annual, vol. 2, 2003, pp. 181-205.
Book Chapters
- 鈥淢asculinity, Civilization, and Apocalypse in Recent Canadian Westerns: Clifford Jackman鈥檚 The Winter Family and Aaron Tucker鈥檚 Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys.鈥 The Routledge Companion to Transnational Westerns, edited by David Rio, Marek Paryz, and Christopher Conway. Under contract.
- 鈥溾楾hat Eventual Stranger鈥: Towards Unrecognizability in [Michael Ondaatje鈥檚] Warlight.鈥 Do You Want To Be Happy and Write? Critical Essays on Michael Ondaatje. Edited by Robert Lecker. McGill-Queen鈥檚 UP, 2023, pp. 379-395.
- 鈥淩umour and the Celebrity of American Historical Figures in Contemporary Women鈥檚 Canadian Westerns.鈥 The Western in the Global Literary Imagination. Edited by Marek Paryz, David Rio, and Christopher Conway. Brill, 2023, pp. 38-53.
- 鈥淐anada鈥檚 Triumph Comics and David Garneau鈥檚 M茅tis Response to the 鈥業ndian鈥 of the Comic Book Western.鈥 The Comic Book Western: New Perspectives on a Global Genre. Edited by Christopher Conway and Antoinette Sol. University of Nebraska Press, 2022. Winner of the Ray and Pat Browne Award for Best Edited Collection in Popular and American Culture, 2023.
- 鈥淟istening to the Unscripted: Aura and Experience in Irving Layton鈥檚 Televisual Archives.鈥 CanLit across Media: Unarchiving the Literary Event. Edited by Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod, McGill-Queen鈥檚 UP, 2019, pp. 205-220.
- 鈥淭he Hero鈥檚 Energy in Newfoundland and Labrador.鈥 The Democracy Cookbook. Edited by Alex Marland and Lisa Moore, ISER Books, 2017, pp. 113-116.
鈥淎nthology on the Radio: Robert Weaver and CBC Radio鈥檚 Anthology.鈥 Anthologizing Canadian Literature: Theoretical and Cultural Perspectives. Edited by Robert Lecker, Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2015, pp. 167-182.
Regularly Taught Courses
Undergraduate
- English 2150: Modern Canadian Fiction
- English 2850: What Is Film?
- English 3158: Canadian Literature 1970 to the Present: City/Scape
- English 3848: The Western
Graduate
- English 7069: Public Intellectuals in Canada
Honours And Graduate Supervision
- BA Hon: any topic in Canadian fiction, poetry, and film
- MA and PhD: twentieth-century and contemporary Canadian fiction and poetry, genre (especially but not only the Western), celebrity (especially in literature, of public intellectuals, or in Canadian music), and theories of metaphor, transnationalism, and ecocriticism