Angela Failler

Title: Professor, Canada Research Chair
Phone: 204.786.9028
Office: 3C24A
Building: Centennial Hall
Email: a.failler@uwinnipeg.ca

Degrees:
PhD - Women's Studies, York University

MA - Women's Studies, Dalhousie, Mount Saint Vincent and St. Mary's Universities (joint program)

BA - Sociology (Honours), University of Saskatchewan

Biography:

Dr. Angela Failler is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Canada Research Chair in Culture and Public Memory at the University of Winnipeg where she also directs the Centre for Research in Cultural Studies (CRiCS). Her research is focused on how practices of culture and public memory are used to grapple with the “difficult knowledge” of historical traumas and injustices, including their ongoing/after effects. Her projects pay special attention to memorials, museums, commemorative artworks, community-based practices of remembrance, and government sponsored memory projects. She employs interdisciplinary, collaborative methodologies that draw on the expertise of scholars, educators, artists, curators, and other cultural practitioners. She is the Principal Investigator of a long term study on public memory and the cultural afterlife of the 1985 Air India Bombings. She is also a founding member of Thinking Through the Museum and co-leads Museum Queeries, an interdisciplinary research project that prioritizes Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, and queer (2S+LGBTTQ) contributions and interventions into museums and museum studies. In 2012 Failler won the Clifford J. Robson Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence.

Teaching Areas:

Feminist theory

Queer theory

Cultural studies

Embodiment and subjectivity

Courses:
WGS-1232 Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies

WGS-2201 Feminisms: Background and Fundamentals

WGS-2251 Gender, Race and Nation in Canada

WGS-3006 Embodied Subjects

WGS-3302 Feminisms: Current Perspectives

WGS-4004 Cultural Studies and Feminism

WGS-4100 Queer Studies in the Global Postmodern

WGS-4400 Advanced Topics

WGS-3900/4900 Directed Readings

GENG-7901 Topics in Genders, Sexualities and Cultures: Thinking Through the Skin

GENG-7741 Topics in Local, National, and Global Cultures: Queer Studies in the Global Postmodern

Publications:

FORTHCOMING:

Failler, A. (In Preparation). Public Memory and the Afterlife of the 1985 Air India Bombings (sole-authored book manuscript).

EDITED BOOKS:

Chakraborty, C., Dean, A. and Failler, A. eds. (2017). The Art of Public Mourning: Remembering Air India. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press.

Cavanagh, S.L., Hurst, R.A.J. and Failler, A. (Eds.) (2013). Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis. Houndmills (UK) and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Failler, Angela, Jason Hannan, and Sabrina Mark, eds. (2022). Memorial Reckoning and the Fall of Imperial Icons, a special issue of Global Media Journal: Canadian Edition. Volume 14, Issue 2.

Failler, Angela, Ives, Peter, and Heather Milne, eds. (2015). Caring for Difficult Knowledge: Prospects for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, a special double issue of the Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies 37.2/3. 

ARTICLES: 

Failler, A. (2023). Unsettling homocolonial frames of remembrance: Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer interventions at the museum. Memory Studies, 16(1), 12–31. https://doi-org.uwinnipeg.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/17506980221144545

Failler, A., J. Hannan and S. Mark. 2022. “Editorial/Introduction: Memorial Reckoning and the Fall of Imperial Icons.” Memorial Reckoning and the Fall of Imperial Icons, a special issue of Global Media Journal: Canadian Edition. Volume 14, Issue 2. 1-10.

Dean, A. and A. Failler (2019). “An Amazing Gift”? Memory Entrepreneurship, Settler Colonialism and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698019843971.

Failler, A. (2018). Canada 150: Exhibiting National Memory at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Citizenship Studies, DOI:10.1080/13621025.2018.1462500.

Failler, A. 2015. Hope Without Consolation: Prospects for Critical Learning at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies 37.2/3, 227-250.  

Failler, A., Ives, P. and Milne, H. (Eds.) (2015). Introduction: Caring for Difficult Knowledge--Prospects for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies 37.2/3, 100-105.

Failler, A. (2012). “War-on-terror” frames of remembrance: the 1985 Air India bombings after 9/11. Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 27 (Spring 2012), 253-270.

Failler, A. with artwork by E. Marjara. (2010). "Remember me nought": The 1985 Air India bombings and cultural Nachträglichkeit. Public: Art/Culture/Ideas, 42, 113-124.

Failler, A. (2009). Remembering the Air India disaster: Memorial and counter-memorial. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 31(3-4), 150-176.

Failler, A. (2009). Narrative skin repair: bearing witness to representations of self-harm. English Studies in Canada, 34 (1), 11-28.

Failler, A. (2006). Appetizing loss: Anorexia as an experiment in living. Eating Disorders 14, 99-107.

BOOK CHAPTERS:

Chakraborty, C., A. Dean and A. Failler (2017). The Art of Public Mourning: An Introduction. The Art of Public Mourning: Remembering Air India. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, xiii-xxxii.

Failler, A. and Roger I. Simon.  (2015). Curatorial Practice and Learning from Difficult Knowledge.  The Idea of a Human Rights Museum, Eds. Busby, K., Mueller, A. and Woolford, A. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 165-179.

Cavanagh, S.L., Hurst, R.A.J. and Failler, A. (Eds.) (2013). Introduction. Enfolded: Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis. In Cavanagh, S.L., Hurst, R.A.J. and Failler, A. Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis (pp.1-15). Houndmills (UK) and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Failler, A. (2013). Narrative Skin Repair: Bearing Witness to Mediatized Representations of Self -Harm. In Cavanagh, S.L., Hurst, R.A.J. and Failler, A. (Eds.) Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis (pp.167-187). Houndmills (UK) and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Failler, A. (2009). Racial grief and melancholic agency. In Campbell, S., Meynell, L., & Sherwin, S (Eds.), Agency and Embodiment (pp.46-57). Philadelphia: Penn State University Press.

Failler, A. (2009). “Too broke to answer the phone”: Reporting the “death” of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. In Trimble L. & Sampert, S. (Eds.), Mediating Canadian politics(pp.219-238). Toronto: Pearson Education Canada.

Failler, A. (2005). Excitable speech: Judith Butler, Mae West and Sexual Innuendo. In Blumenfeld, W.J. & Soenser Breen, M (Eds.), Butler matters: Judith Butler’s impact on feminist and queer studies since Gender Trouble (pp.95-109). Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing. (Originally printed in International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies, 6 (1-2), 49-62.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS:

Failler, A. Creative Remembrance: Transcending the Limits of Official History (2015). Program essay for air india [redacted] (theatre performance commissioned by Turning Point Ensemble). Dir. Tom Creed, Composer Jurgen Simpson, Poet Renee Saojini Saklikar, Music Director and Artistic Coordinator Owen Underhill, Media Artist John Galvin, Singers Zorana Sadiq, Daniel Cabena, Alexander Dobson. Presented November 6-11, 2015 at the SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. http://turningpointensemble.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/AIRINDIAprogramFINALrs.pdf

Failler, A. and Sharma, K. “Shoal Lake 40’s Living Museum: A Photo Essay.” Cultural Studies Research Group [Web essay]. 23 July 2015. http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/csrg/projects/shoal-lake-photo-essay%20.html

Failler, A. and Lehrer, E. “Museum Openings.” Cultural Studies Research Group [Blog post]. 5 October 2014. http://uwinnipeg.ca/csrg/blog/2014/10/Failler%20and%20Lehrer.html

Failler, A., Willis, C. “Mandatory indigenous courses add value.” Winnipeg Free Press [Op-Ed]. March 31, 2015. http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/mandatory-indigenous-courses-add-value-298100541.html