Emilia Nielsen
Associate Professor
Health & Society (HESO)
On Sabbatical (July 1 2024 - June 30 2025)
Office: 734 Ross Building South
Phone: 416 736 2100 Ext: 77813
Email: nielsene@yorku.ca
Primary website: Personal Website
Secondary website: HESO Faculty Profile
Emilia Nielsen's scholarly writing has appeared in academic journals such as Canadian Literature, Disability Studies Quarterly, Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, Performance Research, Studies in Canadian Literature as well as in literary journals across Canada. Surge Narrows (Leaf Press, 2013), her debut poetry collection, was a finalist for the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her second collection of poetry, Body Work (Signature Editions, 2018), won a Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry, and was a finalist for Lambda Literary Award and the League of Canadian Poets’ Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She is the author of the scholarly text Disrupting Breast Cancer Narratives: Stories of Rage and Repair (University of Toronto Press, 2019), winner of a Elli Köngäs-Maranda Prize.
Degrees
PhD, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, University of British ColumbiaMA, Department of English, University of New Brunswick
BFA, Department of Writing, University of Victoria
Research Interests
Current Research Projects
-
Summary:
Illness narratives present a challenge to readers when they are championed primarily for what they can teach us about a patient's experience (Woods, 2011). Such personal stories, when written in a linear narrative form, unwittingly become entangled in larger issues with which all life writing projects must contend: questions about the veracity of memory, representation of self and responsibility to community (Bolaki, 2016; Jurecic, 2012). Too often, those outside the disabled and chronically ill communities judge these same illness narratives strictly along the lines of factual accuracy or inaccuracy; a memoir of illness can be invalidated if its author misrepresents or misremembers the minutiae of their diagnosis, treatment, convalescence, or rehabilitation. This research-creation project will use experiential knowledge, critical theory, and creativity to address complex questions of truth-value, form and structure, as well as the personal politics at the heart of researching and writing compelling illness narratives.
Funders:
SSHRC Insight Grant
-
Summary:
On Being Ill is a podcast that aims to platform innovative thinkers working at the intersections of creativity and disability. Executive produced by poet, academic, and author, Dr. Emilia Nielsen, you’ll hear conversations about illness, chronic pain, crip joy, and how we’re harnessing the capacity of our creative praxes to build worlds for disability.
Description:2024 Season 4: “Conversations on Cultures of Care with Indigenous Creatives” on the podcast “On Being Ill”: Conversations on Creativity, Disability and Identity.
2023 Season 3: “Conversations with Emerging Talent on Creativity, Disability, and Identity” on the podcast “On Being Ill”: Conversations on Creativity, Disability and Identity.
2023 Season 2: “Conversations with Interdisciplinary Visual Artists on Creativity, Disability, and Identity” on the podcast “On Being Ill”: Conversations on Creativity, Disability and Identity.
2022 Season 1: “Conversations with Writers on Creativity, Disability, and Identity” on the podcast “On Being Ill”: Conversations on Creativity, Disability and Identity.
Funders:
SSHRC
National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health, Indigenous Services Canada
The Health Arts Research Centre, University of Northern British Columbia
-
Summary:
While biomedical research into the management of chronic disease is well established, the experiential knowledge of patients remains undervalued as a means of understanding the impact of living with chronic illness. Many chronic illnesses disproportionately affect women, yet an intersectional analysis is too often absent when calculating the societal impact of disease (Driedger & Owen, 2008; Moss & Dyck, 2002; Wendell, 2001). Therefore, in this research-creation project, I examined life writing by women diagnosed and treated or living with a chronic illness in order to better understand the personal challenge it presents to quality of life—physically, emotionally, spiritually and economically.
Funders:
SSHRC Insight Development Grant
Disrupting Breast Cancer Narratives: Stories of Rage and Repair. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Print.
Body Work. Winnipeg, MB: Signature Editions. Print.
Surge Narrows. Lantzville, BC: Leaf Press. Print.
“Chronically Ill, Critically Crip?: Revisiting the Poetry and Poetics of Dissonant Disabilities.” Living the Edges: A Disabled Women's Reader. D. Driedger (Ed.). Toronto: Inanna Publications.
“Chronic Poetics and the Poetry of Chronic Illness (in a Global Pandemic).” Canadian Literature. Special Issue: Pandemics. 245: 48-64. Print.
“The Problem of Standardized Breast Cancer Narratives.” Special Feature: Medicine & Society / Humanities | Encounters. CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal. November 25: E1-E2. Print.
“Transforming Disabling Trauma through Care Work and Collective Affinity: Mental Disability and ‘a Shared Queerness’ in Cereus Blooms at Night. ” Special Section: Care Ethics. Studies in Canadian Literature. 44.1: 181-197.
“Chronically Ill, Critically Crip?: Poetry, Poetics and Dissonant Disabilities.” Disability Studies Quarterly. 36.4: n. pag. Web.
“Queering Breast Cancer’s Affective Narratives: The Summer of Her Baldness and The L Word.” Special Issue: Queer/Affect. Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. 48.1: 49-64. Print.
“Counternarratives of Breast Cancer and Chronic Illness: Performing Disruption, Patienthood and Narrative Repair.” Special Issue: “On Medicine.” Performance Research. 19.4: 97-106. Print.
“Feeling Angry: Breast Cancer Narratives, Cancer Prevention and Public Affects.” Canadian Woman Studies. Special Issue: Women and Cancer. 28.2/3: 117-122. Print.
“Unfulfilled Promises: Troubling Trafficked Women in Eastern Promises.” Re-public: Re-imagining Democracy. Special Issue: Sexing Borders: n. pag. Web.
Translated into Greek: “Ανεκπλήρωτες υποσχέσεις: Προβληματισμός για το εμπόριο γυναικών στην ταινία Eastern Promises.” Re-public: Re-imagining Democracy. Special Issue: Φύλο και σύνορα.: n. pag. Web.
“Disability Poetry and Crip Poetics: Reading Body Work.” Creating Space X, The Canadian Association for Health Humanities, Hamilton, ON, April 12-13
“Exploring the Poetry and Poetics of Chronic Illness: Precarity, Care, Collective Affinity.” Creating Space X, The Canadian Association for Health Humanities, Hamilton, ON, April 12-13
“The Poetics and Ethics of Living with Chronic Illness: Exploring Feminist, Queer, Crip Canadian Poetry.” Indigenous, Canadian and Québécois Feminist Production Today, Banff Centre for the Arts, AB, October 11-14
“Rereading Cereus Blooms at Night: Explicating Figures of Care.” Canadian Literature Centre Research Seminar, Edmonton, AB, February 27
“Conceptualizing Indigenous ‘Graphic Medicine’: Telling Feminist Stories in Decolonizing Graphic Novels.” National Women’s Studies Association, Montreal, QC, November 13-16
“Chronically Ill, Critically Crip?: Querying Disability Poetry and Poetics.” Pacific Rim International Conference on Disability and Diversity, Honolulu, HI, May 18-19
“‘The Angry Breast Cancer Survivors’: Creating Justice Through Sharing Stories.” National Women’s Studies Association, San Juan, PR, November 13-16
“Breast Cancer at the Edge of Cultural Politics: Cancer Rage, Gender Rage.” Sexuality Studies Association, Victoria, BC, June 1-2 2013, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences
“Feminist Bioethics, Narrative Ethics and Disruptive Breast Cancer Narratives: Claiming the Subjective Edge.” Women’s and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes, Victoria, BC, June 1-4 2013, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences
“Resisting Breast Cancer’s Normative Script: Catherine Lord’s The Summer of Her Baldness.” Thinking Gender 2011, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, February 11
“Queerness in the Heterotopia: Unbecoming, Contingents, and the Archive.” Views from the Edge. Vancouver: Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies, University of British Columbia. 16.1: 78-90. Print.
Emilia Nielsen's scholarly writing has appeared in academic journals such as Canadian Literature, Disability Studies Quarterly, Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, Performance Research, Studies in Canadian Literature as well as in literary journals across Canada. Surge Narrows (Leaf Press, 2013), her debut poetry collection, was a finalist for the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her second collection of poetry, Body Work (Signature Editions, 2018), won a Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry, and was a finalist for Lambda Literary Award and the League of Canadian Poets’ Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She is the author of the scholarly text Disrupting Breast Cancer Narratives: Stories of Rage and Repair (University of Toronto Press, 2019), winner of a Elli Köngäs-Maranda Prize.
Degrees
PhD, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, University of British ColumbiaMA, Department of English, University of New Brunswick
BFA, Department of Writing, University of Victoria
Research Interests
Current Research Projects
-
Summary:
Illness narratives present a challenge to readers when they are championed primarily for what they can teach us about a patient's experience (Woods, 2011). Such personal stories, when written in a linear narrative form, unwittingly become entangled in larger issues with which all life writing projects must contend: questions about the veracity of memory, representation of self and responsibility to community (Bolaki, 2016; Jurecic, 2012). Too often, those outside the disabled and chronically ill communities judge these same illness narratives strictly along the lines of factual accuracy or inaccuracy; a memoir of illness can be invalidated if its author misrepresents or misremembers the minutiae of their diagnosis, treatment, convalescence, or rehabilitation. This research-creation project will use experiential knowledge, critical theory, and creativity to address complex questions of truth-value, form and structure, as well as the personal politics at the heart of researching and writing compelling illness narratives.
Project Type: FundedRole: Principal Investigator
Funders:
SSHRC Insight Grant
-
Summary:
On Being Ill is a podcast that aims to platform innovative thinkers working at the intersections of creativity and disability. Executive produced by poet, academic, and author, Dr. Emilia Nielsen, you’ll hear conversations about illness, chronic pain, crip joy, and how we’re harnessing the capacity of our creative praxes to build worlds for disability.
Description:2024 Season 4: “Conversations on Cultures of Care with Indigenous Creatives” on the podcast “On Being Ill”: Conversations on Creativity, Disability and Identity.
2023 Season 3: “Conversations with Emerging Talent on Creativity, Disability, and Identity” on the podcast “On Being Ill”: Conversations on Creativity, Disability and Identity.
2023 Season 2: “Conversations with Interdisciplinary Visual Artists on Creativity, Disability, and Identity” on the podcast “On Being Ill”: Conversations on Creativity, Disability and Identity.
2022 Season 1: “Conversations with Writers on Creativity, Disability, and Identity” on the podcast “On Being Ill”: Conversations on Creativity, Disability and Identity.
Project Type: FundedRole: Host & Executive Producer
Funders:
SSHRC
National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health, Indigenous Services Canada
The Health Arts Research Centre, University of Northern British Columbia
-
Summary:
While biomedical research into the management of chronic disease is well established, the experiential knowledge of patients remains undervalued as a means of understanding the impact of living with chronic illness. Many chronic illnesses disproportionately affect women, yet an intersectional analysis is too often absent when calculating the societal impact of disease (Driedger & Owen, 2008; Moss & Dyck, 2002; Wendell, 2001). Therefore, in this research-creation project, I examined life writing by women diagnosed and treated or living with a chronic illness in order to better understand the personal challenge it presents to quality of life—physically, emotionally, spiritually and economically.
Project Type: FundedRole: Principal Investigator
Funders:
SSHRC Insight Development Grant
All Publications
“Chronically Ill, Critically Crip?: Revisiting the Poetry and Poetics of Dissonant Disabilities.” Living the Edges: A Disabled Women's Reader. D. Driedger (Ed.). Toronto: Inanna Publications.
Disrupting Breast Cancer Narratives: Stories of Rage and Repair. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Print.
Body Work. Winnipeg, MB: Signature Editions. Print.
Surge Narrows. Lantzville, BC: Leaf Press. Print.
“Chronic Poetics and the Poetry of Chronic Illness (in a Global Pandemic).” Canadian Literature. Special Issue: Pandemics. 245: 48-64. Print.
“The Problem of Standardized Breast Cancer Narratives.” Special Feature: Medicine & Society / Humanities | Encounters. CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal. November 25: E1-E2. Print.
“Transforming Disabling Trauma through Care Work and Collective Affinity: Mental Disability and ‘a Shared Queerness’ in Cereus Blooms at Night. ” Special Section: Care Ethics. Studies in Canadian Literature. 44.1: 181-197.
“Chronically Ill, Critically Crip?: Poetry, Poetics and Dissonant Disabilities.” Disability Studies Quarterly. 36.4: n. pag. Web.
“Queering Breast Cancer’s Affective Narratives: The Summer of Her Baldness and The L Word.” Special Issue: Queer/Affect. Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. 48.1: 49-64. Print.
“Counternarratives of Breast Cancer and Chronic Illness: Performing Disruption, Patienthood and Narrative Repair.” Special Issue: “On Medicine.” Performance Research. 19.4: 97-106. Print.
“Feeling Angry: Breast Cancer Narratives, Cancer Prevention and Public Affects.” Canadian Woman Studies. Special Issue: Women and Cancer. 28.2/3: 117-122. Print.
“Unfulfilled Promises: Troubling Trafficked Women in Eastern Promises.” Re-public: Re-imagining Democracy. Special Issue: Sexing Borders: n. pag. Web.
Translated into Greek: “Ανεκπλήρωτες υποσχέσεις: Προβληματισμός για το εμπόριο γυναικών στην ταινία Eastern Promises.” Re-public: Re-imagining Democracy. Special Issue: Φύλο και σύνορα.: n. pag. Web.
“Disability Poetry and Crip Poetics: Reading Body Work.” Creating Space X, The Canadian Association for Health Humanities, Hamilton, ON, April 12-13
“Exploring the Poetry and Poetics of Chronic Illness: Precarity, Care, Collective Affinity.” Creating Space X, The Canadian Association for Health Humanities, Hamilton, ON, April 12-13
“The Poetics and Ethics of Living with Chronic Illness: Exploring Feminist, Queer, Crip Canadian Poetry.” Indigenous, Canadian and Québécois Feminist Production Today, Banff Centre for the Arts, AB, October 11-14
“Rereading Cereus Blooms at Night: Explicating Figures of Care.” Canadian Literature Centre Research Seminar, Edmonton, AB, February 27
“Conceptualizing Indigenous ‘Graphic Medicine’: Telling Feminist Stories in Decolonizing Graphic Novels.” National Women’s Studies Association, Montreal, QC, November 13-16
“Chronically Ill, Critically Crip?: Querying Disability Poetry and Poetics.” Pacific Rim International Conference on Disability and Diversity, Honolulu, HI, May 18-19
“‘The Angry Breast Cancer Survivors’: Creating Justice Through Sharing Stories.” National Women’s Studies Association, San Juan, PR, November 13-16
“Breast Cancer at the Edge of Cultural Politics: Cancer Rage, Gender Rage.” Sexuality Studies Association, Victoria, BC, June 1-2 2013, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences
“Feminist Bioethics, Narrative Ethics and Disruptive Breast Cancer Narratives: Claiming the Subjective Edge.” Women’s and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes, Victoria, BC, June 1-4 2013, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences
“Resisting Breast Cancer’s Normative Script: Catherine Lord’s The Summer of Her Baldness.” Thinking Gender 2011, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, February 11
“Queerness in the Heterotopia: Unbecoming, Contingents, and the Archive.” Views from the Edge. Vancouver: Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies, University of British Columbia. 16.1: 78-90. Print.
