Dr. Jan Purnis

Associate Professor in English
BA Hons (Guelph), MA, PhD (Toronto)

jan.purnis@uregina.ca
Phone: 306.359.1261 | Fax: 306.359.1200 | Office: CM 512

Research Interests

  • Renaissance Literature
  • Representations of Digestion
  • The Body-Mind Relationship
  • Theories of Emotion
  • Colonialism
  • Gender
  • Depictions of Cannibalism
  • The Resurrection of the Body

Representative Publications

  • “Renaissance Discourses of Emotions” in Emotions, Community, and Citizenship: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, (University of Toronto Press, 2017). Edited by Rebecca Kingston, Kiran Banerjee, James McKee, Yi-Chun Chien, and Constantine C. Vassiliou.
  • “Bodies and Selves: Autoscopy, Out-of-Body Experiences, Mind-Wandering, and Early Modern Consciousness” in Shakespeare and Consciousness, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Edited by Paul Budra and Clifford Werier.
  • “The Belly-Mind Relationship in Early Modern Culture: Digestion, Ventriloquism, and the Second Brain” in Embodied Cognition and Shakespeare’s Theatre: The Early Modern Body-Mind, (Routledge, 2014). Edited by Laurie Johnson, John Sutton, and Evelyn Tribble.
  • “The Gendered Stomach in The Taming of the Shrew” in Gender and Power in Shrew-Taming Narratives, 1500-1700, (Palgrave, 2010). Edited by David Wootton and Graham Holderness.
  • “The Stomach and Early Modern Emotion” in University of Toronto Quarterly 79.2 (Spring 2010).

Representative Awards

  • A Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Development Grant for my project “Cannibals Incorporated: Cannibalism, Digestion, and Early Modern Literature” (2013-2016)
  • The Clifford Leech Dissertation Prize for 2009-2010 (awarded by the University of Toronto Department of English and the Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama)