About
I am Professor of English in the Department of Literature, Language, Writing, & Humanities and Director of the University Core at Fairleigh Dickinson University – Vancouver Campus. In Fall 2017, I was Visiting Professor at l’Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, and for the Fall of 2011, I was Visiting Professor of English in the graduate program at Simon Fraser University. For 2006–2008, I was an Assistant Professor (limited term) and SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Victoria. I pursue studies in Music and performance as well.
In 2017, I became Director of
FDU Press, the editorial offices for which relocated to FDU’s Vancouver campus.
My research interests include Transatlantic Modernism (British, American, Irish, and Canadian), colonialism and decolonization, prose and poetry, media studies, cultural studies, genetic criticism, anarchism, radical political thought, and opera. I have particular interests in Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller, Elizabeth Smart, T.S. Eliot, Ursula K. Le Guin, Aidan Higgins, and related authors. I was granted the 2021 Distinguished Faculty Award for Research & Scholarship by Fairleigh Dickinson University, and my monograph
A Modernist Fantasy won the 2020 Mythopoeic Award for Scholarship.
Other Publications
.: monographs
Gifford, James.
Personal Modernisms: Anarchist Networks and the Later Avant-Gardes. Edmonton, AB: U of Alberta P, 2014.
———.
A Modernist Fantasy: Anarchism, Modernism, & the Radical Fantastic. Victoria, BC: ELS Editions, 2018. (
winner of the 2020 Mythopoeic Award for Scholarship)
.: collections
Gifford, James & Orion Ussner Kidder. Eds.
Hobgoblins of Fantasy: American Fantasy Fiction in Theory. Spec. issue of
The New Americanist 1.3 (Fall 2019).
Gifford, James, James M. Clawson, & Fiona Tomkinson. Eds.
Archives & Networks of Modernism. Spec. issue of
Global Review: A Biannual Special Topics Journal 1.1 (2013).
Gifford, James & Gabrielle Zezulka-Mailloux. Eds.
Culture and the State: Landscape and Ecology. Vol 1. Edmonton: CRC Humanities Studio, 2004.
———. Eds.
Culture and the State: Disability Studies and Indigenous Studies. Vol 2. Edmonton: CRC Humanities Studio, 2004.
———. Eds.
Culture and the State: Nationalisms. Vol. 3. Edmonton: CRC Humanities Studio, 2004.
———.
Culture and the State: Alternative Interventions. Vol 4. Edmonton: CRC Humanities Studio, 2004.
.: editions
Fletcher, Edward Taylor.
Of Sunken Islands and Pestilence: Restoring the Voice of Edward Taylor Fletcher to Nineteenth-Century Canadian Literature. Ed. James Gifford. Edmonton, AB. Athabasca University Press, 2022.
———.
“The Sealed Book of the Future”: The Collected Prose of Edward Taylor Fletcher. Ed. James Gifford. Humanities Commons, 2022. (digital companion volume to Of Sunken Islands & Pestilence)
Durrell, Lawrence.
From the Elephant’s Back: Collected Essays & Travel Writings. Ed. James Gifford. Edmonton, AB: U of Alberta P, 2015.
Hemingway, Ernest.
in our time: The 1924 Text. Ed. James Gifford. Victoria, BC: Modernist Versions Project, 2015.
———.
“In Our Time” & “They All Made Peace—What Is Peace?”: The 1923 Text. Ed. James Gifford. Victoria, BC: Modernist Versions Project, 2015.
Fletcher, Edward Taylor.
The Lost Island: Atlantis. Intro & Notes. James Gifford. Engravings. Peter Lazarus. Mission: Horse Whisper Press, 2011.
Wilde, Oscar.
The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. & Intro. James Gifford. Victoria, BC: McPherson Library, University of Victoria, 2011. (download updated
EPUB or
PDF directly)
Stephanides, Theodore.
Autumn Gleanings: Corfu Memoirs & Poems. Eds. Lindsay Parker, James Gifford, & Anthony Hirst. Kerkyra: Durrell School of Corfu, 2011.
Durrell, Lawrence.
Panic Spring: A Romance. Ed. & Pref. James Gifford. Victoria, BC: ELS Editions, 2008.
———.
Pied Piper of Lovers. Ed. & Intro. James Gifford. Victoria, BC: ELS Editions, 2008.
Miller, Henry & Herbert Read.
The Henry Miller-Herbert Read Letters: 1935-58. Ed. James Gifford. Ann Arbor: Roger Jackson, Inc., 2007.
.: articles & chapters (selected)
Gifford, James. “
A Textual Study of Lawrence Durrell’s Revolt of Aphrodite: The Book That Has Not Yet Been.”
ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, & Reviews 35.3 (2022): in press.
———. “
Goblin Modernism: Modernism, Anarchism & the Radical Fantastic.”
Anarchisms. Ed. Roger Rothman. Spec. Issue of
Modernism/modernity 27.3 (2020): 553–567.
Gifford, James & Orion Kidder. “Alan Moore & Anarchist Praxis in Form: Bibliography, Remediation, & Aesthetic Form in
V for Vendetta &
Black Dossier.”
Working Class Superheroes: Populist Politics in Comics, Films, & Television. Ed. Marc DiPaolo. University Press of Mississippi, 2018. 94–125.
Gifford, James. “
Chapter 32: Literature & Anarchism.”
Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism. Eds. Carl Levy and Matthew Adams. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 571–588.
———. “An Improbably Moveable Mediterranean: Translating, Transplanting, & Transforming Global Surrealisms.”
Le Pays Mediteranneen en Profondeur / The Mediterranean and its Hinterlands. Eds. Helen Goethals & Isabelle Keller-Privat. Spec. issue of
Caliban: French Journal of English Studies 57 (December 2017): in press.
———. “H.D.’s
Hirslanden Notebooks & Durrell’s Claudia: Occult Modernism Across the Curtain & in the Mirror.”
ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, & Reviews 30.2 (2017): 145–149.
———. “Mary Stewart’s Greek Novels: Hellenism, Orientalism, & the Cultural Politics of Pulp.”
Greece in British Women’s Literary Imagination, 1913–2013. Eds. Semele Assinder, David Holton, & Eleni Papargyriou. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2017. 99–118. Lang Classical Studies 19.
———. “Cairo to California: Art & Liberty to Anarchist Post-Surrealism.”
Art et Liberté: Rupture, War, & Surrealism in Egypt (1938–1948). Eds. Sam Bardaouil & Till Fellrath. Paris: Skira, 2016. 10–15. (Exhibition catalogue for “Art et Liberté,” at the Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, the Tate Liverpool, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, & Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen)
———. “Letter From Egypt: The Quarry Miner Lawrence Durrell.”
Fronts of Modernity: The Twentieth Century Collections. Ed. J. Matthew Huculak. Victoria, BC: University of Victoria Libraries, 2016: 54–59.
———. “
Late modernism’s migrations: San Francisco Renaissance, Egyptian anarchists, and English post-Surrealism.”
Textual Practice 29.6 (2015): 1051–1075.
———. “”
Place, Personalism, Anarchism, & Fantasy: Recasting Late Modernism.”
Literature Compass 12.7 (2015): 322–332.
———. “‘
Per omnia saecula saeculorum‘ or ‘Inkaba yakho iphi?‘: Indigeneity in Alex La Guma and Aidan Higgins.”
Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 42.2 (2015): 171–189.
———. “Dispossessed Sexual Politics: Henry Miller’s Anarchism qua Kate Millett and Ursula K. Le Guin.”
Henry Miller: New Perspectives. Eds. James Decker & Indrek Männiste. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. 173–186.
———. “
From Booster to Bolero: Post-Surrealism & Apocalyptic Anarchism.”
Anarchism. Ed. Allan Antliff.
Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 4.2 (2013): 270–298.
Parker, Lindsay and James Gifford. “
Rethinking How Humanities Think: Daring and ‘do / make / think’.”
ESC: English Studies in Canada 38.1 (2012): 89–113.
Gifford, James. “
‘The world’s extremest borne’: West Coast Landscapes and the Poetic Works of Edward Taylor Fletcher.”
Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review 213 (Summer 2012): 193–202.
Gifford, James. “
Poetic Text, Music Text: Competing Nationalist Styles in Restoration Opera.”
Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory 14.1 (Spring 2012): 21–37.
———. “
Anarchist Transformations of English Surrealism: The Villa Seurat Network.”
jml: Journal of Modern Literature 33.4 (Summer 2010): 57–71.
———. “Vassanji’s Toronto and Durrell’s Alexandria: The View from Across or the View from Beside?”
The Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies 15.2 (2008): 28–43.
Gifford, James & Steve Osadetz. “Le Gnosticisme dans Monsieur de Lawrence Durrell: Nouvelles Preuves.”
Hommage à Jacques Lacarrière: Durrell et Lacarrière rencontre au bord du Styx. Eds. Corinne Alexandre-Garner and Christiane Séris. Nanterre: Presses Universitaires de Paris X, 2008. 117–128.
———. “
Durrell’s Revolt of Aphrodite: Nietzschean Influences.”
Mosaic: A Journal For the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 36.2 (2003): 111–127.
Projects
.: Creative Work
Gifford, James. “Quibble Commons.”
The Santa Fe Literary Review 17 (2022): in press.
——. “Headwaters,” “Serpentine Ways,” & “Mud Bay.”
SAD Mag: Stories, Art, Design 32 (Fall 2021): 14–15.
——. “Bear Creek.”
NōD Magazine 27 (Summer 2021): in press.
——. “Anderson Elv.”
North Dakota Quarterly 88.3/4 (2021): 161–162.
——. “
Candy Crush.”
Pulp Mag 23 (Spring 2021): 31–32.
——. “
Terrace Nostoi.”
Quarantine Review 1 (2021). Web. 1 January 2021.
——. “
Þunor to Θαλασα.”
Thorn Literary Magazine 1.4 (2020): 7.
——. “
Scansion.”
Molecule: A Tiny Lit Mag 3 (2020): 50.
——. “
Rue Sainte-Ursule.”
Anarchist Essays, season 1, episode 3, Anarchism Research Group, Loughborough University, 30 October 2020, Spotify.
——. “
Gaspereau in the Wild.”
Canadian Literature (2020): 138–139.
——. “
Gaspereau in the Community.”
Canadian Literature (2020): 131–132.
——. “Rue Sainte-Ursule.”
The Nashwaak Review 40–41.1 (2019): 294–302.
——. “
Nicomekl Ways.”
Abridged 0.58 (2019): 46.
——.
Rev. of Photon Touch: poems.
Prairie Fire: A Canadian Magazine of New Writing. Web. 23 October 2019.
——. “
Surrealism, Spoonerism, Lyric.”
Canadian Literature (2019): in press.
——. “
Personal Politics or Political Persons.”
Canadian Literature 237 (2019): 129–130.
——.
Rev. of Looking for Light.
Prairie Fire: A Canadian Magazine of New Writing. Web. 19 November 2018.
——. “
Sugar Bowl” & “
Remedy.”
Funicular 1 (2018).
——. “Argos at Blackie Spit.”
The Quilliad 10 (2018): 25.
——.
Rev. of Nuala: A Fable.
Prairie Fire: A Canadian Magazine of New Writing. Web. 5 October 2018.
——. “
Stave in the Autobiography of Sidney Ashe Fletcher.”
Burning House Press (September 2018).
——. “Cathedral, Corfu,” “Marialena,” & “Athens.”
Azuria 7 (2018): 34–36.
——.
Rev. of Frequent, Small Loads of Laundry: Poems.
Prairie Fire: A Canadian Magazine of New Writing. Web. 13 March 2018.
——. “
Tyropita: The Story of a Saint, a Lost Eye, & Two Cheese Pies.”
SAD Mag: Stories, Art, Design 23 (2017): 56–57.
——. “
Rev. of All of Us Reticent, Here, Together.
Prairie Fire: A Canadian Magazine of New Writing. Web. 24 July 2017.
——. “Women’s Words on Reading.”
WWR Magazine 1.1 (2005): 15. From an interview with Kate Braid.
