BA, MA, PhD
Instructor, English & Women's & Gender Studies
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
School of Humanities
English
School of Social Sciences
Women's & Gender Studies
604.986.1911 ext. 2498
Fir Building, room FR 404
mandykoolen@capilanou.ca
Education
PhD, English, McMaster University, 2008.
MA, English, McMaster University, 2004.
BA, English and Women's Studies, York University, 2002.
"My belief that passion is contagious is fundamental to my approach to teaching."
Bio
Mandy Koolen (PhD, McMaster University, 2008) has an interdisciplinary teaching and research background. In addition to teaching in English, she has also taught courses in Cultural Studies, Religious Studies, and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies.
Koolen's doctoral dissertation entitled Que(e)rying History: Historical Fiction and the Construction of Contemporary Pasts examines the ways that much historical fiction written by contemporary authors encourages readers to empathetically identify with characters who expressed same-sex attraction in the past as a means of destabilizing prejudiced beliefs about sexual minorities today.
After completing her MA and PhD at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Koolen taught at Southampton Solent University in the UK before moving to Sudbury, Ontario where she taught courses in English and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for nine years. Since moving to B.C. in 2017, Koolen has taught courses at Capilano University as well as Simon Fraser University.
Koolen is also a dissertation coach and editor, and the founder of The Balanced Academic.
I love to teach literature and popular culture texts that depict acts of resistance and/or disrupt reductive stereotypes about diverse groups of people. I see critical analysis of literature and popular culture to be fundamental to challenging various forms of oppression and to fostering social justice.
Some of the topics I cover regularly in my courses include the feminine and masculine ideals; the diverse and creative ways that oppressed groups of people survive and resist oppression; non-binary conceptions of gender, sex, sexuality and race; Indigenous literature and film; historical fiction; affect studies; and intersectional understandings of gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, age, etc.
Koolen, Mandy. "Skin" and "Stranger around a Grandfather Drum." Spirits in Stone: Northern Ontario Poetry Collection (Volume 18). New Liskeard: White Mountain Publications, 2013.
Koolen, Mandy. "Understanding Aileen Wuornos: Pushing the Limits of Empathy." Constructing Crime: Discourse and Cultural Representations of Crime and 'Deviance.' Ed. Christiana Gregoriou. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Koolen, Mandy. WOMN 1005: Introduction to Women's Studies. Distance course written for Thorneloe College at Laurentian University, Department of Women's Studies (April 2011-June 2012), 337 single-spaced pages (96,000 words).
Koolen, Mandy. "Masculine Trans-formations in Jackie Kay's Trumpet." Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal 35.1 (Fall 2010): 71-80.
Koolen, Mandy. "Historical Fiction and the Revaluing of Historical Continuity in Sarah Waters's Tipping the Velvet." Contemporary Literature 51.2 (2010): 371-397.
Koolen, Mandy. "LGBTQ Historical Fiction." Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States. Ed. Emmanuel Nelson. Santa Barbara: Greenwood P, 2009.
Koolen, Mandy. "Isabel Miller." Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States. Ed. Emmanuel Nelson. Santa Barbara: Greenwood P, 2009.
Koolen, Mandy. "Penny Hayes." Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States. Ed. Emmanuel Nelson. Santa Barbara: Greenwood P, 2009.
Koolen, Mandy. "Historical LGBTQ Fiction." LGBTQ America Today. Ed. John Hawley. Santa Barbara: Greenwood P, 2008. Advisory board: Judith Butler, Eli Coleman, Paul Crowley, S.J., Judith Halberstam, Michael Horberg, MD, Karen C. Krahulik, Ed Stein, Claude J. Summers, Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano.
Koolen, Mandy. "Undesirable Desires: Sexuality as Subjectivity in Angela Carter's The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman." Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 36.6 (2007): 399-416.
Koolen, Mandy. "Risky Business." Short story published in The Church-Wellesley Review (Spring 2000).
Graduate Scholarship, McMaster University, 2007-08.
Canada Graduate Scholarship PhD, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 2004-07.
Canada Graduate Scholarship Master's, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 2003-04.