Meet Cultural Studies Students

Melanie Proulx is a third year PhD candidate in the research-creation stream of cultural studies. Her doctoral research examines how to divulge stories of sexual violence in comics while minimizing the risk of retraumatizing survivors. In addition to having published several book chapters and academic articles, Melanie also has creative publications including a picture book about consent, The Bum Drum Conundrum; a webcomic about living with chronic illness, Malady Magnet; and a forthcoming graphic novel about her experiences as a rape survivor.

Tanya Lukin Linklater’s performances, works for camera, installations, and writings centre histories of Indigenous peoples’ lives, lands, and structures of sustenance. Her performances in relation to objects in exhibition, scores, and ancestral belongings generate what she has come to call felt structures. She investigates insistence in both concept and application. Tanya has shown at SFMOMA, Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019, EFA Project Space + Performa, Art Gallery of Ontario, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Remai Modern, Winnipeg Art Gallery, and elsewhere. She is participating in Soft Water Hard Stone, the 2021 New Museum Triennial. Her collection of poetry, Slow Scrape, was published by The Centre for Expanded Poetics and Anteism in 2020 with a second printing in 2021. Tanya studied at University of Alberta (M.Ed.) and Stanford University (A.B. Honours). In 2021 Tanya received the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Visual Art and was long listed for the Sobey Art Award. She is a doctoral candidate in Cultural Studies at Queen's University with supervision by Dylan Robinson.

Tianna Edwards was born and raised in Kingston and moved away for 10 years to complete her post-secondary education and begin her career as a journalist. She returned to Kingston six years ago and is currently the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion Coordinator for Yellow House, the Centre for Inclusion, coordinating programs and communications for Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous and People of Colour student communities at Queen’s. Tianna is also completing her Masters in Cultural Studies part-time. Her research project will be a podcast featuring the voices of Black people who live and have lived in Kingston. The purpose is to fight the erasure of the Black community in Kingston through storytelling and representation. This will help Black folks find each other and help the rest of the Kingston community fight the narrative that Blackness is transient here. Her project took a turn after sharing her experience as a Black woman in Kingston on her personal blog, Keep up with Kingston. Her story resonated with many and she felt if one story could do this, imagine what more stories could do.