Jane Tolmie
Associate Professor (cross-appointed with Gender Studies)
Biography
Jane Tolmie (PhD Harvard, DPhil Oxon, Rhodes Scholar) is a former medievalist and now contemporary literature and comics specialist with research interests in: critical disability studies, performance and theatre; sequential art; science fiction and fantasy; feminist, queer, and gender theory; transgender studies; autobiography/self-narration; fan studies, and social justice. Her current research projects engage with critical disability studies and storytelling, graphic medicine, and reproductive justice in popular culture. She supervises MA and PhD students in a range of disciplines including Gender Studies, English, Art History, Cultural Studies, and Education.
She is a poet, feminist activist, blogger (HuffPo), and a member of Informed Opinions. She regularly contributes interviews on topics in feminist studies and popular culture, e.g. “Do trigger warnings create a safe space for students, or coddle them?” Interview. CBC Radio The Sunday Edition. 29 November, 2015.
In connection with her work in popular culture, in this case the practice of fanvidding, she is an advocate of public and academic engagement with fandom; see appendix O of a case brought before the U.S. Copyright office at the library of Congress in 2011.
Jane is an Associate Professor in Gender Studies, cross-appointed to English and affiliated with the graduate program in Cultural Studies.
Research Interests
comics and sequential art, feminism, queer theory, theatre and performance, reproductive justice, transgender studies, science fiction, fantasy, critical disability studies, art activism
A Special Issue on Critical Disability Studies and the Fantastic is now open until July 1, 2027 with the open access, peer-reviewed journal Humanities (guest edited by Jane Tolmie): https://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/YPWU5IT3OM.
Selected Publications
Tolmie, J.M.; Carroll, W. “Perfectly You”: Visual Thinking and Decolonization in the Canadian Speculative Fiction Classroom. Arts 2026, 15, 108. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts15050108
Woman, Life, Freedom, and the Comics Classroom After Mahsa Amini Humanities 2025, 14(2), 25; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020035
“Sarah Leavitt’s Tangles: Teaching Queer Caregiving Memoir on Disability, and Pedagogy as Resistance.” Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics. 8:2, 2024. https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/14947
Contagious Imagination: The Work and Art of Lynda Barry. Ed. Jane Tolmie (University Press of Mississippi, 2022). https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2tsxkt8
Drawing from Life: Memory and Subjectivity in Comic Art. Ed. Jane Tolmie. (University Press of Mississippi, 2013). Nominated for 2014 Eisner award. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2tvprn
“Spinning Women and Manly Soldiers: Grief and Game in the English Massacre Plays.” In Laments for the Lost in Medieval Literature. Ed. Jane Tolmie and M. J. Toswell. Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, pp. 283-298. (Brepols Press, 2010). https://doi.org/10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.3.2608
The Book of Vole is an ongoing poetry/art project in 2026, and the only creative project included here, some done in collaboration with Canadian artist Perry Rath and discussed briefly here.
- Jane Tolmie and Perry Rath, collaborative art/poetry exhibit at the Vancouver Art Institute, April 3-June 29, 2016.
- Jane Tolmie. “Book of Vole (excerpts).” Imaginarium 3: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. Ed.Sandra Kasturi and Helen Marshall. ChiZine 2015
- “Experiments in Autobiography: The Book of Vole (excerpts).” Strange Horizons. 2013.
“York: The Slaughter of the Innocents.” Ed. & Intro. The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama. Ed. Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian. Broadview. 2013.
“Masculinities in Canadian Literature.” Jane Tolmie and Karis Shearer. Canadian Perspectives on Men and Masculinities. Ed. Jason Laker. OUP: 2010.
“Public Scandal and Private Pain: Joseph's Quite Reasonable Doubts.” Performance, Drama and Spectacle in the Medieval City. Ed. Catherine Emerson, Adrian Tudor, Mario Longtin. Leuven: Peeters, 2010.
“Modernism, Memory and Desire: Queer Cultural Production in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.” Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. 22, 2009. https://doi.org/10.3138/topia.22.77
“Eve in the Looking-Glass: Interpretive Labour in the Anglo-Norman Adam play.” lectio difficilior: European Online Journal of Feminist Exegesis. 2, 2009.
“Silence in the Sewing Chamber: Le Roman de Silence.” French Studies. 63:1, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/knn127
“Medievalism and the Fantasy Heroine.” Journal of Gender Studies.15:2, 2006. 145-59. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589230600720042
“Goading, Ritual discord and the deflection of blame.” Journal of Historical Pragmatics: Ritual Language Behaviour. Vol.4., No.2. 2003. 287-301. https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.4.2.08tol
“Framing Persuasion: Eve and the Fall of the Verbal Order.” Mediaevalia: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Medieval Studies Worldwide. Vol. 20, 2001. 93-118
“Dave Duncan.” Dictionary of Literary Biography: Canadian Fantasy and Science-Fiction Writers. Ed. Douglas Ivison. A Bruccoli Clar Layman Book, The Gale Group, 2002. 75-90
“Can We Talk About 'Multiple Versions Versions of the Same Thing' in a Meaningful Way?“ Arthuriana. Vol. 9, No. 1, Special Double Issue on Modern and Post-Modern Arthurian Literature and Teaching King Arthur at Harvard (Spring 1999), pp. 141-143. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27869429
“Tongue in Cheek: Treating Cannibalism in Science Fiction.” Wit’s End. 1995. 6-9