Sophie Been

Biography 

Sophie is a PhD Candidate (ABD) working under the supervision of Dr. Angela Facundo. Her dissertation focuses on contemporary Queer life writing.

For 2026/2027, she is teaching three courses on Contemporary Literature at Brandon University and has developed her syllabi to concentrate on contemporary Canadian environmental literature.

Research Interests

Queer Theory; Life Writing (specifically memoir and autoethnography); Contemporary Literature; Gender and Sexuality Studies; Canadian Literature; Ecocriticism.

Publications and Conferencing 

“Autoethnographic Archive: Visibility and Risks for North American Queer and Gender-Diverse Scholars.” Archiving in the Americas: Digital Humanities, Ethnography, and Life Writing amid State Censorship, The 2027 MLA Annual Convention, 7 January 2027, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles. Conference presentation.

“Writing the Body/Self: Affective Multimodal Self-Representation in Paige Maylott’s My Body is Distant (2023).” Contemporary Queer and Trans Life Writing: Locating the Autobiographical “I”, The 2026 MLA Annual Convention, 11 January 2026, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Toronto. Conference presentation.

 “Autoethnography towards Community Accountability: Queerlandia, Belonging, and Hope.” Journal of Critical Race Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 1, 2025, pp. 64-75.

“(Anti)/Narrativity and the Demands of Legibility in Contemporary Queer Life Writing.” Special Topics Presentation, 27 May 2025, Queen’s University, Watson Hall. 

“The (Gendered) Politics of Autobiography: Muriel Rukeyser’s Savage Coast.” The Radical Politics of Sexuality and Gender, 1914–1945, 25 September 2024, Queen’s University, Dupuis Hall.

Awards and Recognition

Canada Graduate Scholarship - Master's (CGS-M), awarded in 2022
William C. Leggett Graduate Fellowship, awarded for 2025-2026

Graduate Supervision

Angela Facundo
Juliane Okot Bitek