Linda Hutcheon is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. Her areas of interest are: I. Comparative Canadian literature; II. Literary theory (post-structuralist, feminist, semiotic); III. Postmodern literatures (North and South American, European); IV. Theory; Twentieth-Century Fiction; Interdisciplinary Studies. Professor Hutcheon’s current research projects deal with a) Comparative Literary History, and b) Death and dying as well as the body in opera. Professor Hutcheon has published numerous books, such as Opera: Desire, Disease, Death (University of Nebraska Press, 1996), Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony (Routledge, 1995), Splitting Images: Contemporary Canadian Ironies (Oxford University Press, 1991), The Politics of Postmodernism (Routledge, 1989), A Poetics of Postmodernism (Routledge, 1988), A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms (Methuen, 1985), and hes groundbreaking early study Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox (1980; Methuen, 1984). Professor Hutcheon has also published extensively in edited volumes and journals.