Speakers either present a lecture or share a work-in-progress.
Works-in-progress are circulated in advance to listserv subscribers. If you are not a member of the listserv and would like to receive information about WINCS events, please see this website's "Join / Contact" page.
Work in Nineteenth-Century Studies Group Events 2026-2027
Wednesday, November 18, 2026 | 4:30 pm | Jackman Humanities Bldg., Room 616
Laura Fisher, Professor of English, Toronto Metropolitan University
"'Any name you please': Life-Writing in the Red Light District"
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This talk comes from Fisher's current book project, which tells the story of the birth of the twentieth century and the rise of modern sexuality as told through the story of an anonymous sex worker's lost memoir, written in 1913 in San Francisco. The talk will situate this project in relation to nineteenth-century currents in memoir and prostitution and will be of interest to regular WINCS participants as well as those interested in Modernism and early twentieth-century literature, American Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Laura Fisher is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Toronto Metropolitan University, where she specializes in early twentieth-century U.S. literature and culture. Her book, Girl on the Line: A Story of Sex, Vice, and the Lost Memoir that Helped Shape Modern America will be published by Pantheon (US) and McClelland and Stewart (Canada). She is the author of Reading for Reform: The Social Work of Literature in the Progressive Era (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), a literary history of social reform institutions in the United States, and the editor of Kate Chopin’s 1899 feminist novel The Awakening (Norton Library, 2023). Dr. Fisher’s research has been published in American Literature, American Literary History, College Literature, Journal of Modern Literature, MELUS, Modern Language Quarterly, and elsewhere. In addition to her scholarly writing, Dr. Fisher writes cultural criticism on such topics as riot grrrl, popular music and culture, and contemporary literature for publications such as The Guardian, The New Inquiry, Avidly—Los Angeles Review of Books, and Public Books. She has also produced a digital and public humanities project entitled City of Words, which she uses as a tool for teaching urban literatures in Toronto and beyond.
Thursday, January 28, 2027 | 4:30 pm | Jackman Humanities Bldg., Room 616
Kristin Moriah, Associate Professor of English, Queen's University
"'Of the artiste, by the artiste and for the artiste':
Performing Black Internationalism at the Turn of the Century"
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Kristin Moriah is a member of the American Antiquarian Society, a Canada Research Chair in Black Feminist Arts and Technologies, and the 2022 recipient of the American Studies Association’s Yasuo Sakakibara Prize. She is the editor of Insensible of Boundaries: Studies in Mary Ann Shadd Cary (2025), the first collection of scholarly essays about radical Black feminist editor and activist Mary Ann Shadd Cary. Dr. Moriah’s recent projects include a co-edited special Issue of J19: The Journal of Nineteenth Century American Studies. This volume, the first-ever special issue of J19, was assembled in honour of F.E.W. Harper’s 200th birthday. The work presented in that issue is part of a recent proliferation of Harper scholarship, which promises to advance our knowledge of the impact of Harper’s corpus and set the stage for even more innovative approaches to the study of her legacy as a Black feminist activist and intellectual.
Nineteenth-Century Graduate (NRG) Student Reading Group
The NRG gives junior scholars – C19 Americanists, Victorianists, Romanticists, and beyond – a chance to connect, share research ideas, and develop professionally.
New members are always welcome!
Please visit the UofT Nineteenth-Century Reading Group website, or email:
Andy Chang, Quenby Hersh, Caio Popovic, or Robbie Steele,