BA, MA, PhD
Instructor
sross2@capilanou.ca
Education
PhD, English, Simon Fraser University, 2003.
MA, English, University of British Columbia, 1988.
BA, English & Art History, University of British Columbia, 1986.
Bio
Sheila Ross (PhD, Simon Fraser University, 2003) has taught literature and writing at Capilano University since 2008. Her doctoral work is a study of the 20th century German philosopher H.G. Gadamer's work on "event hermeneutics" and its radical potential for a new ethics as well as for understanding contemporary narrative art. This orientation deeply informs her teaching, whether concerning the temporal structures that organize storytelling, or the importance of the oral word for the written essay.
I regularly teach a variety of literature and writing courses, from upper level literature and composition courses to Canadian literature, literature & film, and introductory literature and university writing courses.
My long-time interest in apocalyptic literatures has taken an environmental turn, as I research literature exploring life in a time of climate catastrophe (for example, novels by Claudia Casper, Claire Watkins, Richard Powers, Annalee Newitz) and especially works that critique human exceptionalism by foregrounding the sentience of other living creatures.
This research turn may help our students to imagine or reimagine value systems for a world in turmoil. Other scholarly interests include theorizing a poetics of attention and the threat posed to its cultivation by a surveillance economy. I am also interested in resuming the development of an intermediate writing textbook on style, put on hold while developing an new English Major.
Ross, Sheila. "The Poetics of Attention: Chronos, Kairos & The Little Machine of Story." Conference paper, 3rd International Irish Narrative Inquiry conference, NIU Galway, Ireland (March 2016).
Ross, Sheila. "Givenness and the Word of the Creature." The Capilano Review 3:13 (Winter 2011): 104-107.
Ross, Sheila. "The Enigma of Health, the Ecstasy of Beauty, and the Hermeneutics of the Everyday. "Conference paper, Canadian Hermeneutics Institute, Toronto ON (April 2010).
Ross, Sheila and David Jardine, "Won by a Certain Labour: A Conversation on the While of Things." Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Curricular Studies 5 (Jan 09).
Ross, Sheila. "The Temporality of Tarrying in Gadamer." Theory, Culture & Society 23:1 (Jan 06).
Ross, Sheila. "Gadamer's Late Thinking on Verweilen," Minerva Annual On-line Journal of Philosophy Vol 8 (Nov 04). Accessible at: http://www.minerva.mic.ul.ie/vol8/index.html.
Ross, Sheila. "Theology as Hermeneutical Stance: Gadamer and Self-Composure in St. Augustine's Confessions." comitatus 27 (1996), 1-13. Accessible at: https://escholarship.org/uc/cmrs_comitatus/27/1.