- North York, Ontario, Canada
- 416-736-2100 x33944
Alison J Halsall
York University, Humanities, Faculty Member
- My teaching and scholarly strengths are interdisciplinary and trans-generic, and I have won several teaching awards, ... moreMy teaching and scholarly strengths are interdisciplinary and trans-generic, and I have won several teaching awards, including the 2017 Department of Humanities Excellence in Teaching Award and the 2010 Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence. I specialize in Victorian and modernist literatures, with a particular emphasis on Visual Cultures, which includes the study of paintings and illustrations, contemporary film, comics and graphic novels. I have also developed a substantial expertise in Children's Literature, and am currently working on a project that looks at crisis comics, the interface of literature and human rights discourse.(My teaching and scholarly strengths are interdisciplinary and trans-generic, and I have won several teaching awards, including the 2017 Department of Humanities Excellence in Teaching Award and the 2010 Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence. I specialize in Victorian and modernist literatures, with a particular emphasis on Visual Cultures, which includes the study of paintings and illustrations, contemporary film, comics and graphic novels. I have also developed a substantial expertise in Children's Literature, and am currently working on a project that looks at crisis comics, the interface of literature and human rights discourse.)edit
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Research Interests: Art()
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"H.D. scholars have been writing about "White Rose and the Red"for decades, but the manuscript has remained cloistered in the archives. Now at last, in Alison Halsall's meticulously researched critical edition, an... more
"H.D. scholars have been writing about "White Rose and the Red"for decades, but the manuscript has remained cloistered in the archives. Now at last, in Alison Halsall's meticulously researched critical edition, an important work of modernist fiction sees the light of day."--Helen Sword, University of Auckland"It is time that this evocative and fascinating novel became available for further study (and enjoyment) to readers/scholars of H.D. as well as feminist literary scholars and scholars of modernism and of Victorian literary studies. It will become essential reading."--Cassandra Laity, Drew UniversityNever before published, "White Rose and the Red"is the fictional biography of Elizabeth Siddall, wife of English poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This extraordinary novel explores the charged interpersonal relationships between and among Siddall, Rossetti, and other key members of the pre-Raphaelite movement, including William Morris and John Ruskin.During H.D.'s lifetime, publishers shied away from the novel's radically unconventional hybrid form that combines elements of historical nonfiction, fiction, and biography. As part of the dense and allusive prose trilogy written during and after World War II (along with "The Sword Went Out to Sea"and "The Mystery"), "White Rose and the Red"exemplifies the mythic theme that H.D. saw as unifying all her writing. It also examines how Siddall--a controversial muse and model--came to become the iconic figure of an artistic movement.H.D. (born Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) was an American writer who lived in London before, during, and after World War II. Many of her novels were written under the pseudonym Delia Alton. Alison Halsall is adjunct professor of English literature at York University, Toronto."
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In this chapter, Halsall discusses the myriad benefits to teaching graphic novels as a unique genre of literature, arguing that the graphic novel format helps transform a novel into an artistic artifact, and thus appeals in part to the... more
In this chapter, Halsall discusses the myriad benefits to teaching graphic novels as a unique genre of literature, arguing that the graphic novel format helps transform a novel into an artistic artifact, and thus appeals in part to the needs of our distinctly visual age. With this multimedia reading experience as a foundation, Halsall discusses her use of Frank Miller’s 300 to discuss the epic genre and Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in engaging with Victorian historical and literary conventions, and the ways in which these readings deepen students’ understanding of and engagement with both the graphic novel format and the conventions of the more traditionally “literary.”
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Research Interests: Comics()
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Research Interests: Queer()
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Suzanne Collins’s trilogy and Koushun Takami’s novel investigate how space and place can be re-imagined and adapted by the child players in their battle for survival and revenge. In these dystopian texts, children who have clearly been... more
Suzanne Collins’s trilogy and Koushun Takami’s novel investigate how space and place can be re-imagined and adapted by the child players in their battle for survival and revenge. In these dystopian texts, children who have clearly been acted upon by authoritarian governments, eventually claim their own power and control over these prescribed spaces, appropriating nature (the woods, the game arena, the island) as their battleground and, in fact, transforming nature into a temporary home in their quests to reassert agency over their own lives, which the governments are so determined to destroy. The tributes in these games thus transform the arena or the island into spaces that in turn allow them to actualize their own desires for revenge and personal freedom, sometimes even temporary enjoyment, oftentimes the confession of love in acts that also serve the educational purpose of teaching the importance of a child’s agency, to themselves, to their fellow “players,” and to the (largely adult) viewing public.
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This article argues that Neil Gaiman's appropriation of the Gothic topos in The Graveyard Book (2008) deliberately unsettles its genre. No stranger to the interaction of word and image on the page, Gaiman's fascination with the visual can... more
This article argues that Neil Gaiman's appropriation of the Gothic topos in The Graveyard Book (2008) deliberately unsettles its genre. No stranger to the interaction of word and image on the page, Gaiman's fascination with the visual can be seen on the first page of his novel, a page that communicates in word and image. Interestingly, P. Craig Russell's graphic novel version (2014) develops the hybridity of Gaiman's source text in more depth. Not only are these volumes a further testament to the visual potential of Gaiman's Graveyard Book; they also visually mirror Gaiman's approach to the Gothic: it unsettles and transforms the once-frightening world of ghosts and goblins into a world in which the child-protagonist and reader would feel at home.