Dr. Anna Veprinska

PhD

Pronouns: she/her

Positions

Assistant Professor

Faculty of Arts, Department of English

Contact information

anna.veprinska@ucalgary.ca

Location

Office: SS1102

I'm looking for...

Research partners

Learning opportunities

Funding

Background

Educational Background

PhD English, York University, 2018

MSt English (1900-present), University of Oxford, 2011

BA (Honours) English, York University, 2010

Biography

I am a poet and scholar of contemporary poetry, creative writing, empathy, crisis and trauma studies, and Holocaust and genocide studies. My current research and writing focus on poetry, sound, accessibility, and disability.

Research

Areas of Research

Contemporary literature, twentieth and twenty-first-century poetry, empathy, poetry after trauma, the Holocaust, genocide, creative writing, disability and chronic illness studies, sound studies, ecocriticism

Participation in university strategic initiatives

Human dynamics in a changing world

Infections, inflammation and chronic diseases

Courses

Course number	Course title	Semester
ENGL 436.01	Creative Writing, Poetry: Short Forms	Fall 2023
ENGL 336.02	Introduction to Creative Writing Practice (Fiction)	Fall 2023
ENGL 336.04	Introduction to Creative Writing Practice (Across the Genres)	Winter 2024
ENGL 251	Literature and Society	Winter 2024

Projects

Listening as Pain and Necessity: Hyperacusis, Noise Pollution, and Auditory Accessibility

This research-creation project merges personal sensitivity to listening, accessibility-driven reliance on sound, and research on sound pollution to write a book of poems.

Empathy in Poetic Encounters with Holocaust Survivor Interviews

This research-creation project examines empathy in the poetry of Holocaust survivors during their audio-visual testimonies. As part of the project, I write poems in response to the testimonies.

Awards

Wayne O. McCready Emerging Fellowship, Calgary Institute for the Humanities. 2024
Honourable Mention for Memory Studies Association First Book Award, Memory Studies Association. 2021
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship, SSHRC / University of Toronto. 2020
Faculty of Graduate Studies Dissertation Prize, York University. 2019
A.C. Silber Award for Holocaust and East European Studies, York University. 2017
Cummings Foundation Research Fellowship, Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2016
English Department Teaching Assistant Award, York University. 2016

Publications

Empathy in Contemporary Poetry after Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan. (2020)
Sew with Butterflies: Poems. Steel Bananas Press. (2014)
Stone Blossom [chapbook]. Anstruther Press. (2022)
Spirit-Clenched [chapbook]. Gap Riot Press. (2020)
"The Unanticipated Visitor: A Case Study of Response and Poetry at Sites of Holocaust Memory". Understanding Visitor Experience at Holocaust Museums and Memory Sites. Ed. Diana Popescu. Routledge. (2022)
"There and un-there: empathy in poetic encounters with Holocaust survivor interviews". Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, vol. 29, no. 1. (2022)
"Ability, Academia, and Audiobooks: In Conversation” . Co-author Sarah Jensen. New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication, vol. 2, no. 2. (2022)
“Empathetic Witnessing in Charles Reznikoff’s Holocaust and Cynthia Hogue and Rebecca Ross’s When the Water Came: Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina”. Contemporary Literature, vol. 58, no. 3. (2017)
"Meetings with Anna Akhmatova: Translation as Interrogation” . The Bristol Journal of English Studies, vol. 2. (2012)
“Learning from the Past, Teaching for the Future: A Forum.”. Co-author Sara Horowitz. Canadian Jewish Studies (Jewish Education in Canada). (2024)