Placeholder Profile Image

Dr. Anthony Camara

Pronouns: He/Him

Positions

Undergraduate Program Director

Faculty of Arts, Department of English

Associate Professor

Faculty of Arts, Department of English

Contact information

Location

Office: Social Sciences 1110

For media enquiries, contact

mediarequests@ucalgary.ca

Background

Educational Background

PhD English, University of California Los Angeles, 2013

M.A. English, University of California (LA), 2009

B.A. English, University of California (LA), 2003

B.S. Biology, University of California (LA), 2003

Biography

I am an associate professor at the University of Calgary specializing in literature and science studies with an emphasis on prose fictions from the late Victorian period to the present day. My current book project, Dark Matter: Weird Fiction and the Substance of Horror, traces the evolution of the titular subgenre from its origins in the British Fin-de-siècle to its definitive statement in the twentieth-century pulp fictions of the famous American writer, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. My scholarly work has appeared in numerous collections as well as the peer-reviewed journals Horror Studies, Gothic Studies, and Studies in the Fantastic, among others. In addition to my PhD in English, I have a background in the biological sciences—I spent three years researching the genetics of sensory systems in the moon jellyfish, Aurelia aurita, and various other marine invertebrates—and long-standing interests in chemistry and astrophysics. Consequently, I am well suited to supervise projects in the fields of science and speculative fiction. And, as my scholarly work surely indicates, I am possessed of a love of horror literature and cinema, enabling me to supervise projects on the Gothic and the supernatural.

Research

Areas of Research

Popular genres: Weird & Horror Fiction, Popular genres: Science & Speculative Fiction

Courses

Course number Course title Semester
ENGL 203 Introductory Seminar 2020
ENGL 393 Speculative Fiction I: Science Fiction 2021
ENGL 477 Literature and Science: AI and VR in Science Fiction 2021
ENGL 517.29 Advanced Topic in Theory and Culture: Posthumanism Seminar 2020
ENGL 251 Literature and Society Fall 2021
ENGL 388 Supernatural Horror in Literature Fall 2018

Awards

  • CIH Fellowship, Calgary Institute for the Humanities. 2022

Publications

  • “The Non-Euclidean Gothic: Weird Expeditions into Higher Dimensions and Hyper-Matter with H.P. Lovecraft". Science Fiction Studies, vol. 51, no. 2. 174-201. (2024)
  • "Computing Human Identity in Greg Egan’s Permutation City". Western Humanities Review, vol. 73, no. 3. 151-180. (2019)
  • "Horror in the Wax Museum: Edith Nesbit’s ‘The Power of Darkness’ and the Strand Magazine". Edited by Faith Binckes and Carey Snyder, Edinburgh University Press.. Women, Periodicals, and Print Culture in Britain, 1890s-1920s: The Modernist Period. (2019)
  • "Neural Netfics: Science Fiction Stories for You and Your Posthuman Family". Northeastern Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Conference. (2023)
  • "Anti-Imperial Machines and Creative (R)evolutionary Energies: Re-engineering the Literary History of Steampunk" (Talk). Telus Spark Science Night. (2024)

In the News