Dr. Jocelyn Williams portrait

Dr. Jocelyn Williams

Associate Professor, English
Area Chair, Humanities

Phone: (403) 254-3767
Email: Jocelyn.Williams@stmu.ca
Office: A206

PhD English Literature, Memorial University, Newfoundland
MA English Literature, University of Toronto, Ontario
BA English Literature, St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia

Specializations: Autobiography, 20th/21st century Literature and Theory, Canadian Literature, and creative writing.

My research is in post trauma literature. I disseminate academic and public-facing research to encourage the conversation on social recovery. I strive to integrate my program of research into pedagogy, leadership, and global citizenship and feature intergenerational collaboration of diverse voices for generative exchange.


I’m Dr. Williams and although I’m formal in name, you’ll find me open and warm in class. I love teaching you literature and writing and that passion shows through in my energetic lectures and our lively class discussions. Stick with me and you’ll fall for everything from daring life-writing strategies and snowless Canadian novels to honest, clever, and rebellious poems of the 19th to the 21st century. It’s my pleasure to support your critical engagement from different angles and expression of self, fully, confidently and culturally responsibly. Through the study of English literature, we’ll keep ourselves entertained and live with joy and tolerance.

  • 359 Auto/biography
  • 325 Contemporary Literature
  • 399 Editorial Entrepreneurship I and II
  • 469 Modern and Contemporary Literary Theory
  • 341 Early Canadian Literature
  • 343 Later Canadian Literature
  • 381.10 Major Authors: Atwood
  • 381.6 Major Authors: Ondaatje
  • 381.8 Major Authors: Alice Munro
  • 381.3 Major Authors: John Irving
  • 399 Directed Reading: Atlantic Canadian Fiction
  • 317 Restoration & 18th century Literature
  • 337 Romantic Literature
  • 355 Catholic Prose
  • 401 Senior Seminar
  • 200A/200B Survey of English Literature


This Ends in Betrayal (from Prism International)

On Wednesday morning, I felt like I swallowed the towel I had used to hand dry the dishes. I drove myself to the 8:00am opening and spoke my brief fear to the one eyed woman at the front. The blood tests were a slow measure. One machine tied to me spit out lightning on paper. She held my hand when she told me to cancel the rest of this day and the next and another.

I had my period but they needed to shave me and empty my bed pan and insert a blue tube for the dye. I offered my ready wrist to the team who said no. I couldn’t wear panties and knew blood to be pooling on the gurney as I signed my name crookedly. Yes enough information had been given (passive voice) and local bleeding likely, a joke. No I do not remember the potential complications (less than ½ do: 47.1 + 11.0 %).

On another Wednesday morning, after the rash after the handrails after the pills under my tired tongue and insistence I stop driving and reading black tea leaves and screens of signs, I look squarely: my right breast has blossomed. Its nipple pulls in when I raise my arm as if to wave; a dimpled golf ball but egg shape sits waiting the rest of this day and the next and another (5 years= 90%; 10 years = 83%) Margins of a new sort were just as scribbled (passive) and tested and retested across national borders (voices). The first time the incision looked like a small frown. The second and third a nurse with both eyes shrieked when she saw the seams burst from infection after weeks of drain tubes in Frankenstein flesh.

On the last Wednesday morning, I sketched lungs–symmetrical, billowed, obvious behind their still rugged cage. Next, I drew the heart, a bit to the left, once uncomplicated.But when he removed my breasts, its beat was too close. When I laughed, I felt the clots on my organs on the edge of my right shoulder, like a muse losing footing.

  • The Legacy Interviews: Intergenerational Memoirs of Resiliency. St. Mary’s UP. Forthcoming, Summer 2021.
  • “This Ends in Betrayal.” Prism International. 59.3,2021, 70.
  • “Hers.” Bacopa Literary Review. Vol. 11,2020.
  • “Rash.” Open Minds Quarterly. Summer 2019, 19.
  • “Always, Always.” Frontier Poetry. Josh Roark, editor,2019. https://www.frontierpoetry.com/2019/03/26/2018-frontier-open-finalists/
  • Weaving Words of Wisdom: Intergenerational Memoirs. St. Mary’s UP. 2019.
  • “Envy.” Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology. Priscilla Uppal and Maeghan Stimas, editors, Mansfield P,2018, 139.
  • Sightlines. Vol. 13-15, 2018-2021.•Poetry. Canadian Woman Studies. 30:1. 65, 127. 2013.
  • Beyond the Foreground: Ann Marie MacDonald’s Prose. Canada and Beyond. 2012.
  • Book Review of Helpless by Barbara Gowdy. The Nashwaak Review. 2011.
  • 2nd editor of Sylvie Berard’s Of Wind and Sand; Calgary: Tesserect. 2009.
  • “The Rifle Kicks Hard Both Ways: Rereading David Adams Richards.” The Nashwaak Review. 2006.
  • Poetry. The Antigonish Review: 117: 54-56. 1999.

In Progress

  • Far From the Tree,a chapbook.
  • Disarmed Pedagogy: Challenging Privileged Readers.
  • Post Traumatic Literature: Writing Sexual Trauma, Reading Recovery.

  • “‘What Effrontery!’ Surviving The Testaments.” MLA: Wilderness (and Other) Tips: Concepts of Survival in Atwood’s Works.” Washington, D.C., Jan 2022.
  • “Border-Stalking: the Possibilities of Catholic Literature for a Pluralistic Age” co-presented with a student at ACCUTE, Congress, Vancouver, 2019.
  • “Poetry as Preventative Medicine for Teen Mental Health” AISC, Alberta Teachers’ Convention, Calgary, 2019.
  • “Nanabush Showed Me: Learning Indigenous Literature” AEPL Conference, Colorado, 2018.
  • Sharon Butala: Feminism in Motion. Katowice, Poland.2018.
  • “‘As in Genesis Pain Came’: The Role of Institutionalized Faith in Trauma Memoir.” ACCUTE, Congress, Ryerson, 2017.
  • “‘As in Genesis, Pain Came’: The Role of Institutionalized Faith in Trauma Memoir” at ACCUTE Conference, Congress. 2013.
  • “All God’s: Children in Flannery O’Connor’s Short Fiction” at ACCUTE Conference, Congress. 2012.
  • “Another Old Buck:” Masculinity and Spirituality in Andre Dubus’s Short Fiction. Christianity and Literature Study Group/ ACCUTE, Congress. 2011.
  • “Beyond Horizontal: Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Prose. Canada and Beyond. Huelva, Spain. 2010.
  • “Cocktail Queer” at ACCUTE Conference, Congress. 2009.
  • “Prey Tell: Hunting in Canadian Literature” at the Eleventh Annual CBU Storytelling Symposium. 2008.
  • “MisLeading: Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fiction” at ACCUTE Conference, Congress. 2006.
  • “(Re)Facing Freud: The Williamson Approach” at CCCLA Conference, Congress. 2006.
  • “Voice Not Victim” at the Tenth Annual CBU Storytelling Symposium. 2006.
  • “Writing and Racing Abuse: Vanessa Alleyne” at Race, Gender, Class, Sexuality Conference. 2005.
  • “Selves: Writing Race, Writing Incest” at Beyond Autoethnography: Writing Race and Ethnicity. 2005.
  • “The Messy Things Let Out: Janice Williamson” at the ACCUTE Conference, Congress. 2005.
  • “Monsters and Mockery: James De Mille” at The Ninth Annu7al CBU Storytelling Symposium. 2005.
  • “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (Reader)” at The Thomas Raddall Symposium Series. 2004.
  • “From House to House: Story in Cape Breton” at The Fourth Annual UCCB Storytelling Symposium. 2000.
  • “Postcolonial Possibilities for George Cartwright” at The Atlantic Canadian Studies Conference XII. 1998.

  • Teaching Innovation Grant, St.Mary’s University, Calgary, 2021.
  • Open finalist, Frontier Poetry, 2019.
  • Horizon for Seniors Grant, Service Canada, 2018, 2020.
  • St. Mary’s Research Grant, Calgary, 2018.