Faculty Bio

Dr. Rita Dirks

Associate Professor, English

Phone: 403-531-9130
Email: rita.dirks@stmu.ca

My academic journey began at the University of Winnipeg (BA) and then the University of Manitoba (MA). I received my PhD from the University of Alberta’s Department of Comparative Literature, Religion, Film/Media Studies. I research and publish in the areas of women's and gender studies, focusing on Canadian literature and writers of the 1890s-1925 like Oscar Wilde, Bliss Carman and Virginia Woolf. My current project is a book on the Canadian author Miriam Toews: The Violence of Pacifism: Feminism, Theology, and Their
Mennonite Reception in the Novels of Miriam Toews (Pandora Press; forthcoming in 2027).

I have been fortunate to be able to combine my scholarly work with classroom teaching. Most recently, I have taught courses in Canadian literature, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, literary theory, and world literatures, including drama.

While I was a graduate student and instructor at the University of Alberta, I received a Teaching Excellence Award.

I started to teach at St. Mary’s University in January 2023, with one course, and then full time as of July 2023.

Specialization/Research Interest

Women’s and Gender Studies, Canadian Literature, Literary Theory, Decadence (Russian, French, and English)

Education

PhD, Comparative Literature, University of Alberta
MA, Slavic Studies (Russian Literature), University of Manitoba
BA, German Studies, University of Winnipeg

  • Dirks, Rita. Review of Miriam Toews, A Truce That Is Not Peace. Toronto: Knopf, 2025. Anabaptist World, forthcoming November 2025.
  • Silence and Rage in Miriam Toews’s Mennonite Novels. London: Bloomsbury/Lexington, 2024.
  • “Pleasure in the Face of Death: Poetry and Self-Realization.” Sexuality and Erotism in a Post-Pandemic World: Beyond the Biopolitics of the New Normal. Ed. Jon Braddy and Phil Shining. Leiden: Brill, 2023, 153-180.
  • "Freedom to Know Me: The Conflict between Identity and Mennonite Culture in Miriam Toews's A Complicated Kindness.” Narratives Crossing Borders: The Dynamics of Cultural Interaction. Ed. Herbert Jonsson, Lovisa Berg, Christina Edfeldt and Bo G. Jansson. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2021, 33-50.
  • “Oscar Wilde’s Spirituality: The Erotics of Queer Theology.” Exploring Sexuality & Spirituality. Ed. Phil Shining and Nicol Michelle Epple. Leiden: Brill P, 2020, 197-210.
  • “Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Dostoevsky: The Sacred Space of the Soul.” Ed. Kristina K. Groover, Religion, Secularism, and the Spiritual Paths of Virginia Woolf. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 151-66.
  • “Hierophants of Decadence: Bliss Carman and Arthur Symons.” Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies 1 (2018): 35-55. Goldsmiths, University of London.