Dr. Laurel Ryan
Associate Professor of English and Co-director of Graduate Studies
What are your research interests?
I am interested in how authors take ideas of the past – sometimes from their own countries, sometimes from other places – to tell stories about the present. I find it particularly curious when they look to other places as well as other times to explore the here and now: what do these transnational and transhistorical borrowings say about their own times and places?
A constant thread among my projects is my interest in how authors have appropriated ideas of elsewhere and elsewhen to justify their contemporary sociopolitical aims. I am particularly interested in how nineteenth-century authors used globalizing discourses to imagine history as deriving not from any given land, but from cultural memory.
What drew you to these topics?
I love finding connections, and there is limitless potential in the study of how stories move through time and across nations. Medievalism – or the study of how we re-imagine the medieval past – and transnational studies are both growing fields with so much room to explore. What we value about old stories says as much or more about our own values than it does about the times and places we’re talking about. We are constantly reinventing the past, and I always want to know why. What’s the future that we’re hoping for by telling that story about the past?
What are some of your most recent (completed) projects?
I recently completed co-editing the book Medievalism and Slavic Popular Culture (Arc Humanities, 2025) with Anna Czarnowus. This was a fascinating project: the primary target audience is scholars in North America and the UK, but we wanted to prioritize contributors with lived experience with Slavic cultures, so English was a second or third language for most of the contributors. I learned about differences between North American and Eastern European scholarly writing styles, and I worked with the contributors to help their chapters conform to North American scholarly expectations. This was my first edited volume, but Anna has a lot of editing and co-editing experience, and she was a wonderful collaborator who taught me a lot about the process.
I also recently published an article in Canadian Literature on “Locating Camelot in Canada: Place, Memory, and John Reade’s The Prophecy of Merlin and Other Poems.” My work frequently combines cultural and literary studies; in this article, I discuss how stories of King Arthur have worked their way into the geographies and cartographies of various places I’ve lived, and I combine that analysis of place with a reading of an Arthurian poetry collection that was popular in nineteenth-century Canada. This article is the most autobiographical of all of my work so far: I write explicitly about my connections to these places and what these Arthurian cartographies mean for me.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a couple of projects: I’m finishing an article on transatlantic constructions of race in late-nineteenth-century literary periodicals, and I’ve just started a piece about Canadian adaptations of Robin Hood. I am also always adding to my database on Canadian medievalisms.
What courses do you teach?
This is my 12th year at UL, and I have taught 19 different courses here! The courses in my current rotation are ENGL 203: World Literatures and Cultures to 1650, ENGL 290: Introduction to English Studies, and graduate seminars on nineteenth-century transnational literatures.
What is/are your favorite, and why?
My current favorite course is one I’m teaching right now: ENGL 415, Pop Medievalisms. We’re looking at contemporary stories from different parts of the world that fantasize a global medieval past. It’s a passion course for me – it’s my area of research specialty – and I love seeing students get excited about things that I find exciting too.
My next favorite course is ENGL 290: Introduction to English Studies. This is the course that introduces students in English to the major. (It’s also open to students taking English as a minor.) I teach this as a very hands-on course. We do a lot of work together in class to learn a sampling of tools and techniques from all of the disciplines under the English umbrella. I love introducing students to possibilities within English that are new to them, and giving them practical tools to help them with their research.
Talk a little about the kinds of service you’re involved in.
Currently I’m the Graduate Coordinator for Incoming Students in the English Department. A huge part of this role is engaging with prospective students, and another really important part of it is helping new graduate students navigate the university once they get here. We have a large department, and I enjoy getting to know all of our graduate students this way.
I’m also a member-at-large on the executive of the Association for Canadian and Québec Literatures, a bilingual (French/English) scholarly association. Many of the associations in literary studies are monolingual, and I really appreciate that this association reaches across the boundaries of language and discipline. Previously, I’ve served as the VP-Anglophone and the Mentorship Coordinator for this association, and I’ve organized its annual conference three times. I like taking on roles that bring people together: conferences are wonderful for that, and the mentorship program is a powerful way to help new scholars build connections outside of their institutions and thrive in the broader academic community.
How can the liberal arts be beneficial to students?
As Thomas King has said, “the truth about stories is that that’s all we are.” Stories are powerful, for good and for ill. I think it’s really important to be intentional about the stories that we tell about ourselves and about each other, and to think carefully about the stories that are told to us. We get comfortable with certain types of stories, while others can seem alienating or unsettling. The more practice we get at reading and listening to and thinking about all types of stories, the better we’ll all be at understanding each other.