I am a PhD candidate in the Department of English at the University of Toronto. My research engages with theories of diaspora, decolonial and anti-racist ecocriticism, and Asian North American literatures. In my dissertation, I explore how recent diasporic Asian texts set in Turtle Island articulate environmental crisis. Reading novels and poetry by Ruth Ozeki, Paul Yee, Rita Wong, and C Pam Zhang, I attend to the ways in which these writers figure Asian-Indigenous relations. My work asks what more ethical modes of diasporic placemaking might look like on stolen lands that are also at risk.
Contact: anna.butlerkoo@mail.utoronto.ca
Karina Vernon 