WINNIPEG, MB – The University of Winnipeg congratulates English professor Andrew Burke, who received the prestigious Priestley Prize in Vancouver recently, awarded by the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English in association with English Studies in Canada.
The prize recognizes the best article published during the year by English Studies in Canada.
Burke’s winning article is entitled “Do you smell fumes?: Health, Hygiene and Suburban Life,” and will appear in Vol. 32.4 of English Studies in Canada and online through Project Muse.
The essay is primarily an analysis of Todd Haynes’s 1995 film Safe, but also provides a broader reading of the cultural history of suburbia. Safe has been described as a horror movie of the soul, an eerie medical thriller that shows us our environment has finally turned against us. Burke’s essay leads into an analysis of the film through the history of representations of suburbia from Victorian Britain to contemporary Hollywood, arguing that what was originally considered a place of health and hygiene has come to be seen as a space of illness and contagion.
The Priestley Prize, awarded annually, is named after Francis Ethelbert Louis Priestley (1905-1988), who retired in 1972 from his University College in the University of Toronto after some 50 years of teaching. Priestley was a professor widely recognized for his unrivalled contribution to the welfare of the humanities in Canada.
Andrew Burke, B.A. Hons. (Dalhousie), M.A. (Concordia), Ph.D. (York) specializes in Victorian literature and culture; contemporary British literature and culture; critical theory; and film studies.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Diane Poulin, Communications Officer, The University of Winnipeg
P: 204.988.7135 d.poulin@uwinnipeg.ca
