Karis Shearer

Introduction

My research focuses on the media and print culture in Canada, with a focus on literary audio, the long poem, and women’s labour in literary communities. After 8 years as lead UBC-researcher on the SSHRC-funded SpokenWeb project, which resulted in the preservation of hundreds of unique cultural heritage recordings and an edited collection of Finnish-Canadian writer Gladys Hindmarch, I have recently undertaken new research that continues my work on gender, textual studies, and sounded poetry, this time with a focus on Kalevala in Canada. “Kalevan Naiset: Reading Epic Poetry in Finnish migrant-settler communities in Northern Ontario” situates the Kalevan Naiset Ainikin Tupa within the longer history of Finnish migration to Northern Ontario, asking how Finnish-Canadian women used reading, recitation, and collective listening practices to sustain cultural memory, negotiate gender roles, and articulate belonging amid shifting ideas about citizenship, nationalism, and multiculturalism in Canada. The lodge’s lifespan (1955-2025) coincides with major changes in migration patterns, women’s roles, and Canadian cultural policy, making it a valuable lens for understanding diasporic cultural institutions and women’s cultural labour. 

Projects

Kalevan Naiset: Reading epic poetry in Finnish migrant-settler communities in Northern Ontario” (Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 2026-28).

Selected Publications

Shearer, Karis, et al. The SoundBox Collection. UBC Okanagan, 2024.  https://soundbox.ok.ubc.ca/

Shearer, Karis and Erin Moure. “It was an extension of the moment”: Five Poets in Conversation on Analog Audio Recording and Creative Practice.” In Resistant Practices in Communities of Sound. Eds. Deanna Fong and Cole Mash. Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2024. 286-323.

Co-author. Felicity Tayler, Marjorie Mitchell, Chantal Ripp, and Pascale Dangoisse, et al. Data Primer: Making Digital Humanities Research Data Public.  Press Books, 2022. SSHRC-funded, peer-reviewed OER.

Eds. Deanna Fong and Karis Shearer. Wanting Everything: The Collected Works of Gladys Hindmarch. Talonbooks, 2020.

Shearer, Karis. “’It’s all a curious dream’: Nostalgia, Old Media, and the Vancouver Poetry Conference, 1963.” Un-Archiving the Literary Event: CanLit Across Media. Eds. Jason Camlot and Katherine McLeod. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2019. 165-82.

Shearer, Karis, et al. “In Conversation: A Corner is Never a Firm Divide.” With Deanna Fong, Erin Moure, and Al Filreis. The Capilano Review 3, no. 39 (Fall 2019): 93-98.

Fong, Deanna and Karis Shearer. “Gender, Affective Labour, and Community-building through Literary Audio Artifacts.” No More Potlucks 50 (May 2018).  Republished April 21, 2022 with a new introduction in The SpokenWeblog.

Shearer, Karis and Katrina Anderson. “The Novel in English in Canada to 1950.” The Oxford History of the Novel in English: The World Novel to 1950. Vol. 9. Eds, Ralph Crane, Jane Stafford, and Mark Williams. Oxford University Press, 2016. 137-59.

Shearer, Karis. “The Poet-Editor and The Small Press: Michael Ondaatje and The Long Poem Anthology.” Anthologizing Canadian Literature: Theoretical and Cultural Perspectives. Ed. Robert Lecker. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2015. 219-52.