Cameron Sparling

Research Project

Houses in Motion: Memory and Migrant Poetics in Five Late Twentieth Century Novels

Biography

Cameron Sparling (he/him) is in his second year of a direct-entry PhD in English at the University of Toronto, focusing on poststructuralist (primarily French) theory and the Canadian and American novel in the late twentieth century. Responding to the significance of the migrant in current political discourse, his proposed research is a survey of eighteen migration narratives, 1941–98, to identify the formal tropes used to construct or deny senses of dignity and belonging in a globalizing world.  

Cameron is a Junior Fellow at Massey College, a member of a collaborative specialization through the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, and a recipient of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship. He is currently chair of the Graduate English Association annual conference. Cameron is also working toward his Irish dance teacher’s certification; in his seventeen-year dance career, he won nine Western Canadian Championships and one Eastern Canadian Championship and placed fifth at the North Americans and ninth at Worlds. Cameron is passionate about teaching and firmly believes that engagement with the arts enriches all our lives. In his free time, he can be found cooking, collecting jewelry, observing architecture, and travelling, trying to explore more facets of the world.