Kailin Wright

Headshot of Kailin Wright

Kailin Wright

Professor, Adjunct Professor Acadia University
Campus Location
Nicholson Tower Rm 404
Email
Phone
(902) 867-3362
Biography

Adjunct Professor, Acadia University

Ph.D. (University of Toronto)

M.A. (University of Toronto)

B.A. Honours (University of Toronto) 

Research

Canadian theatre; Canadian literature; social justice; theatre history; identity; gender; race; Indigenous literatures; political theatre; performance studies; feminism; adaptation; Shakespeare adaptation; film and television adaptation; dystopia; reproductive justice; digital humanities; archives; and children's literature. I am interested in working with Honours and Advanced Major students in any of these areas.

Current Activities: Kailin Wright is Editor of The Antigonish Review and actively involved with Theatre Antigonish.  

Honours

2026StFX President's Reach Award
2026-2028SSHRC Insight Development Grant, "Archival ACTS: Unsettling Performance Histories in Atlantic Canada" (PI)
2025-2027Jules Léger Research Scholar in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
2023-2028SSHRC Insight Grant. “No Mother, No Nation: Performing Reproductive Justice and the Future.” Principal Investigator (PI). 
2023SSHRC Connection Grant. “Performing Shores / The Shores of Performance: A Canadian Theatre Conference.” Co-Applicant.
2020-2023Jules Lèger Research Scholar in Humanities and Social Sciences.
2020-2023Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Partnership Grant. Theatre as a Bridge to Empathy and Healing: Learning from Queer Birth Stories. Principal Investigator: Lisa Goldberg. Co-Investigator.
2018-2022SSHRC Insight Development Grant. "No Baby, No Future: Performing Pregnancy Loss in Canada." Principal Investigator.
2021Association of Atlantic Universities (AAU) Teaching Award.
2017StFX University Outstanding Teaching Award.
2013-2015SSHRC Strategic Knowledge Cluster Grant. Editing Modernism in Canada (EMiC), Principal Investigator: Dean Irvine. Co-applicant.
Publications

Books: Monographs

Books: Edited Books and Essay Collections

Editor: Journals

Digital Projects

Articles and Book Chapters

  • “Motherhood as Nationhood in Still Stands the House.” Rethinking Motherhood. Ed. Karen Bamford, Sheila Rabillard. McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming 2027. 
  • “Archives of Aquariums and Audience Immersion in Secret Life of a Mother.” Making Moscovitch: A Feminist Theatre Scrapbook. Ed. Sasha Kovacs and Michelle MacArthur. Playwrights Canada Press, forthcoming 2027.
  • “Together We Scream: Staging the Universal Child Care Crisis in Four of the Richest Countries.” Representing Reproduction in Contemporary Literature and Visual Culture: Time, Crisis and Futurity. Edited by Alice Hall and Melissa Oliver-Powell. Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming, 2026.
  • “(Un)Making History? Canadian Theatre History and the Canadian Theatre Review.” Performance Matters, “Reassembling CTR 199-200” 12.1 (2026): 11-20.
  • “Slings & Arrows: Adapting Shakespeare as Canada in Theatre and Television.” Slings & Arrows: Adapting Shakespeare in Theatre and Television. University of Toronto Press, 2026. 3-27. 
  • “Performing ‘A Nobody’: An Interview with Rothaford Gray on His Role as Nahum in Slings & Arrows.” Co-Authored with Don Moore. Slings & Arrows: Adapting Shakespeare in Theatre and Television. University of Toronto Press, 2026. 108-121.
  • “Why Shakespeare? Why Canada?: An Interview with Susan Coyne, Bob Martin, and Mark McKinney on Creating Slings & Arrows.” Slings & Arrows: Adapting Shakespeare in Theatre and Television. University of Toronto Press, 2026. 247-264. 
  • “New in Town: An Interview with Three Creators of a Cabaret for New Canadian Citizens.” Interview with Anuj K. Jain, Justin Gregg, and Laura Teasdale. Canadian Theatre Review 201 (2025): 99-103.  
  • “A Past-Perfect Future?: Performing the Past as the Future of Theatre in Atlantic Canada.” Canadian Theatre Review 201 (2025): 30-32. 
  • “(Un)Making History? Canadian Theatre History and the Canadian Theatre Review.” Canadian Theatre Review 200 (2024): 10-16. (Reprinted in Performance Matters.)
  • “Ruined Madonna with Child: Challenging Racialized Motherhood and the Sixties Scoop in Indigenous Theatre.” The Palgrave Handbook of Reproductive Justice and Literature. Springer International Publishing, 2022. 556–78. 
  • “Everyone is Happy! Performing Adaptation, Irony, and Gender in The Millennial Malcontent.” Voices of a Generation. Ed. Michelle MacArthur. Playwrights Canada Press, 2022. 53-8. 
  • “Untold Stories of Slavery: Performing Pregnancy and Racial Futurity in Beatrice Chancy.” On the Other Side(s) of 150: Untold Stories and Critical Approaches to History, Literature, and Identity in Canada. Ed. Linda M. Morra and Sarah Henzi. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2021. 134-150.  
  • “Performing This is for You, Anna as #MeToo: Sexual Harassment and Performance-Based Activism on a University Campus.” Canadian Theatre Review 180 (2019): 27-35. 
  • “Failed Futurity: Performing Abortion in Merrill Denison’s Marsh Hay.” Canadian Literature 232 (2017): 100-16. 
  • “Dispublics: Popular Yet Political Spectatorship in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad and Erin Shields’s If We Were Birds.” Theatre Journal 69.2 (2017): 213-34.  
  • “Making Radio, Making History: Merrill Denison’s Alexander Mackenzie.” Past Lives: Performing Canada’s Histories. Ed. Heather Davis-Fisch. Playwrights Canada Press, 2017. 189-196. 
  • “Bringing the Text to Life: Editing the Modernist Canadian Play The God of Gods.” Making Canada New: Editing, Modernism, and New Media. Ed. Dean Irvine, Vanessa Lent, and Bart Vautour. University of Toronto Press, 2017. 189-211. 
  • “‘Who’s There?’: Slings & Arrows’ Audience Dynamics.” Shakespeare and Canada: Remembrance of Ourselves. Ed. Irene Makaryk and Kathryn Prince. University of Ottawa Press, 2017. 79-95.
  • “Performing Cultural Crossroads: The Subject-Making Functions of ‘I am’ Declarations in Daniel David Moses’s Almighty Voice and His Wife.” Theatre Research in Canada/Recherches théâtrales au Canada 35.2 (2014): 80-105.  
  • “Politicizing Difference: (Re)Claiming Canadian Theatre History and ‘Les Sauvages’ in Le Théâtre de Neptune en la Nouvelle-France and Sinking Neptune.” Studies in Canadian Literature 38.1 (2013): 8-28.