Kailin Wright
Adjunct Professor, Acadia University
Ph.D. (University of Toronto)
M.A. (University of Toronto)
B.A. Honours (University of Toronto)
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
| 2026 | StFX President's Reach Award |
| 2026-2028 | SSHRC Insight Development Grant, "Archival ACTS: Unsettling Performance Histories in Atlantic Canada" (PI) |
| 2025-2027 | Jules Léger Research Scholar in the Humanities and Social Sciences. |
| 2023-2028 | SSHRC Insight Grant. “No Mother, No Nation: Performing Reproductive Justice and the Future.” Principal Investigator (PI). |
| 2023 | SSHRC Connection Grant. “Performing Shores / The Shores of Performance: A Canadian Theatre Conference.” Co-Applicant. |
| 2020-2023 | Jules Lèger Research Scholar in Humanities and Social Sciences. |
| 2020-2023 | Social 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. |
| 2018-2022 | SSHRC Insight Development Grant. "No Baby, No Future: Performing Pregnancy Loss in Canada." Principal Investigator. |
| 2021 | Association of Atlantic Universities (AAU) Teaching Award. |
| 2017 | StFX University Outstanding Teaching Award. |
| 2013-2015 | SSHRC Strategic Knowledge Cluster Grant. Editing Modernism in Canada (EMiC), Principal Investigator: Dean Irvine. Co-applicant. |
Books: Monographs
- No Mother, No Future: Performing Motherhood and Reproductive Loss. Routledge Press, 2026.
- Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020.
Books: Edited Books and Essay Collections
- The God of Gods: A Canadian Play by Carroll Aikins. University of Ottawa Press, 2016.
- Slings & Arrows: Adapting Shakespeare as Canada in Theatre and Television. Co-edited by Don Moore. University of Toronto Press, 2026.
Editor: Journals
- Editor, The Antigonish Review, 2025-present
- Associate Editor, Canadian Theatre Review, 2023-present
Digital Projects
- Editor, with Robin Whittaker, The Atlantic Canadian Theatre Site, 2026-present
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.
