About – Research Profile

 

Associate Professor, PhD

E-mail: ruta.slapkauskaite@flf.vu.lt

MotherNet Twinning Project: #MotherNetPersonal webpage: https://rutowl.wordpress.com

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. (Groucho Marx)

Research interests (in no particular order):

Literatures in English: Canadian, Antipodean (i.e. Australian, Tasmanian, and New Zealand), British, Irish, American

Ecocriticism and Environmental Humanities

Imagetexts/Iconotexts

Neo-Victorian literature and culture

Toys, dolls, machines, and literary practices

Membership in Associations: ESSE (European Association for the Study of English), CAPS (Canadian Association for Postcolonial Studies), CEACS (Central European Association for Canadian Studies), TransCanadian Networks (Spain)

Centre for Canadian Studies, Stockholm University: board member

Some of my publications:

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2026. Funny Bones: What Comes to Grief in Chris Flynn’s „Mammoth“. Ecokritike, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 367-383. https://doi.org/10.33823/eke.2026.3.2.531

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2025. Maternal Inclination and the Politics of Immunity in Emma Donoghue’s The Pull of the Stars. In Lazzari, L. and Po DeLisle, G. (eds.), Unmasking (New) Maternal Realities: Pregnancy, Childbirth, Postpartum in Global Literature, Cinema, and Media. London and New York: Springer Nature.

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2024. Mothering the Anthropocene: Entropic Satire in Richard Flanagan’s The Living Sea of Waking Dreams. In Guttman, A. and Austen, V. J. (eds.), Ruptured Commons, pp. 182-203. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2023. Eco-Memory and the Anthropocene Imagination: Ed O’Loughlin’s Minds of Winter. In: Bédard-Goulet, S. & Premat, C. (eds.), Nordic and Baltic Perspectives in Canadian Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Northern Spaces Narratives, pp. 165–192. Stockholm University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/bci.f. License: CC BY.

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2023. “Pro Pele Cutem: On the Subject(s) of Extraction in Fred Stenson’s The Trade”. Canadian Literature. Poetics and Extraction, No. 251, pp.13-34.

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2023. “Waking the Witness and Witnessing the Wake in David Dabydeen’s Turner.” In The Hook of Desire – Slavery and David Dabydeen’s Turner edited by Lynne Macedo. Hertford: Hansib Publications, pp. 213-237.

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2022. “An Ecology of the Hewn in Susan Vreeland’s The Forest Lover.” In The Northern Forest edited by Sara Bédard-Goulet and Daniel Chartier. Tartu and Montréal: University of Tartu Press and Imaginaire Nord.

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2021.“The He(A)rt of the Witness: Remembering Australian Prisoners of War in Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North„. In Anglica: An International Journal of English Studies, 30/3, p. 141–161.

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2020. „Ghost, host, hostage: a poet(h)ics of vulnerability in Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder.”The European Journal of English Studies, 24:3, p. 241-254. https://doi.org/10.1080/13825577.2020.1876611

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2020. „Imperial (S)Kin: The Orthography of the Wake in Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black.“ Studia Anglica Posnaniensia Vol. 55, No. 2, De Gruyter/Sciendo.  https://repozytorium.amu.edu.pl/bitstream/10593/26124/1/SAP%2055s2%20%282020%29%2023%20Šlapkauskaitė.pdf

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2020. „Precariousness, kinship, and care: Becoming human in Claire Cameron’s The Last Neanderthal‘“. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Sage. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989420967984

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2019. „Out of the Closet, into the World: The Power of Puppets in Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist.“ Literatūra, 61(4).

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2019. „An Arc of Itinerant Tropes: Beyond Kin and Kind in Andre Alexis’ Fifteen Dogs. Eds. Maria and Martin Loschnigg, The Anglo-Canadian Novel in the Twenty-first Century: Interpretations. Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag Winter, p. 11-19. https://www.amazon.com/Anglo-Canadian-Novel-Twenty-First-Century-Interpretations/dp/3825346404/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?keywords=The+Anglo-Canadian+Novel+in+the+Twenty-first+Century%3A+Interpretations.+Heidelberg%3A+Universitatsverlag+Winter&qid=1580932439&sr=8-1-fkmr1

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2018. „Like being trapped in a drum“: The Poetics of Resonance in Frances Itani’s Deafening. Anglica: An International Journal of English Studies, 27/3, pages 201-232, University of Warsaw. http://www.anglica.ia.uw.edu.pl/images/pdf/27-3-SI-articles/Anglica-27-3-10-Slapkauskaite.pdf

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2018. „Material Reflections: The Scope of Memory in Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda„. In History, Memory, and Nostalgia in Literature and Culture. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2017. The Material of Memory in Helen Humphreys’ The Lost Garden. TransCanadiana. Polish Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue Polonaise d’Études Canadiennes. Vol. 2., University of Poznan, pages 238-253. http://www.ptbk.org.pl/userfiles/file/TransCanadiana/Transcanadiana_9_2017.pdf

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2016. Reciprocity and Re-enchantment in Charles Simic’s Dime Store Alchemy. The Art of Joseph Cornell. Human in Literature and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspective. Comparative Studies Vol. VII (3), pages 167-179.

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2015. Et in Arcadia Ego: Memory, Mystery, and Mourning in J.L. Carr’s A Month in the Country. Re-Imagining the First World War: New Perspectives in Anglophone Literature and Culture. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2014. Intermedial Translation: The Gyrating Gaze in David Dabydeen’s Turner. European Journal of English Studies, Volume: 18, Issue: 03, pages 316 – 329, December.

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2012. ‘An Oscilloscopic Machine’: the Lens, the Image and the Canvas in Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family. Otherness: Essays and Studies, 3.1

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2012. The Social, the Spectral and the Specular in Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family. Rudaityte, R. (ed.) Literature and Society. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2011. Story of Identity, Identity of Story: Hiromi Goto’s Chorus of Mushrooms. Sojka, Eugenia and Tomasz Sikora (eds.) Embracing Otherness. Canadian Minority Discourses in Transcultural Perspectives. Torun: Wydanwnictvo Adam Marszalek.

Šlapkauskaitė, R. 2011. Bears, Bodies, and Boundaries: Douglas Glover’s Elle: a novel. Habegger-Conti, Jena (ed.) Transnational Literature, Vol. 4 no. 1.

Some of my other publications may be accessed online: https://vu-lt.academia.edu/RutaSlapkauskaite