S. Trimble (she/they)

Areas of Interest

• Feminist Cultural studies
• Black Feminist thought
• Queer and Trans studies
• Storytelling and Genre
• Autobiography, Memoir, Creative Non-Fiction Writing

I’m currently working on an oral history project organized around interviews with feminist, BIPOC, queer, and trans scholars working in and around cultural studies. The project aims to explore the field from these perspectives, multiplying the genealogies and histories of struggle that can/should be considered in accounts of the pasts and futures of cultural studies.

I also write about film, TV, and literature for both academic and non-specialist audiences, with an emphasis on horror, noir, and gothic genres.

I welcome applications from prospective graduate students interested in feminist approaches to cultural studies, cinema studies, literary studies, and pedagogy.

Biography

I am Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream and Associate Director, Undergraduate Studies at WGSI, where I’ve been teaching since I earned my PhD in 2012. My work is situated at the intersection of feminist studies and cultural studies, with a focus on the politics of pop-cultural storytelling in the US, Canada, and the UK from the 1950s to the present. My book, Undead Ends: Stories of Apocalypse (Rutgers, 2019), considers the cultural politics of mainstream apocalypse films through the lens of Black feminist thought. Works-in-progress include a SSHRC-funded oral history project on histories and genealogies of feminist cultural studies; a SSHRC-funded, multi-institutional project on gender and sexuality studies pedagogies in Canada led by PI Natalie Kouri-Towe (Concordia); and a creative non-fiction project that combines memoir with cultural analysis.

Education

PhD, English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University (2012). 

MA, Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism, Western University (2007). 

BA, English, York University (2005).

Selected Works

“A Demon-Girl’s Guide to Life.” It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror, ed. Joe Vallese. The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2022. ISBN: 1952177790.

“Desire, Fear, Curiosity: Why horror is the genre for our times.” The ROM Magazine. December 2019.

“Subject to Change: The Pronoun Discourse has Always been Versatile.” Bitch Media. August 2020.

“The Fires This Time: Little Fires Everywhere is an Indictment of Colourblind Whiteness.” Bitch Media. July 2020.

Undead Ends: Stories of Apocalypse. Rutgers University Press, 2019. (ISBN: 978-0-8135-9364-7) 

“Home Sick: Horror, Gothic Storytelling, and the Queers Who Haunt Houses.” Inside Killjoy’s Kastle: Dykey Ghosts, Feminist Monsters, and Other Lesbian Hauntings, ed. Allyson Mitchell and Cait McKinney. University of British Columbia Press in collaboration with The Art Gallery of York University, 2019. (ISBN: 9780774861571) 

The Work of Return, edited by Nadine Attewell and S. Trimble, a special issue of TOPIA: Journal of Canadian Cultural Studies 35 (Spring 2016). (ISSN: 1206-0143)  

Honours and Awards

Teaching

Undergraduate Courses:

WGS331S: Special Topics in WGS: Playing Sports Cultures

WGS463F: Advanced Topics in Gender Theory (Feminism and Horror)

Graduate Courses:

WGS5000: Feminist Theories, Histories, Movements I