Dr. Jantina Ellens

Director of Core; Assistant Professor of Core Studies and English


Phone: (905) 648-2139   Ext:4212

Email: jantinaellens@redeemer.ca

Office: 239A

Programs: English Writing , English Literature

Education

PhD (2021), English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University.
Dissertation: Incarnational Fruit: Authorization and Women’s Anonymous Seventeenth-Century Devotional Writing.

MA (2012), English, Western University.

BA (Hons) (2011), English, Redeemer University.

Courses

  • Introduction to Christian Worldview (CTS-110)
  • Expository Writing I (ENG-201)
  • Expository Writing II (ENG-302)
  • Understanding Our World Through the Arts (HUM-210)

About

Dr. Jantina Ellens’s interest in the early modern period was ignited by a love for the poetry of the English Reformation and fanned into flame by a curiosity about the absence of women in the early modern canon. Jantina’s research reveals that women like the author of Eliza’s Babes (1652), An Collins in Divine Songs and Meditacions (1653) and Susanana Hopton in her works (1673-1701) used anonymous devotion to identify themselves with a community of the faithful. The seemingly individualistic act of anonymous authorship becomes an act of community formation. An understanding of this communal approach to authorship challenges assumptions about authorial genius, the role of the reader, and the voice of the marginalized in early modern literature. Jantina continues to explore the implications of a communal voice and the relational text in her research on seventeenth-century prison literature. She also enjoys inviting students into the study of English, the Humanities, and writing through the courses she teaches at Redeemer. In addition to teaching and research, Jantina gardens and bakes while trying to keep up with her five sons. 

Research Interests

  • Early modern poetry and prose
  • Literature written by women
  • Devotional literatory
  • Prison literature
  • Anonymity, readership, and the relationality of literature

Selected Research Publications

All Dr. Jantina Ellens’ research publications, while at Redeemer

Conference Presentations

Ellens, Jantina. “’On the Same’: Inviting Grief in Hester Pulter’s Manuscript Poems.” Presentation at the Sixteenth Century Society Conference, Toronto, ON, October 2024.

Research Publications

Ellens, Jantina. “Devotions in the Ancient Way of Offices: Medieval Domestic Devotions in the Seventeenth Century.” Religions 11, no. 10 (2019): 546.

Ellens, Jantina. “Wishing for the Watchface in Swift’s ‘Progress of Beauty’ (1719).” ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830 8, no. 1 (2018): article 1.

Ellens, Jantina. “‘Skrue up the Heightened Pegs of Thy Sublime Theorboe’: Tuning the Senses in Quarles’s Emblemes (1635).” Emblematica: Essays in Word and Image 1 (2017): 1-29.

Research Funding

Social Science and Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship, 2016-2018