Education
PhD (2019), English, University of Toronto.
Dissertation: Romances of Modern Enchantment at the British Fin de Siècle.
MA (2007), English, University of Toronto.
BA (Hons) (2004), English, University of Waterloo.
Courses
- Expository Writing I (ENG-201)
- Creative Writing I: Essential Tools and Strategies (ENG-203)
- Children’s Literature (ENG-251)
- Senior Writing Project (ENG-403)
- Western Culture & Tradition II (HUM-120)
About
Dr. Melanie East teaches both literature and writing and primarily supports the English Writing program at Redeemer. Her literary scholarship focuses on competing narratives of enchantment in texts ranging from the nineteenth-century English novels of Thomas Hardy to the contemporary Canadian poetry of Karen Solie. Her first love is the Victorian novel, but she enjoys teaching everything from rhetorical theory to children’s literature. Dr. East also has a particular passion for writing pedagogy. She has taught academic and creative writing for several years and champions student creativity both inside and outside the classroom. Dr. East also runs her own freelance editing service, Type and Lead, which caters mainly to academic writers. When she’s not teaching or editing, she enjoys reading, jogging, and spending time with her husband and two children—usually at a rink somewhere.
Research Interests
- Rhetoric and Writing Studies
- Christianity and Literature
- Nineteenth-Century English Literature
- Canadian Literature
- Twentieth-Century English and Irish Literature
Selected Publications
East, Melanie. “Hills of scrap aluminum glitter”: Liturgies of Lament and Affirmation in Contemporary Canadian Ecopoetry.” Secularism and the Pursuit of Transcendence, vol. II. Edited by Stanley E. Porter and Wendy J. Porter, 166-184. Wipf & Stock, 2025.
East, Melanie. “Saint Christopher Returns from the Trenches: Imitating Christ in Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End.” Christianity and Literature Journal 72, no. 3 (2023): 423-441.
East, Melanie. “Reclaiming English Bones: Corporeal Commemoration in Hardy’s War Poems.” Thomas Hardy, Poet: New Perspectives. Edited by Adrian Grafe and Laurence Estanove, 26-43. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2015.
East, Melanie. “A Network of Hopes: The Romance of Gambling in Thomas Hardy’s A Laodicean.” The Comparatist 38, no.1 (2014): 297-313.
East, Melanie. “The Ethics of Mystery—Detection and Dream Vision in The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare.” Victorians Institute Journal Digital Annex 42, 2014, NINES.