Sherry Rowley is a contract faculty member at York University who has taught courses in Humanities, Religious Studies, and Women's Studies. She has also worked with individual students in independent course work in the Department of Humanities (undergraduate level) and the Faculty of Environmental Studies (undergraduate & graduate level) . An award winning teacher, Ms. Rowley has been a guest speaker and consultant on pedagogy as well as facilitated a variety of workshops on teaching strategies. She is committed to educating for critical consciousness and developing feminist anti-discriminatory pedagogies that educate for the whole person.
Rowley is an interdisciplinary feminist scholar interested in disrupting and subverting stereotypes and boundaries, and works among a diversity of areas such as fantasy and the interstitial arts, myth and oral traditions, female spirituality, pre-Christian and early Christian Irish myth and sacred female traditions, cross cultural studies in religion, Native North American spirituality, contemporary goddess spirituality, "New Age" movements, literature, lifewriting, feminist/women's studies, feminist art, cultural studies and popular culture, environmental philosophy, ecofeminisms, popular education, and feminist pedagogies. Her research is grounded in feminist perspectives calling for a complex and multi-vocal layering of theory and experience that employs critical interdisciplinary methods concerned with issues of intersectionality, representation, and cultural appropriation in all areas of the project - research as well as research presentation. To this end, Rowley developed an innovative method of presentation in her dissertation that weaves together three "voices": a narrative self-reflexive "voice" discussing the processes involved in developing the research and presentation of the dissertation project, the "voices" of Native North Americans who are foregrounded as the primary theoretical sources/authorities for the project, and the analytic "voice" which presents the thesis and arguments of the dissertation.
Rowley's current research is in fantasy, myth, female sacrality and ritualizing, storytelling and the interstitial arts across a diversity of media, with a focus on materials and analyses grounded in feminist studies and cultural studies. In addition, her work seeks to identify/trace that which might be identified as theory in the art, literature, and cultural products of marginalized/othered individuals and groups. Rowley is currently developing a large multi-media project that addresses issues of biography and lifewriting, memory, history (circa W.W.I to present), landscape and Lucy Lippard's notions of "the local," and what comics writer Lynda Barry calls "autobifictionalography." It explores the possibilities for political praxis through storytelling and includes a multi-voiced cross-generation visual narrative which interrogates links between such things as history, politics, storytelling and identity. The final project will be multimedia and interactive.
In addition to designing her own websites, Ms. Rowley also created the first main website used by the Division of Humanities as well as their Teaching Assistants' Homepage.
Selected Publications
"Spinning Disciplines, Weaving Knowledges/Experiences: A 'Self in Context(s)' Exercise." Special T.A. Issue of Core: The Newsletter of the Centre for the Support of Teaching. York University vol.8, no. 3, March 1998, pp. 11-12.
"On Saint Brigit and Pagan Goddesses in the Kingdom of God." Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers De La Femme, vol. 17, no. 3, Summer/Fall 1997, pp. 10-13.
"The One Who is Many, The Many Are One: Power and Potentiality in The Sacred Females of Pre-Christian Ireland." Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers De La Femme vol. 17, no. 1, Winter 1997, pp. 93-95.
"Lesbian Issues: Bibliography of Available Materials." Toronto: Nellie Langford Rowell Library, 1990. Updated, 1992.
With Ruth King, Monique Adriaen, Danielle Beausoleil, C.M. Donald, Susan Ehrlich, Terry Lavender, and Valerie Vanstone. Talking Gender: A Guide to Non Sexist Communication. Copp Clark Pitman, 1991.
With the Sexual Assault Collective at CHRY Radio. It's Not a Dick Thing. An award-winning five-part series radio program on sexual assault. Toronto: CHRY Radio Bread and Butter Show, Sept. 17-21, 1990.
Selected Conference Papers
“Multicentred Worlds, Storytelling and “the Local”: Teaching in the Humanities for Environmental and Social Justice.” The Association for Literature, Environment and Culture in Canada (ALECC) on “Space + Memory = Place,” August 2012, Okanagan College & The University of British Columbia, Penticton & Kelowna, B.C., Conference Presentation.
"Some Issues, Challenges, Successes, and Techniques," Teaching Religious Studies at State University in Pennsylvania: Critical Thinking on Women in Religion Conference, 1st of 3, 18 May 2007, Indiana University at Pennsylvania, , Pedagogy Expert/Consultant and Website Creator.
"Where Do We Go From Here? Pedagogy, Interdisciplinarity and Studies in Religion." Teaching Religious Studies at State University in Pennsylvania: Critical Thinking on Women in Religion Conference, 1st of 3, 19 May 2007, Indiana University at Pennsylvania, Pedagogy Expert/Consultant and Website Creator.
“Paths of Resistance: On the Appropriation of Native/Womens’ Spirituality.” Multiculturalism in Canada Conference, 3 March 1998, Kutztown University, Kutztown, PA, Conference Presentation.
“Sacred Females in Pre-Christian and Early Christian Irish Religion.” 17th International Congress of History of Religions, 8 August 1995, Mexico City, Conference Presentation.
"Who(')s(e) Nature? Musing Nature (Un)disciplined." Environmental Studies Association of Canada, 13 June, 1994, Calgary, AB, Conference Presentation.
"Marriage Resistance - Where Does She Go From There? Goddesses, Saints and Other Subversive Females." Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, 27 May 1991, Kingston, ON, Conference Presentation.
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