Image of Dr. Derritt Mason. They have short hair, a beard, and are wearing a blue jacket and blue and green checked shirt with a blue and green butterfly tie.

Dr. Derritt Mason

PhD
Pronouns: they/he

Positions

Acting Senior Director

Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, TI Academic and Research Team

Associate Professor

Faculty of Arts, Department of English

Contact information

Web presence

Phone number

Office: 403.220.3395

For media enquiries, contact

mediarequests@ucalgary.ca

I'm looking for...

Research partners

At the moment, I am only accepting inquiries from prospective graduate students who are interested in video game studies and children's/young adult literature.

Background

Educational Background

Ph.D., English, University of Alberta, 2015

M.A., Cultural Studies and Critical Theory, McMaster University, 2006

B.A. (Hons), Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, 2004

Biography

Primarily, I research and teach at the intersection of children's and young adult literature, queer theory, and media/cultural studies; I also have growing interest and expertise in video game studies and the scholarship of teaching and learning. I am the author of Queer Anxieties of Young Adult Literature and Culture (UP Mississippi, 2021), winner of the Children's Literature Association Honor Book Award. With Kenneth B. Kidd, I have co-edited both Alt Kid Lit: What Children's Literature Might Be (UP Mississippi, 2024) and Queer as Camp: Essays on Summer, Style, and Sexuality (Fordham UP, 2019), which won the Children's Literature Association Edited Book Award. I am also the host and executive producer of the podcast Three Questions About Teaching and Learning (3QTL).

Otherwise, my publications include essays on:

I also co-edited, with Ela Przybylo, a special issue of ESC (40.1) entitled Hysteria Manifest: Cultural Lives of a Great Disorder. For more, see my personal webpage.

Research

Participation in university strategic initiatives

Courses

Course number Course title Semester
ENGL 685/529 Video Games and the Bildungsroman Winter 2022
ENGL 426 Queer Theory and Video Games Winter 2021
ENGL 396 Literature for Young People Fall 2020

Awards

  • Article Award (for "The Virtual Child"), Children's Literature Association. 2023
  • Book Honor Award (for Queer Anxieties), Children's Literature Association. 2023
  • Teaching Excellence Award, Students' Union, University of Calgary. 2021
  • Edited Book Award (for Queer as Camp), Children's Literature Association. 2021
  • Outstanding Early Career Teacher, Faculty of Arts, University of Calgary. 2020
  • Insight Development Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 2019
  • Wayne O. McCready Resident Fellowship for an Emerging Scholar, Calgary Institute for the Humanities. 2019

Publications