Ken Paradis, Wilfrid Laurier University

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Associate Professor Coordinator, English (Faculty of Liberal Arts) Waterloo, Ontario kparadis@wlu.ca Office: (519) 756-8228 ext. 5838

Bio/Research

My research mainly deals with popular fiction and the various ways that Americans have represented themselves, their fears and their desires in it throughout the long twentieth century. For the past several years I've been particularly interested in evangelical Christian popular culture and ficti...

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Bio/Research

My research mainly deals with popular fiction and the various ways that Americans have represented themselves, their fears and their desires in it throughout the long twentieth century. For the past several years I've been particularly interested in evangelical Christian popular culture and fiction, especially in the way that it articulates certain aspects of American rural and working class cultural identity.

I grew up on a small farm in the Slate River Valley, outside of Thunder Bay. Before coming to Laurier I worked at several places, including Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic, McMaster, SUNY Buffalo and Dalhousie. In my time at Laurier Brantford I have administered the Contemporary Studies (2011-14), and English (2014-2021) programs, and have taught in these along with the Foundations stream and in both the English and Cultural Analysis and Social Theory (CAST) graduate programs. I also oversee the biennial Laurier Stedman Prize for Young Writers, a short fiction contest for high school students in the Brantford, Grand Erie and Six Nations areas.

In my spare time I like to go swimming or hike or bike someplace with lots of trees and few people.

I am currently working on a series of articles that deal with the way American Evangelical culture organizes the stories and images it uses to articulate understandings of how people act and fit into the world (in its natural and supernatural dimensions). These articles are the basis for a book provisionally entitled The Evangelical Imagination in the End Times of White Evangelical America.


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