Meet Professor Jessica Carey (Literary and Cultural Studies)
Photo: Jessica Carey
Jessica is thrilled to be making her home at Sheridan after several years of being an itinerant teacher and scholar in English and Cultural Studies. Since receiving her doctorate from McMaster University in 2011, her career has included a two-year term teaching in the Cultural Studies Program at UBC Okanagan, a postdoctoral fellowship in environmental studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, and short-term teaching appointments at Guelph and Laurier. During this time, she has also enjoyed singular experiences such as being invited to give a guest lecture on Temple Grandin’s animal-oriented rhetoric to a humanities seminar at UC Davis in Spring 2015, and presenting her work analyzing Paul McCartney’s public vegetarian persona at the Minding Animals conference in Utrecht in 2012. Jessica’s research focuses primarily on food cultures and contemporary discourses of human-animal relationships, but her teaching focus remains on inspiring students to develop and nurture their communicative potential and their love of the humanities.
Jessica loves to cook, and has moved the same blender across the country three times. The blender’s used to it, but her ever-growing cookbook collection has put its foot down and is extra happy that no cross-country moves are on the horizon.
Jessica Carey answers Alchemy’s Proust Questionnaire:
Favourite virtue: Attentiveness.
Most overrated virtue: Endless energy (though maybe I’m just envious).
My favourite qualities in a student: Curiosity, worry (I relate to students who worry), and humour.
My favourite qualities in a teacher: The ability to tell a good story, a wide range of interests, and empathy.
My idea of perfect happiness: Moving into a little house that would accommodate a drum set, and turning it into a cheery little enclave of sunshine and plants and good food.
My favourite word: Egregious.
The word/phrase/expression I overuse in the classroom: It’s actually a gesture — a butterfly/hinge-like motion I do with my hands that usually means “intersection.”
If I weren’t a teacher I’d be: A drummer/singer. Not either/or — both together, like Karen Carpenter, or Phil Collins.
The talent or skill I wish I had: Growing vegetables.
My favourite food/meal and drink: Prosecco and French fries. Or, a well-constructed sandwich, olives, and a cup of coffee.
My guilty TV/film/gaming pleasure: All kinds of celebrity gossip—since I’m a Cultural Studies prof, I like to say it’s for work.
