Gabrielle McIntire

Professor

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Biography

Gabrielle McIntire received an MA and PhD from Cornell University, an MA from McGill University, and her BA with High Distinction from the University of Toronto. She is a scholar of British and American literary modernisms of roughly 1890-1945, with specialization in poetry, poetics, eco-criticism, and theories of history, memory, desire, and the sacred. McIntire has written or edited four books, and her essays on Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Nella Larsen, and Joseph Conrad have appeared in journals and book collections such as Modernism/modernity, Modern Fiction Studies, Narrative, Callaloo, The Cambridge Companion to To the Lighthouse , The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth and Religion, and The Oxford Handbook of Virginia Woolf. Her poetry has appeared internationally in journals and book collections including The Literary Review of Canada, The A-Line, Van Gogh’s Ear (Paris), The Cortland Review, Freefall, and Audeamus.

McIntire has been a Senior Resident Fellow at Massey College at the University of Toronto; a Research Associate at Holywell Manor, Balliol College, Oxford; a resident at the Writing Studio at the Banff Centre for the Arts. She has also taught at the T.S. Eliot International Summer School in London, England, and she serves on the Editorial Boards of the Woolf Studies Annual, The T.S. Eliot Studies Annual, Twentieth-Century Literature, and The A-Line.

She is the recipient of four teaching awards: the Frank Knox Award for Excellence in Teaching at ��ϳԹ��Դ (2026), The Department of English Literature and Creative Writing Fourth Years’ Choice Teaching Award (2026) at ��ϳԹ��Դ, the W.J. Barnes Award for Distinguished Teaching at ��ϳԹ��Դ (2004), and the Clark Award for Distinguished Teaching at Cornell University (2002).

Research Interests

American and British literary modernisms
eco-criticism; theories of memory; theories of the sacred; poetry and poetics

Selected Publications

The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf, Modernism and Religion, co-editor, Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming.
With 28 original chapters by established and emerging scholars The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf, Modernism and Religion intervenes in debates about the beliefs and spiritual commitments of one of the most celebrated writers of the twentieth century. Although critics and readers have often assumed that Virginia Woolf is hostile or indifferent to religion, her work is, from early to late, traversed with reflections about religious, spiritual and sacred meaning and experience. The Companion is the first book to consider Woolf’s perspectives on global religious traditions including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Quakerism within the context of literary and cultural modernisms. The volume draws on a diverse range of theoretical and critical methods to showcase the multi-layered complexities of Woolf’s approaches to the sacred. Together the contributors provide a thorough re-assessment of the assumption that Woolf was an atheist and illuminate insights about her work in relation to twenty-first century critical discourse about religion, ethics, spirituality, and mysticism and give new attention to feminist perspectives, queer desire, sacred ecologies and narrative poetics.

Unbound, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021.
Inspired by mystical traditions, birdwatching, tree planting, ethics, neuropsychology, and quantum physics, Gabrielle McIntire's poems draw us in with their passionate attention to what it means to be human in a still-wondrous natural environment. Touching on human frailty, the eternal, and the ecological with a delicate and evocative brush, Unbound enacts an almost prayerful attentiveness to the earth’s creatures and landscapes while it offers both mournful and humorous treatments of love and loss. McIntire’s finely tuned musical voice—with its incantatory rhythms, rhymes, sound play, and entrancing double meanings—invites us to be courageously open to the unexpected.

The Cambridge Companion to The Waste Land , editor, Cambridge University Press, 2015.
T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land is often considered to be the most important poem written in English in the twentieth century. The poem dramatically shattered old patterns of form and style, proposed a new paradigm for poetry and poetic thought, demanded recognition from all literary quarters, and changed the ways in which it was possible to approach, read, or write poetry. The Waste Land helped to define the literary and artistic period known as modernism. This Companion is the first to be dedicated to the work as a whole, offering fifteen new essays by international scholars and covering an extensive range of topics. Written in a style that is at once sophisticated and accessible, these fresh critical perspectives will serve as an invaluable guide for scholars, students, and general readers alike.

Modernism, Memory, and Desire: T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf, Cambridge University Press, 2008.
T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf were almost exact contemporaries, readers and critics of each others' work, and friends for over twenty years. Their writings, though, are rarely paired. Modernism, Memory, and Desire proposes that some striking correspondences exist in Eliot and Woolf's poetic, fictional, critical, and autobiographical texts, particularly in their recurring turn to the language of desire, sensuality, and the body to render memory's processes. The book includes extensive archival research on some mostly unknown bawdy poetry by T. S. Eliot while offering readings of major work by both writers, including "The Waste Land," "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Orlando and To the Lighthouse. McIntire juxtaposes Eliot and Woolf with several major modernist thinkers of memory, including Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson and Walter Benjamin, to offer compelling reconsiderations of the relation between textuality, remembrance and the body in modernist literature.

Additional Academic Publications

Forthcoming. The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf, Modernism and Religion. Co-edited with Jane de Gay. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Forthcoming. “Woolf, Poetry, and the Soul.”&�Բ��;The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf,
Forthcoming. “Introduction,” co-written with Jane de Gay. The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf, Modernism and Religion. Ed. Jane de Gay and Gabrielle McIntire. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
2025. “Bloomsbury and Psychoanalysis.”&�Բ��;The Cambridge History of Bloomsbury, ed. Derek Ryan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2025. “Ecology and Voice: Non-Human Speech and Songs of the Earth in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.”&�Բ��;T.S. Eliot Studies Annual.
2023. “Virginia Woolf’s Agnostic, Visionary Mysticism: Approaching and Retreating from the Sacred.”&�Բ��;The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth and Religion, eds. Suzanne Hobson and Andrew Radford. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
2022. “Virginia Woolf’s Agnostic, Visionary Mysticism.”&�Բ��;The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth and Religion, eds. Suzanne Hobson and Andrew Radford. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
2021. “Love’s Errors and Effacements: T.S. Eliot and Emily Hale.”&�Բ��;T.S. Eliot Studies Annual. Ed. John D. Morgenstern. Liverpool and Clemson, SC: Liverpool University Press and Clemson University Press.
2021. “Virginia Woolf: Mature Works I, 1924-1927.”&�Բ��;The Oxford Handbook of Virginia Woolf ed. Anne Fernald. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2020. “Love’s Errors and Effacements: T. S. Eliot and Emily Hale.”&�Բ��;Time Present: The Newsletter of the International T.S. Eliot Society. Summer, Vol. 101: 6-13.
2018. "History in Transition," Futility and Anarchy: British Literature in Transition, 1920-1940 eds. Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2016. “Modernism and Bloomsbury Aesthetics,” Virginia Woolf, ed. James Acheson (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
2015. “Introduction,” The Cambridge Companion to The Waste Land. Cambridge University Press.
2015. “The Waste Land as Ecocritique,” The Cambridge Companion to The Waste Land. Cambridge University Press.
2015. “Uncanny Semblables and Serendipitous Publications: T.S. Eliot’s the Criterion, The Waste Land, and James Joyce’s Ulysses," 1922: Literature, Culture, Politics, ed. Jean Michel Rabaté. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2015. “Feminism and Gender in To the Lighthouse.”&�Բ��;The Cambridge Companion to To the Lighthouse, ed. Allison Pease. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2014. “Psychology and Sexuality,” The Blackwell Companion to Modernist Poetry, eds. David Chinitz and Gail McDonald. London: Wiley Blackwell.
2013. “You Can’t Go Home Again: Ambivalent Nostalgia in T.S. Eliot’s Poetry,” Modernist Nostalgia, ed. Tammy Clewell. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
2013. “Notes Toward Thinking the Sacred in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.”&�Բ��;Modern Horizons, Special Issue on “Modernity, Ideology, and the Novel.” 4.1: 1-11.
2012. “Toward a Narratology of Passing: Epistemology, Race, and Misrecognition in Nella Larsen’s Passing.” Callaloo: A Journal of African American and African Arts and Letters 35.3: 778-94. 2010.
(Reprint) “The Women Do Not Travel: Gender, Difference, and Incommensurability in Heart of Darkness.”&�Բ��;Heart of Darkness: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. 3rd Ed, ed. Ross Murfin. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
2010. “‘Doing up Freud’: Virginia Woolf, The Hogarth Press, and Getting Dirty: A Response to Elisa Kay Sparks’ Review in Virginia Woolf Miscellany&�Բ��;76,” Virginia Woolf Miscellany 77: 16-17.
2005. Heteroglossia, Monologism, and Fascism: Bernard Reads The Waves.” Narrative. 13: 29- 45.
2002. “The Women Do Not Travel: Gender, Difference, and Incommensurability in Heart of Darkness.”&�Բ��;Modern Fiction Studies. 48: 257-84.
2002. “An Unexpected Beginning: Sex, Race, and History in T.S. Eliot’s Columbo and Bolo Poems.”&�Բ��;Modernism/Modernity. 9: 283-301.

Creative Publications

2019. “Cringe.”&�Բ��;The A-Line: A Journal of Progressive Thought. 2: 1-2. (Nashville, USA).
2019. “Cascade.”&�Բ��;The A-Line: A Journal of Progressive Thought. 2: 1-2. (Nashville, USA).
2016. “Upstairs.” Freefall, XXVI Number 3 (Calgary, Alberta).
2014. “On the Rose Garden at UBC.”&�Բ��;Audeamus (Toronto, Massey College Press).
2013. “Bloom.”&�Բ��;Remembering Colin: A Gathering of Poems for Colin Bernhardt (Wolfville, Nova Scotia).
2012. “Fall.”&�Բ��;The Original Van Gogh’s Ear Anthology (Paris: French Connection Press).
2012. “Give.”&�Բ��;Literary Review of Canada Vol. 20. No. 5 (Toronto).
2007. “Speed.”&�Բ��;Literary Review of Canada. Vol. 15. No. 5 (Toronto).
2007. “A Description of an Approaching Hurricane in Canada.”&�Բ��;Scapes (Kingston: Hidden Book Press).
2006. “On Being Close to Dying at Age 87.”&�Բ��;Van Gogh’s Ear (Paris: French Connection Press).
2006. “The Black-Capped Chickadee.”&�Բ��;The Salmon River Watershed: Jewel of Eastern Ontario (Kingston: Friends of the Salmon River Press).
2006. “Summer Surprised Us.” Kingston Poets’ Gallery. Ed. Elizabeth Greene (Kingston, Artful Codger Press).
2006. “Shivering Ash on the Edge of Ramsden Park.”&�Բ��;Kingston Poets’ Gallery. Ed. Elizabeth Greene (Kingston, Artful Codger Press).
2006. “Break Through.”&�Բ��;Kingston Poets’ Gallery. Ed. Elizabeth Greene (Kingston: Artful Codger Press).
2006. “Psalm for Winter.”&�Բ��;Small Brushes (Allamuchy, NJ: Adept Press).
2006. “At Sea.”&�Բ��;The Cortland Review (Online journal, Seattle).
2005. “The Task of the Rose Hip.”&�Բ��;The ��ϳԹ��Դ Feminist Review (Kingston).

Awards and Recognition

2026. Frank Knox Award for Excellence in Teaching, ��ϳԹ��Դ. “The award is the highest honour which is given to instructors of Queen's by Students.”
2026. English Department Student Council Fourth Years' Choice Award, Department of English Literature and Writing, Queen's University
2025. Nominated for the English Department Student Council Fourth Years' Choice Award, Department of English Literature and Creative Writing, Queen's University
2023-2028. SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada) Insight Grant
2019. Nominated for W.J. Barnes Award for Distinguished Teaching, Faculty of Arts and Science, ��ϳԹ��Դ
2008-2012. SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada) Standard Research Grant
2010. Banff Centre for the Arts, Writing Studio Fellowship
2004. W.J. Barnes Award for Distinguished Teaching, Queen's University
2002-3. SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada) Post- Doctoral Award, University of Toronto, Supervised by Linda Hutcheon
2002. Clark Award for Distinguished Teaching, Cornell University

Current Graduate Supervision

“Modernism and the Language of AI: Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, and D.H. Lawrence’s Philosophy and Poetics of the Mind”

Additional Information

Click here to listen to an interview about T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land with the Literate Podcast, that works through The New York Public Library’s “Books of the Century” list:

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Department of English Literature and Creative Writing