School of Creative Arts
School Director, Associate Professor, Theatre
Creative Arts
Abbotsford campus, C1402a
Phone: 604-504-7441 Ext. 6367
email HeatherHeather Davis-Fisch is faculty in theatre and has been the Director of the School of Creative Arts since 2019.
She is the author of Loss and Cultural Remains in Performance: The Ghosts of the Franklin Expedition (Palgrave 2012), which was the co-recipient of the 2013 Ann Saddlemyer award from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research. Her research on Canadian theatre and performance has appeared in Theatre Research in Canada, Performing Arts Resources, Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies, Canadian Theatre Review, and several edited collections.
As of January 2023, Heather will be the Editor in Chief of Canadian Theatre Review. She has edited several special issues of CTR on topics including Commemoration, the COVID-19 Pandemic, Pathography and Extractivism, for which she was the co-recipient (with Kimberly Richards) of the 2022 Patrick O’Neill award for best edited collection, awarded by the Canadian Association for Theatre Research. She has also edited the essay collection Canadian Performance Histories and Historiographies and the play anthology Past Lives: Performing Canada's Histories, both published by Playwrights Canada Press 2017.
Her research emphasizes questions around performance, archive, affect, and cultural memory and focuses on performance in the long nineteenth-century. Her current SSHRC-funded research investigates the history of performance in the Pacific Northwest, employing the lens of settler colonial studies to consider how performance practices contributed to the establishment of the settler colony of British Columbia.
Teaching specializations: Performance studies, theatre history, Canadian theatre and performance.
Davis-Fisch, Heather. “Enacting Civility Through Comic Opera; or, Nation, Race, and Ned McGowan’s War.” Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies, vol.16, no.1, Feb. 2016, pp. 18-27. EBSCOhost, doi: 10.1177/1532708615615610.
Daivs-Fisch, Heather. “Lawless Lawyers: Indigeneity, Civility, and Violence.” Theatre Research in Canada, vol.35, no.1, Spring 2014, pp. 31-48.
Barker, Roberta, Davis-Fisch, Heather, et al. “Canadian Performance Genealogies: A Roundtable.” Theatre Research in Canada, vol.35, no.1, Spring 2014, pp. 89-102.
Davis-Fisch, Heather. “Girls in “White” Dresses, Pretend Fathers: Interracial Sexuality and Intercultural Community in the Canadian Arctic.” Theatre Research In Canada, vol.31, no.1, Spring 2011, pp. 84-106.
Davis-Fisch, Heather. “Aglooka’s Ghost: Apparitions in the Archive.” Performing Arts Resources, vol.28, 2011, pp. 135-142.
Davis-Fisch, Heather. Loss and Cultural Remains in Performance: The Ghosts of the Franklin Expedition. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012
Carter, J., Davis-Fisch, H., and Knowles, R. “Circulations: Visual Sovereignty, Transmotion, and Tribalography.” A Cultural History of Theatre in the Modern Age, Vol. 6, edited by Kim Solga, Bloomsbury, 2017.
Davis-Fisch, Heather. “Xeyxelomos and Lady Franklin Rock: Place Naming, Performance Historioraphy, and Settler Methodologies.” Performance Studies in Canada, edited by Laura Levin and Marlis Schweitzer, McGill-Queens, 2017.
Davis-Fisch, Heather. “Complicated Feelings: Tecumseh as Literary Land Claim.” New Essays in Canadian Theatre, Vol. 4: Theatres of Affect, edited by Erin Hurley, Playwrights Canada Press, 2014.
“Canadian Performance Histories and Historiographies: Essays.” New Essays in Canadian Theatre, Playwrights Canada Press, 2017.
“Past Lives: Performing Canada’s Histories.” Playwrights Canada Press, 2017.