Peter Melville
Title: Professor
Phone: 204.786.9261
Office: 2A32
Email: p.melville@uwinnipeg.ca
Biography:
Peter Melville began his UW career as a Romanticist but after a few years took a sharp turn toward Fantasy, the genre that made him fall in love with reading twice, first as a young person and again much later in life. He completed his BA in English at the University of Waterloo (1997) and his MA (1998) and PhD (2003) at McMaster University. In addition to reading fantasy novels, he has a great fondness for science fiction and single-player, story-based video games (favs include Control, Dishonored, What Remains of Edith Finch, BioShock, and all things Resident Evil). He also enjoys playing soccer with folks who are similarly past their prime and bombing around town on his electric scooter in the non-winter months.
Teaching Areas:
Fantasy Fiction, Poetry, Romanticism
Courses:
F ENGL-2613-001 FANTASY FICTION
F ENGL-4211-001 ROMANTICISM
Publications:
Essays & Book Chapters on Fantasy
“.” Fafnir 12.1 (2025): 32-44.
“.” Fafnir 10.1 (2023): 12-24.
"Unconscious Gods and the Return of Belief in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 33.1 (2021): 16-28.
"Demonizing Nature: Ecocriticism and Popular Fantasy." Avenging Nature: The Role of Nature in Contemporary Art and Literature. Eds. Eduardo Valls Oyarzun et al. Roman & Littlefield, 2020, pp. 149-164.
"Urban Fantasy, Interconnectedness, and Ecological Disaster: Reading Anne Bishop's The Others Series." Studies in the Fantastic 8 (2019/2020): 86-107.
“Queerness and Homophobia in Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogies.” Extrapolation 59.3 (2018): 281-303.
"Revolutionary Subjectivity in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn Trilogy." Studies in the Fantastic 3 (2015/ 2016): 23-44.
“Witnessing the ‘Unwitnessed’ in Steven Erikson’s The Malazan Book of the Fallen.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 26.2 (2015): 276-91.
“Another Way: Smallville’s Tess Mercer as Ethical Hero.” Mapping Smallville: Critical Essays on the Series and Its Characters. McFarland, 2014, pp. 83-99.
Previous Work in Romanticism
Romantic Hospitality and the Resistance to Accommodation (Book). Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007.
“The ‘sick imagination’ of Godwin’s Fleetwood.” RaVoN: Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 65 (2014-2015): 25 pars.
“Lying with Godwin and Kant: Truth and Duty in St. Leon.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 55.1 (2014): 19-37.
“Strangers Among Us: Figures of Refuge in Caleb Williams and St. Leon.” European Romantic Review 24.3 (2013): 335-342.
“Monstrous Ingratitude: Hospitality in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” European Romantic Review 19.2 (2008): 179-185.
“The Problem of Immunity in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man.” Studies in English Literature (2007): 825-846.
“Staging the Nation: Hospitable Performances in Kant’s Anthropology.” European Romantic Review 17.1 (2006): 39-53.
“‘A friendship of taste’: The Aesthetics of Eating Well in Kant’s Anthropology.” Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite: Eating Romanticism. Ed. Timothy Morton. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. 203-216.
“The Sleepy Carib: Rousing the ‘Native Informant’ in Rousseau.” European Romantic Review 13.2 (2002): 183-191.
“Kant’s Dinner Party: Anthropology from a Foucauldian Point of View.” Mosaic 35.2 (2002): 92-109.
“‘Illuminism and Terrorism’: Melancholia and Hypochondria in Immanuel Kant’s Anthropology.” The Dalhousie Review 79.3 (1999): 335-354.