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Heather Smyth

What are you currently reading?

The Harry Potter series, for the fifth time.

What are the top five texts that you find to be the most useful for teaching?

Erna Brodber's Myal: it's a Jamaican novel written mostly in a range of patois, and with many cultural allusions unexplained. Many students find it challenging to read and understand, and as many hate it as love it, at least the first time around. I like teaching with it because it prompts discussions among students about when and how to articulate intellectual and personal responses to a text that may be at least partly obscure to us. Cultural difference can make some of us hesitant to take the risk of judgement, and Hiromi Goto's Chorus of Mushrooms is another text that poses similar questions. I love teaching Fred Wah's Diamond Grill because you can pick up a thread anywhere in the book and run with it for a whole class.

What texts have you had the most fun researching?

Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang: it's a novel about Irish immigrants in Australia, and I wrote an article on the connections between scenes of crossdressing in the novel and the history of political crossdressing in Ireland. It led me in some fascinating directions and into eras of Irish and English history I had not researched before.

What would you be if you weren't an English professor?

A master carpenter (although I've never built anything) or a jazz singer (although I can't sing).