Academic Title: Professor Emerita
Education:
BA, Honours (University of Ottawa)
MA (University of Ottawa)
PhD (University of Sussex)
Email: ssmulders@mtroyal.ca
Scholarly Interests:
Sharon Smulders taught courses in children's literature and nineteenth-century poetry at Mount Royal for over twenty-five years. Now retired, she has published articles on the work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Brian Doyle, Eleanor Estes, Marcus Ewert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Alice Meynell, Beatrice (Culleton) Mosionier, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Robert Service, Ann and Jane Taylor, Oscar Wilde, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her book, Christina Rossetti Revisited, appeared in 1996. Her current research focuses on representations of nonhuman animals in nonfiction picture books for young children.
Selected Publications:
“The Cuteness Quotient: Penguins, Picturebooks, and Environmental Education.” International Research in Children’s Literature, vol. 18, no.1, 2025.
“Penguin Parables: Picturebooks, Interspecies Companionship, and Ecoliteracy.” Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature, vol. 62, no.1, 2024, pp. 32-40.
“S is for Salmon: Picture Books, Ecoliteracy, and Environmental Crisis.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, vol. 29, no. 4, 2022, pp. 1055–1075.
“‘A Matter of Style’: Form, Colour, and Sound in Oscar Wilde’s Poetic Impressions.” Victorian Review, vol. 43, no. 2, 2017, pp. 287-306.
“‘Information and Inspiration’: Wangari Maathai, the Green Belt Movement and Children’s Eco-Literature.” International Research in Children’s Literature, vol. 9, no. 1, 2016, pp. 20-34.