Cam MacDonald

Cam MacDonald is PhD candidate and a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS-D) recipient in the Department of English at the University of Toronto. Their dissertation project explores sonic phenomena, events, and metaphors in late-19th to mid-20th century American literature as a means of attuning to queer selfhoods, belongings, temporalities, and affects that query the discursive, linguistic, and technological formations of subjectivity and embodiment imposed by the twinned emergence of modern sexology and sound recording. Their work insists that listening—as a bodily and affective tool for making sense of the world—forges intimacies with and understandings of others that can provide critical insights into diverse inhabitations and habits of selfhood.

List of Publications

Referred Publications:

• MacDonald, Cameron. “The Alien Resonances and Queer Obscurities of Hyperpop's 100 gecs.” Journal of Popular Music Studies, vol. 36, no. 2, 2024, pp. 76-98.
• MacDonald, Cameron. “‘Befo’ de Wah’: Sounding Out Ill-Legibility in Charles W. Chesnutt’s Conjure Stories.” Sound Studies in African American Literature and Culture, special issue of Humanities, edited by Nicole Brittingham Furlonge, vol. 11, no. 6, 2022, pp. 1-11. doi: 10.3390/h11060137.
• Cecchetto, David and Cameron MacDonald. “Listening through a Pandemic: Silence, Noisemaking, and Music.” Creative Resilience and COVID-19: Figuring the Everyday in a Pandemic, edited by Irene Gammel and Jason Wang, Routledge, 2022, pp. 39-48.

Selected Non-refereed Publications:

• MacDonald, Cameron. Review of Field Notes on Listening by Kit Dobson. University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 93, no. 3, 2024 (forthcoming).
• MacDonald, Cameron. “A Literary (Re)Turn in Sound Studies.” Review of The Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Sound Studies, edited by Helen Groth and Julian Murphet. Sound Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. doi: 10.1080/20551940.2024.2361387.
• MacDonald, Cameron. Review of Listening to the Fur Trade: Soundways and Music in the British North American Fur Trade, 1760–1840, written by Daniel Robert Laxer. University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 3, 2023, pp. 389-391.

Selected Academic Conferences:

• MacDonald, Cameron. “Queer Futurity, Lunar Orientations, and Lessening Into One’s Voice.” SpokenWeb, Calgary, AB, 5-7 June 2024. Panel, Literary Soundscapes.
• MacDonald, Cameron. “‘If they exhaust noise and distance’: Homes, Stones, and the Queer Echoes of Tender Buttons.” Modernist Studies Association (MSA), Brooklyn, NY, 26-29 October 2023. Panel, Of Sea, Stone, and Street.
• MacDonald, Cameron. “Dogs, Echoes, and Other Queer Noises.” Modernist Studies Association (MSA), Brooklyn, NY, 26-29 October 2023. Seminar, Modernism and the Poetics of Noise.
• MacDonald, Cameron. “‘A Story that Wasn’t in the Words’: Music and Mothering in Ann Petry’s The Street.” Northeastern Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Niagara Falls, NY, 23-26 March 2023. Roundtable, African American Music and Literature.
• MacDonald, Cameron. “Songs Along the Keyboard: Listening Around Frank O’Hara.” Modern Language Association (MLA), Washington, DC, 6-9 January 2022. Roundtable, Poetry and Sound: Beyond Voice, sponsored by GS Poetry and Poetics.
• MacDonald, Cameron. “The Hum of Humor: Listening to Queer Laughter in Nella Larsen’s Passing.” Modern Language Association (MLA), Toronto (online), 7-10 January 2021. Panel, Laughter & Feminist Critical Thought, sponsored by MS Screen Arts and Culture.

Selected Academic Awards

• SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship - Doctoral, 2022-25
• Viola Whitney Pratt Memorial OSOTF Scholarship, 2021-22
• Shane Baghai Scholarship in English Literature, University of Toronto, 2017-18