Connor Bennett

My dissertation frames American literary minimalism as a style of survival. By examining minimalist representations of shared loss since the mid-twentieth century (including scenes of US deindustrialization, Japanese American internment, and nuclear anxiety manifested as fictional post-apocalypse), I argue that minimalism navigates grief through a melancholic logic that moves to promote collectivity and subversion. In doing so, I show how minimalist stylistics serve their practitioners as a means of renegotiating the American ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. My research has been supported by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS-D) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

At the University of Toronto, I have developed and delivered courses on topics including minimalist stylistics and academic composition. Since Fall 2021, I have served as teaching assistant for ENG140Y: Literature for Our Time, the largest English course in Canada. In 2023, I received the TATP's TA Teaching Excellence Award, which aims to honour graduate students from across the University of Toronto who demonstrate “sustained and ongoing excellence in their teaching,” specifically on the basis of accessibility, equity, and inclusion; quality feedback; student engagement; and commitment to reflectiveness and pedagogical development.

List of Publications

• "Raymond Carver's Minimalist Mouth-Work," ELH (forthcoming)
• "An Introduction to 'Minimalisms Now: Race, Affect, Aesthetics,'" co-written with Michael Dango, Post45 Contemporaries, April 2023.

Additional Information

• Co-Editor, "Minimalisms Now: Race, Affect, Aesthetics." Post45 Contemporaries, April 2023.