Dr. Sneja Gunew (1946-2024)
It is with great sadness that we share the news of the death of our colleague, Dr. Sneja Gunew, Professor Emerita at GRSJ and former Director of the Centre for Research in Women’s and Gender Studies at Women’s Studies at UBC.
Dr. Sneja Gunew taught in England, Australia before joining UBC in 1995 as professor in English and Women’s Studies. She was a well-respected and innovative critic and theorist, who published widely on multicultural, postcolonial and feminist critical theory. Her research reflects her multidisciplinary interests, focusing on comparative multiculturalisms and diasporic literatures and their intersections with national and global cultural formations.
For more than two decades, she has supervised many Masters and Doctoral students in WMST/WAGS/GRSJ who are now well placed in many institutions and universities around the world, including UBC-Vancouver and UBC-Okanagan.
Among her other achievements during her time at UBC, Dr. Gunew was Director of the Centre for Research in Women’s and Gender Studies from 2002 to 2007 (The Centre went on to become the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice in 2012) and was integral to the development of the GRSJ as we know it today.
Her books include Framing Marginality: Multicultural Literary Studies (1994) and Haunted Nations: The Colonial Dimensions of Multiculturalisms (Routledge 2004). She was editor and co-editor of four anthologies of Australian women’s and multicultural writings: Feminist Knowledge: Critique and Construct and A Reader in Feminist Knowledge (Routledge 1990-91)
She was a champion of multicultural writers, compiling (with others) A Bibliography of Australian Multicultural Writers (the first such compilation in Australia) and co-editing Striking Chords: Multicultural Literary Interpretations (1992), the first collection of critical essays to deal with ethnic minority writings in the Australian context. She also set up the first library collection of ethnic minority writings in Australia. Continuing her focus on cultural difference, Gunew edited (with Anna Yeatman) Feminism and the Politics of Difference (1993) and (with Fazal Rizvi) Arts for a Multicultural Australia: Issues and Strategies (1994).
In retirement, Dr. Gunew continued her prolific research and community engagement through the UBC Emeriti College. She published and presented conference papers on various topics — from the intersection of multilingualism, identity, affect, gender and food to current issues within Indigenous and minority cultures.
Our heart-felt condolences to her family, friends, and everyone grieving her passing.
