Professor Knutson came to Sainte-Anne in 1988 with an almost-complete doctorate in Comparative Canadian Literature (French-English) from the University of British Columbia. That research eventually resulted in a monograph on the narrative structures of Nicole Brossard's Picture Theory and Daphne Marlatt's How Hug a Stone: Narrative in the Feminine (WLU 2000). In the 1990s, the backlash against feminism meant that Professor Knutson, steeped and trained in feminist philosophy and practise, felt somewhat "always already"[1] misunderstood. She turned her attention to the world around her, and during those years, founded Port Acadie: An Interdisciplinary Review in Acadian Studies, with the collaboration of then VRER Ian Richmond and the multi-talented André Meuse, and played music and acted in supporting roles for thirteen summers of Evangeline, directed by Lecoq-trained theatre artist and Professeur émérite de l'Université Sainte-Anne, Normand Godin. This was bound to have an effect. A chance to go to Denmark as a Guest Professor in 2002 led to a deepened commitment to theatre research in Canada, and in particular to Canadian adaptations of Shakespeare, as manifest in the work of Africadian poet extraordinaire George Elliott Clarke, and elsewhere. This resulted in various publications and a book under the guidance of Ric Knowles. The same interests occupy her today. Current research projects include a long manuscript on Daphne Marlatt's engagement with Classical Japanese Noh Theatre, and a complex and multi-faceted project on the work of theatre artist, teacher, and Holocaust survivor, Tibor Egervari, focussed on his adaptation of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in Auschwitz. Professor Knutson is revising an article that analyzes that play in light of work in psychology on congruity and cognition, in order to re-frame catharsis in relation to the destruction of a toxic stereotype and recovery from an unspeakable harm.
