Dr. Rachel W. Jekanowski, BA (Queen’s University), MA and PhD (Concordia University)

Assistant Professor of English

Affiliated faculty in the Environmental Policy Institute (School of Science and the Environment) 

Phone: (709) 639-6560

Email: rjekanowski@mun.ca

Office: AS 332-F

  

Research Interests/Expertise 

  • Film and media studies, with a focus on documentary and industrial film, film history, and theory

  • Visual cultures and politics of resource extraction

  • Petrocultures and energy studies, including energy just transitions

  • Environmental media studies

  • Settler colonialism and decolonial theory

  • Critical ocean studies

  • Low-carbon, arts-based, and interdisciplinary methods for sustainability studies

 

Teaching Areas

  • Film theory and film history

  • Documentary

  • Canadian and Indigenous film and literatures

  • Genre film and literature (SF, the Gothic, the Weird)

  • Worldbuilding and speculative fiction

  • Feminist theory and media

  • Environmental film and media

  • Petrocultures and energy studies

  • Research methods

  • Critical reading and writing

 

Grant-Funded Research Projects 

  • Green Transitions Socio-Economic Innovation Hub of NL: Green Transition Fund, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Department of Industry, Energy and Technology and Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (Co-PI, Fall 2024 – 2026)

  • Designing regional and local scale indicators to quantify the impacts of SBW outbreak in Western Newfoundland on cultural ecosystem services: Spruce Budworm Early Intervention Phase III Program, Natural Resources Canada (Co-PI, May 2023 – March 2026) 

  • Energy Justice and Future Imaginaries in NL’s Green Transition: Memorial University’s Seed, Bridge and Multidisciplinary Fund (Principal applicant, July 2024 – June 2025)

  • Petro-Literature Speaker Series: Scholarship in the Arts Program, Grenfell Campus (Principal applicant, Fall 2024)

  • Sustainable and Just Transitions: Energy Imaginaries, Culture, and Identity in Two Island Contexts: Funded by the Sustainability and Resilience Institute at the University of Southampton, UK (Co-PI, 2024 – 2025) 

  • Public Forum for Project Nujio'qonik and Green Transition in Western Newfoundland: Quick Start Fund for Public Engagement, Memorial University’s Office of Public Engagement (Co-PI with The Independent, March 2024 – May 2025)

  • Year of the Arts West Coast Screening Initiative: CelebrateNL, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador with PictureNL and the Rotary Arts Centre (Co-applicant, Jan. 2024 – Dec. 2025)

  • Women at Work in Crawley Films: Grenfell Campus Research Fund, Memorial University (Principal applicant,Winter 2023)

  • Sustainable Publishing for the Energy Transition: Public Engagement Accelerator Fund, Memorial University’s Office of Public Engagement (Co-PI with The Goose journal, March 2023 – Dec. 2024) 

  • Screening Labrador: Scholarship in the Arts Program, Grenfell Campus (Principal applicant, Winter 2023)

  

Editorial Positions

  

Selected Publications

1. Peer Reviewed Articles

Rachel Webb Jekanowski, “Water, Power: Hydro-Imaginaries and the Churchill Falls Project in Crawley Films.” Forthcoming in Canadian Journal of Film and Media Studies.

Rachel Webb Jekanowski, Anne Pasek, and Alex Nathanson, “Solar-Powered Community Art Workshops for Energy Justice: New Directions for the Public Humanities.” Forthcoming in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment.

[Detailed schematics and other supplementary workshop materials available here: https://www.solarpowerforartists.com/learn/publications/community-art-workshops-for-energy-justice.html]

Camille Ouellet Dallaire, Rachel Webb Jekanowski, and Jocelyne Roberts. “Left Behind: A Critical Assessment of Gender Equity in Project Nujio’qonik’s Environmental Impact Statement in the Context of Newfoundland’s Wind-to-Hydrogen Industry.” Applied Energy 394 (2025): 125964. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2025.125964.

Rachel Webb Jekanowski, “From Labrador to Leipzig: Film and Infrastructures along the Fur Trail.” Canadian Journal of Communication vol. 46, no. 2 “Materials and Media of Infrastructure” (2021): 291-314.

Rachel Webb Jekanowski, “Scientific Visions: Resource Extraction and the Colonial Impulse in Canadian Popular Science Films,” Canadian Journal of Film Studies / Revue canadienne d'études cinématographiquesvol. 28, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 1-24.

Rachel Webb Jekanowski, “Fuelling the Nation: Imaginaries of Western Oil in Canadian Nontheatrical Film,” Canadian Journal of Communication vol. 43, no. 1 “Communicating Power: Energy, Canada and the Field(s) of Communication” (2018): 111-125.

 

2. Peer Reviewed Book Chapters

Brent Ryan Bellamy, Lori Bradford, Rachel W. Jekanowski, and Markus Reisenleitner, “Sustainable Publishing,” in Low-Carbon Research Methods, ed. Anne Pasek. Forthcoming with Goldsmiths University Press.

Rachel Webb Jekanowski, “Cinematic Oceans: Mediation and Meanings of Seawater,” in The Routledge Handbook on Critical Ocean Studies, eds. Paul Foley and Jennifer Silver. Forthcoming with Routledge.

Rachel Webb Jekanowski and Elizabeth Miller, “Collaborative Encounters: I-Docs and Environmental Pedagogy In and Beyond the Classroom,” in The Interactive Documentary in Canada, eds. Michael Baker and Jessica Mulvogue (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2024), 143-160.

Rachel Webb Jekanowski, “Contested and Emergent Futures: Film and Energy Regimes of the Newfoundland Offshore,” in Cold Water Oil: Offshore Petroleum Cultures, eds. Fiona Polack and Danine Farquharson (Routledge, 2022), 116-136.

 

3. Other Scholarship

Rachel Webb Jekanowski, Giulia Champion, and Mikala Hope-Franklyn, “Gothic Energies in Transition,” Energy Humanities (Jan. 28, 2025): https://www.energyhumanities.ca/news/gothic-energies-in-transition.

Dean Bavington, Danine Farquharson, Rachel W. Jekanowski, and Fiona Polack, “Newfoundland and Labrador,” in Energy In/Out of Place, eds. Emily Roehl, Anne Pasek, and Caleb Wellum (Mystery Spot Books and Petrocultures Research Group, 2022), https://doi.org/10.17613/ed7m-qt38.

After Oil Collective, Solarities: Seeking Energy Justice, ed. Ayesha Vemuri and Darin Barney. University of Minnesota Press, 2022. (Co-authored as part of the After Oil Collective.) Manifold Edition: https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/solarities.

 

4. Edited Journal Issues

Rachel Webb Jekanowski, Abigail Fields, Brent Ryan Bellamy, and Margot Mellet, (eds.), “Sustainable Publishing,” forthcoming joint-issue between The Goose: A Journal of Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada and Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies.

Rachel Webb Jekanowski, Abigail Fields, and Brittni MacKenzie-Dale (eds.), “Garbage/déchets,” The Goose: Journal of Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada vol. 20, no. 2 (2025). https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol20/iss2/.

Emily Roehl and Rachel Webb Jekanowski (eds.), “Critical and Creative Engagements with Petro-Media,” Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies vol. 13, no. 1 (2022). https://doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.PM.13.1.

 

Awards and Recognitions

2020 Peter Morris Prize, awarded by Film Studies Association of Canada and Canadian Journal of Film Studies in recognition of my journal article “Scientific Visions: Resource Extraction and the Colonial Impulse in Canadian Popular Science Films,” April 2021. 

Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Dissertation Award, April 2020. This annual award recognizes an outstanding PhD dissertation in the field.