FIMS Profile

Dr. Basil Chiasson
Assistant Professor

FIMS & Nursing Building Room 4059
Phone: 519-519-661-2111 x88501

University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5B7
Fax: 519-661-3506
bchiasso@uwo.ca
  • About Me

  • Publications

  • Research

  • Courses Taught

PhD: University of Leeds, UK ~ MA: York University, Toronto ~ BA: Saint Mary's University, Halifax, NS  

I have been employed at Western since 2020 and teach in the Creative Arts and Production (CAP) and Media, Information, and Technoculture (MIT) programs and on the Digital Communications Certificate. I routinely teach Introduction to Creative Arts; Sound, Image, Text I (with Sally Kewayosh and Joanna Devereux); First Year Foundations for MIT; and Writing across Digital Media Platforms.   

Everything I do is informed by my diverse background in the arts. I have worked as a professional musician – performing, recording, composing, and teaching – and continue to perform with bands and compose original music. I have also worked in show production as a carpenter and audio technician and have experience as an actor, creative writer, and dramaturg. 

Before arriving at Western, I taught in English departments at several universities, mostly courses in the history of theatre and performance but also English courses which study literature to teach university-level essay composition and critical thinking. My research and scholarly publications have focused on the Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, whose life and work are the subject of my first book, another I co-edited, and several journal articles and book chapters. I have also published on other British playwrights, looking at how their work responds to capitalism’s ongoing reformation of social relations and citizen subjectivities and, moreover, how plays and productions offer ways of thinking meaningfully and critically about the processes and consequences of “neoliberalization.”

I have been developing new research interests and projects since arriving at Western. My ongoing project entitled Forest City Memories examines the city of London, Ontario with a concern for how the past and collective memories are, and are not, constructed across the civic landscape and, relatedly, how London's memorial culture helps us to think critically about how and how much Canada is contending with its colonial past and present. The project focuses on Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ local histories and routinely employs student research interns, features geospatial mapping technology to plot and offer a critical re-narration of numerous memorials and commemorative sites around London, and is currently expanding to collaborate with community partners interested in London’s history and the politics of memory.    

I am open to supervising students with interests and expertise in one or more of the following areas: creativity; the creative industries; memory studies; digital humanities; media and performance; media and music; activism and the arts; the social life and politics of affect.  

Chiasson, B. (2023), "Subjectivity in Dennis Kelly’s Early Drama: Towards Neoliberalism." In Beautiful Doom: The Work of Dennis Kelly on Stage and Screen, eds. Jacqueline Bolton and Nicholas Holden. Manchester: Manchester UP, forthcoming.   

Chiasson, B., and C. Fallow, eds (2021), Harold Pinter: Stages, Networks, CollaborationsLondon: Bloomsbury.

Chiasson, B. (2021), "Pinter’s Modernism(s) Revisited: A Drama Reliant upon Prose." In Harold Pinter: Stages, Networks, Collaborations, B. Chiasson and C. Fallow, eds, 15-41, London: Bloomsbury. 

___ (2020), "Harold Pinter's Remembrance of Things Political: What Memory Meant for the Citizen." The Harold Pinter Review: Essays on Contemporary Drama 4.1 (May): 1-19.  

___ (2018), "Simon Stephens, Birdland, and a Few Affects of Neoliberalization." Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 6.2: 331-57. DOI: 10.1515/jcde-2018-0029.

___ (2017), The Late Harold Pinter: Political Dramatist, Poet and ActivistLondon: Palgrave Macmillan.  

___ (2014), "Pinter's Political Dramas: Staging Neoliberal Discourse and Authoritarianism." In M. Taylor-Batty's The Theatre of Harold Pinter, 249-67, London: Bloomsbury. DOI: 10.5040/9781408175293.  

___ (2013), "Harold Pinter's 'More Precisely Political' Dramas, or a Post-1983 Economy of Affect." Modern Drama 56.1: 80-101. DOI: 10.1353/mdr.2013.0007. 

___ (2009), "(Re)Thinking Harold Pinter’s Comedy of Menace." In M. Brewer, ed, Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter31-54,  Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. DOI: 10.1163/9789042028920_004. 

 


CA 1020 Introduction to Creative Arts 2024 Winter , 2023 Winter , 2022 Fall , 2022 Winter , 2021 Fall , 2021 Winter , 2020 Fall CA 2100 Creativity in the 21st Century 2023 Winter , 2021 Fall CA 2200 Sound, Image, Text I 2023 Fall , 2022 Fall , 2022 Winter DIGICOMM 2305 Special Topics in DC: Writing Across Digital Media Platforms 2021 Winter DIGICOMM 2311 Writing Across Digital Media Platforms 2024 Winter , 2023 Winter , 2022 Winter MIT 1025 First Year Foundations 2023 Fall , 2022 Fall , 2021 Fall (2 sections) MIT 3953 Special Topics in MIT: The Politics of Memory: Media, Affect, Activism 2020 Fall