Rate My Professor Jenny McKenney

Dr. Jenny McKenney serves as Department Head and Associate Professor (Teaching) in the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, at the University of Calgary. She has been a faculty member in the department since 2011, previously holding the position of Undergraduate Program Director for four years and contributing to key committees such as Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) and Teaching and Learning. Her appointment as Department Head commenced on July 1, 2025, for a five-year term. McKenney earned her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Toronto in 2000, an M.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Toronto in 1994, and a B.A. in English Literature from Oberlin College in 1993. In 2022, she was recognized as a senior instructor in the department.

McKenney's main academic specialty is 18th-century studies, with research interests in popular literatures and genres, texts and technologies, women's writing, and eighteenth-century literatures. She has published several articles on 18th-century topics, including 'That “Bossy Shield”: Money, Sex, Sentiment, and the Thimble' in Lumen (2015). Her scholarship engages with material culture and sentimental objects in eighteenth-century contexts. McKenney has participated in the University of Calgary's strategic initiative Human Dynamics in a Changing World from 2015 to 2021 and serves on the Faculty of Arts council. In her teaching portfolio, she has delivered courses such as ENGL 405 on Middle English Literature: The Canterbury Tales (2021), ENGL 401 on Old English Language and Prose Literature (Winter 2022), ENGL 387 on The Haunted House (Winter 2022), ENGL 203 Introductory Seminar (Winter 2022), and a senior seminar on Chick Lit. This course syllabus begins with Jane Austen and examines works popular among women readers, addressing themes of romance, work, and identity. In 2022, she contributed to Arch Magazine with recommendations for unconventional chick lit titles, highlighting her engagement with contemporary literary discussions rooted in historical women's writing traditions.