Cam MacDonald, MLC Coordinator

Cameron Jade MacDonald is a long-time member of the MLC Research Centre, having served as the MLC Coordinator, Member of the Executive Team, and RA lead for the MLC’s SSHRC funded project Telling COVID-19 Stories (2022-2026). She holds a BA in English from Toronto Metropolitan University (2012-2016), and an MA from the University of Toronto English Department, where she is now a PhD student (2021-2027). Supported by a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship (2022-2025), her doctoral research focuses on sonic phenomena in literature, such as echoes, silences, noise, and music, to explore alternative modes of queer selfhood, affect, and inhabitance. Her work involves literary analysis, sound studies, and queer theory in relation to late 19th - mid 20th century American literature. 

Scholarly Articles

MacDonald, Cameron Jade. “‘A Story that Wasn’t in the Words’: Music, Mothering, and Minor Figures.” The Crossroads of Music and Literature: New Essays on the Muse of Song, edited by Kelly Baron and Andrew DuBois, Bloomsbury, 2025 (forthcoming).

MacDonald, Cameron. “The Alien Resonances and Queer Obscurities of Hyperpop’s 100 gecs.” Journal of Popular Music Studies, vol. 36, no. 2, 2024, pp. 76-98.

MacDonald, Cameron. “‘Befo’ de Wah’: Sounding Out Ill-Legibility in Charles W. Chesnutt’s Conjure Stories.” Sound Studies in African American Literature and Culture, special issue of Humanities, edited by Nicole Brittingham Furlonge, vol. 11, no. 6, 2022, pp. 1-11. doi: 10.3390/h11060137. 

Cecchetto, David and Cameron MacDonald. “Listening through a Pandemic: Silence, Noisemaking, and Music.” Creative Resilience and COVID-19: Figuring the Everyday in a Pandemic, edited by Irene Gammel and Jason Wang, Routledge, 2022, pp. 39-48.

Selected Conference Papers

MacDonald, Cameron. “‘Louder and higher and lower and wider’: Channeling Queer Black Noise in Their Eyes Were Watching God.” American Literature Association, Boston, MA, 21-24 May 2025. Panel, The Harlem Renaissance 100 Years Later.

MacDonald, Cameron. “Queer Futurity, Lunar Orientations, and Lessening Into One’s Voice.” SpokenWeb, Calgary, AB, 5-7 June 2024. Panel, Literary Soundscapes.

MacDonald, Cameron. “‘If they exhaust noise and distance’: Homes, Stones, and the Queer Echoes of Tender Buttons.” Modernist Studies Association (MSA), Brooklyn, NY, 26-29 October 2023. Panel, Of Sea, Stone, and Street.