Dr. Craig Ireland
Honours B.A. (Comparative Literature), Ph.D (Théorie et Épistémologie de la Littérature)
Subject: Language Arts / Literary and Cultural Theory
What will my child walk away with? The skills and confidence to analyze complex ideas, formulate original positions, and communicate them effectively to audiences who may not already agree with them. These are prized, transferable skills that will serve students in every career and every intellectual context they encounter.
What can families expect? A teacher with 20 years of university-level experience in literary, aesthetic, and social theory, teaching at Bilkent University in Ankara alongside positions in North America. My first book was published with McGill-Queen’s University Press, and I bring that scholarly depth into every class I teach.
What does class actually feel like? Intellectually demanding and genuinely stimulating. I teach students to engage with ideas from the 18th through the 20th century not as historical curiosities but as live frameworks for understanding the present. Students consistently discover that the ideas they thought were old are surprisingly current.
How do you challenge a curious mind? I ask students to remain open to viewpoints that diverge from their own, and I give them the analytical tools to engage with those viewpoints rigorously rather than dismissively. That capacity for genuine intellectual openness is harder to develop than most people assume, and it is among the most valuable things education can produce.
Credentials and Experience Ph.D. in Theorie et Epistemologie de la Litterature, Universite de Montreal. Honours B.A. in Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley (summa cum laude). SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Universite de Sherbrooke. Author of The Subaltern Appeal to Experience (McGill-Queen’s University Press). Co-authoring The Politics of Risk Society with a colleague from the Ethics, Society and Law programme at Trinity College, University of Toronto. 20 years of teaching experience at Bilkent University covering literary theory, intellectual history, and 18th to 20th century European and North American cultural history. Raised in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Why Craig? Why Brain Power?
I have spent two decades teaching students that the ability to engage with difficult ideas while remaining open to challenge is not just an academic skill — it is a civic one. Brain Power’s students are ready to develop that capacity, and I take that responsibility seriously.