Kylie Burton

BA Honors in WGS (2014), BEd 2016


High School English & Creative Writing Teacher


Bio: Kylie graduated from the Women's and Gender Studies Department with an Honors Degree in 2014. She describes her time in the department as an experience marked by "infinite learning and growth." While in the program, Kylie completed an undergraduate honours thesis focusing on representations of disability, gender, and sexuality in the television show Nip/Tuck. The skills and relationship she developed while completing her thesis allowed her to continue to work alongside faculty after graduation as a research assistant for the Department of Women's and Gender Studies, the Faculty of English and Film Studies, and the Department of Secondary Education.

Kylie credits the breadth of the WGS program for enabling her to develop a strong variety of knowledge, skills, and new ways of looking at the world. Because of this, there were many paths open to her following graduation. In fourth year, she began volunteering with a Queer-Straight Alliance and was moved by the resilience, creativity, empathy, and curiosity of the youth in the group. In this space, Kylie felt the merging of theory and praxis, and she realized how much she had to offer young people in Alberta. And so she entered the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta and completed an After Degree in Secondary Education (majoring in English Language Arts and minoring in English as a Second Language) and graduated in December 2016. Kylie quickly found employment with Black Gold Regional Schools. "Every day that I work with young people I feel the energy of the ideas I encountered in WGS," explains Kylie. "The program provided me a foundation for empathy, self-reflexivity, and critical curiosity in my own professional work, primarily teaching, and my creative work. I am immensely happy with the way that my two educational paths merge together in my teaching and interactions with diverse groups of young people."

Kylie currently works as a high school teacher specializing in English and Creative Writing.