Joel Heng Hartse

Joel Heng Hartse is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, where he teaches academic writing. His writing about pop culture, music, and religion has appeared in the Vancouver Sun, the Stranger, the Seattle Weekly, the Portland Mercury, Paste, Geez, Image, Comment, Christianity Today, Killing the Buddha, and many other publications; his work on education has been published in Inside Higher Ed, Times Higher Education, The Conversation and a number of academic journals.

His books include Sects, Love, and Rock & Roll (Cascade, 2010), a memoir of 90’s Christian rock fandom; Dancing about Architecture is a Reasonable Thing to Do (Cascade, 2022), a book about music criticism, meaning, and mystery; and TL;DR: A Very Brief Guide to Reading & Writing in University (On Campus/UBC Press, 2023), a short academic writing guide.

He has completed writing residencies at the Grünewald Guild and the Collegeville Institute at St. John’s College in Minnesota, and taught music criticism with Hugo House in Seattle.