Specializations

• Comparative Québécois/Canadian literature
• Québécois literature
• Contemporary literary theory and cultural studies
• Postmodernism, postcolonialism, feminism, New Historicism, myth criticism, l'écriture migrante, spirituality and religions

Administrative and Honorary Positions

Executive Council and Conference Co-Organizer (Congress), Association des littératures canadiennes et québécoise / Association of Canadian and Québec Literatures, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002.

Book Review Editor, La Revue francophone, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 (now called Nouvelles Etudes francophones)

Advisory Board, Canadian Studies Research Group, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.

Visiting Research Scholar, Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London, UK, August-December 2008.

Associate Research Scholar, Institute for Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, UK, August-December 2008.

Chair, Steering Committee, Inter-Faculty Programme in Canadian Studies, University of Victoria, (Fine Arts; Humanities; Social Sciences).

Advisory Board, Canadian Literature.  

Advisory Board, Studies in Canadian Literature/Etudes en littérature canadienne.

Advisory Board, Canadian Comparative International Project, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland.

Affiliate Researcher, Centre for Canadian Literature/Centre de  littérature canadienne, University of Alberta.

Lectures

Plenary Speaker/Invited Speaker, to university audiences outside of Victoria, BC

Public Lecture. "Transculturalism, Autobiography, and Religion in Postcolonial Canadian Novels of Consensus," University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, April 2012.

Public Lecture. “Neologisms, the Imaginary and the Border: a Provocative Point of View.”  Presented in the Huxley Speaker Series, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington, USA, February 2011.  Sponsored by Huxley College and The Border Institute. 

Plenary Address. The international conference "MulticultiCanada 2010" at the Centre for Canadian Literature/Centre de littérature canadienne, University of Alberta, March 2010.

Public Lecture. Presented to the Institute for the Study of the Americas, School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK, December 2008.

Public Lecture. Presented to the Institute for Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK, December 2008.

Invited Speaker. To the Institute for Germanic and Romance Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK, December 2008.

Public Lecture. To the joint session of the Programme of Canadian Studies -English and French, University of Nottingham, November 2008.

Plenary Address. The international conference “(One’s) History in Fiction,” Universities of Manitoba, Canada and North Dakota, USA, Winnipeg, Manitoba, October 2006.

Invited Speaker. To Canadian Studies Program, University College Dublin, Ireland, August 2004.

Invited speaker. To “le Département d’études françaises, hispaniques et italiennes", University of British Columbia, January 2003.

Keynote Speaker. International Conference “Literature and Music of Canada”, Canadian Studies Program at the University of Washington, Seattle, U.S.A., June 1995.

Invited Speaker. To the international conference "Discover the World Next Door Through Its People," University of Washington, Seattle, U.S.A., June 1994.

Invited Speaker. To the international conference "Postcolonialism: Theory and Practice," Programme in Comparative Literature, University of British Columbia, March 1992.

Invited Speaker. To the Canadian Studies Program of the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, in May 1992

Plenary Speaker/Invited Speaker, to audiences in Victoria, BC

“Neologisms, Place, and the Imaginary: ma région, la frontière,” presented to the international conference "Cascadia Critical Geographies," University of Victoria, October 2010.

Public Lecture. “Catholicism, Postcolonialism, Consensus: Religiosity and the Imaginary in Novels of the 1990s,” University of Victoria, Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, October 2007.

Invited Speaker. “The Difficulties of Poetic Translation.” To “The Mouth of the River: the Art of Translation” panel at the Pacific Festival of the Book, Victoria Arts Connection, March, 2007.

Invited Speaker. “Monique Proulx: pas du tout invisible,” presented to the Victoria Literary Arts Festival, May 2003.

Invited Speaker. "L'influence de Jack Kerouac et de Jacques Poulin sur les « road novels » de Guillaume Vigneault," presented to the Victoria Literary Arts Festival, May 2003.

Invited Speaker. “La littérature québécoise, le postcolonialisme et le catholicisme,” presented to “Alliance française,” March 2003.

Invited Speaker. "L'affaire Larue: literature, society and l'écriture migrante in contemporary Québec." Presented to the 2000 Community Seminar, Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, University of Victoria, May 2000.

Public Lecture. "Christianity, Memory and Identity/ 'l'Identitaire': Contemporary Fiction from English-Speaking Canada and Quebec." Presented to the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, the University community and the public, University of Victoria, November 1999.

Invited Speaker. “Contemporary Issues in Québec: politics, écriture, and l’identitaire,” presented to Dr. John Greene’s Québec Cinéma course Fren 389B, Victoria, March 1998.

Public Lecture. “Cosmogonies and ‘convergence culturelle’: Quebec Social Mythology and the Blurring of Cosmologies,” presented to the 1997 Symposium, “Cosmogenesis,” Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, Victoria, B.C., February 1997.

Invited Speaker. "Folk Music, Colonialism and Postcolonialism in the Americas," presented to Dr. Joan Backus' course "Issues in Contemporary Canadian Culture" Faculty of Fine Arts, October 1995.

Invited Speaker."Quebec in the 1990s," presented to Dr. Joan Backus's course, "Issues in Contemporary Canadian Culture," Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, March 1993.

Invited Speaker. "The Quiet Revolution: Its Causes and Its Consequences," presented to Dr. Joan Backus's course "Issues in Contemporary Canadian Culture," Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, October 1991.

Invited Speaker. "Robinson Crusoé et Louis-Joseph Papineau: refaire les mythes du 'centre' dans le contexte du Nouveau Monde," presented to the French Department Faculty Seminar, October 1991.

Invited Speaker. "La Révision de l'histoire dans le roman québécois contemporain," presented to l'Alliance française, Victoria, March, 1991.

Selected Publications

Books and Refereed Book Chapters

New World Myth: Postmodernism and Postcolonialism in Canadian Fiction. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998. (Nominated for the 1998 Gabrielle Roy Prize for best international work, Canadian literary criticism/theory.)

Art as an Early-Warning System. With Erica Dodd, Martin Segger and Matthew Pollard. Ed. Ludgard De Decker. University of Victoria: Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, 2000.

Paris/Québec. Ed. Claudine Bertrand. With Stephen Scobie. Victoria: Ekstasis Press, 2003.

L'Autre en mémoire. Ed. Dominique Laporte. Sainte-Foy, Québec: Les Presses de l'université Laval, 2006. 330 pages. [Member of Editorial Team.]

"Le discours féminin et le mythe postmoderne: Comme une enfant de la terre de Jovette Marchessault et Obasan de Joy Kogawa." in Les Discours féminins dans la littérature postmoderne au Québec. Dir. Raija Koski, Kathleen Kells et Louise Forsyth. San Francisco: Mellen Research UP, 1993. 291-305.

"Memory, Identity and Religion: Postcolonial Side-by-sidedness in Contemporary Fiction." Is Canada Postcolonial? Ed. Laura Moss. Wilfrid-Laurier Press, 2003. 268-281.

"Novo Mondo.” In Dicionário de figuras e mitos litterários das Américas. Ed. Zilá Bernd. Translated into Portuguese by Flávia Westphalen. Sao Paulo, Brasil: Tomo Editorial and Editora da Universidade/UFRGS, 2007. 493-498.

"L'imaginaire, le texte et les études comparatives dans le Nouveau Monde." Transplanter le Canada : Semailles/Transplanting Canada: Seedlings. Eds. Marie Carrière and Jerry White. Edmonton: CLC, 2009. 43-52.

Selected Refereed Articles

"Memory, Knowledge, Mysticism: Brossard and Schoemperlen." Forthcoming Canada.

"Hemispheric Travel and the Imaginary: the Literatures of Canada and Québec." Forthcoming UK.

"Comparative Canadian/Québécois Literature Studies." Forthcoming Germany.

“Le Postmodernisme euro-américain apocalyptique et le mythe archaïque. ” Études canadiennes (en France)  69 (2010) : 7-18.

“Comparative Canadian/Québécois Literature: the Way of the Future?” (Canadian Literature 204 (Spring 2010): 152-5.

"Postmodernism, Archaic Myth and the Feminine: Pierre Nepveu's Des mondes peu habités/Still Lives." Australasian Canadian Studies 26.2 (2008). 125-158. (Australian publication)

"Transculturalism, Postcolonial Identities, Religiosity in Lalonde's Sept Lacs Plus au Nord and Tostevin's Frog Moon," International Journal of Francophone Studies 9.3 (2006) : 365-380.

"Les Pays du Nouveau Monde, le postcolonialisme de consensus et le catholicisme québécois." Québec Studies. 35 (Spring/Summer 2003): 13-30.

"Memory, Writing and identity/identitaire : l'écriture migrante from Québec and New World Autobiographical Fiction from English-speaking Canada." Textxet; Studies in Comparative Literature29.5 (2000) 397-411.

"The Role of Memory in two 'fictions de l'identitaire' from Quebec; Sergio Kokis's Le Pavillon des miroirs and Jean-François Chassay's Les Ponts." Studies in Canadian Literature 24.2 (1999): 141-150.

"Canadian Fiction Meets History and Historiography: Jacques Poulin, Daphne Marlatt, Wayson Choy." Colby Quarterly 3.1 (March 1999): 18-34.

"Naufrage ou navire: la mémoire de l'écriture migrante des années quatre-vingt et quatre- vingt-dix au Québec." Avec Karyn Marzak. LittéRéalité 92 (Automne/Hiver 1997): 65-78.

"Comparative Postcolonialism and the Amerindian in English-speaking Canada and Québec." Canadian Ethnic Studies 28.3 (1996): 4-15.

"Les métarécits, le postmodernisme et le mythe postcolonial au Québec," Etudes littéraires 27.1 (Summer 1994): 43-61.

"Postmodern Myth, Post-European History, and the Figure of the Amerindian: François Barcelo, George Bowering, and Jacques Poulin," Canadian Literature 141 (Summer 1994): 15-33.

"La Révision postcoloniale de l'Histoire et l'exemple réaliste magique de François Barcelo." Studies in Canadian Literature 16.2 (1991): 39-53.

"Postmodernisme et postcolonialisme: refaire les mythes du 'centre' dans le contexte du Nouveau Monde." Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Kanada-Studien (1991) 11.Jahrgang/Nr. 1+2 Band 19/20): 141-9.

"Le Mythe postmoderne dans quelques romans historiographiques québécois," Quebec Studies 12 (Spring/Summer 1991): 49-57.

"Les Mots, les noms et le postmoderne: l'onomastique dans Le Semestre de Gérard Bessette," Studies in Canadian Literature 13.1 (1988): 98-106.

"Fiction, Historiography and Myth: Jacques Godbout's Les têtes à Papineau and Rudy Wiebe's The Scorched-Wood People," Canadian Literature 110 [Literature and Ideology] (Fall 1986): 61-78.
Reprinted in: Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 138. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. 2001. Gale Group. 343-351.
Reprinted in: Contemporary Literary Criticism Select. (on line) March 26, 2002. http://www.gale.com.

Current Research

Contemporary comparative Canadian and Québécois fiction, postcolonialisms, memory, l'identitaire, religion and spiritualities, l'écriture migrante and life writing.