The event will include free pizza, a welcome to first year and welcome back to returning students, and discussion about exciting student activities for the upcoming year.

This event is a great opportunity for students to get to know each other and the professors and staff. All students majoring in French (including Combined Majors), as well as faculty, instructors and staff welcome!

Please RSVP by Friday September 13th, 2103 to Mireille.Fournier@carleton.ca

Focusing on the upcoming 2014 World Cup in Brazil, this research project aims to contribute to theoretical and empirical understandings of the intersections between major sporting events, moral panics and anti-prostitution/trafficking campaigns.  While the scholarly literature on this issue provides substantial evidence of the use of anti-trafficking campaigns to promote the abolition of prostitution, little is known of the ways in which these types of campaigns unfold locally through specific cultural contexts.  This project seeks to address this gap through an ethnographic analysis of the campaigns against sex tourism during the World Cup 2014 in Brazil, with a focus on the city of Natal, one of the twelve host cities.  Natal offers a unique case in point due to both its long history of anti-sex tourism campaigns and the processes of gentrification expressed through these campaigns.  The proposed investigation thus seek to analyse whether the campaigns linked to the 2014 World Cup might further stigmatize, criminalize and spatially marginalize the women engaging in practices of sex tourism.

Christine Duff (Department of French): Lire le zombi: Haïti et au-delà/ Reading the Zombie: Haiti and Beyond

The last few years have seen a resurgence of popular interest in the zombie in North America: witness the advent of Zombie Walks and the use of the zombie metaphor in the Occupy Movement.  There have been international conferences devoted to the subject, two recently taking place in Montreal: Autopsie du zombi in May 2012, and Invasion Montréal: colloque international sur le zombi in July of the same year.  In short, the undead are experiencing a renaissance.  While the zombie is a useful metaphor in contemporary debates regarding exploitation and oppression, its contemporary revival obscures its origins, along with much of its signifying potential.  Literature represents one of the richest arenas in which this signifying potential plays out.  In literary studies, however, work on the zombie has focused exclusively on Haitian literary production, extending only recently to writings of the Haitian diaspora.

The proposed project seeks to: 1) establish the extent to which the motif of zombification is present in the literatures of the Americas (in the hemispheric sense of the term); and 2) determine overarching tendencies in its use and explore their implications.  The trope of zombification undergirds a larger number of literary works than is currently acknowledged.  If, as Kaiama Glover maintains in her 2005 article on Haitian literature, the zombie is a particularly rich site of metaphorical potential and is “highly exploitable as a literary device”, it is my assertion that the full and myriad implications of the zombie and zombification as literary devices remain to be identified and articulated, especially with regard to literatures outside of Haiti.

Michel Hogue (Department of History): Empire of Possibilities: Isaac Cowie and the Making of the Prairie West

In putting his recollections to paper, former fur trader Isaac Cowie sought to preserve in print some of his experiences during a critical period in the Prairie West’s history.  “These papers may prove interesting,” Cowie suggested, “to anyone connected with the ‘days of auld lang syne’ in Western Canada, and perhaps to a few of the numerous newcomers who have come to build an empire of infinite possibilities therein.”  Born in the Shetland Islands, Cowie entered the Hudson’s Bay Company’s (HBC) service at Fort Qu’Appelle in 1867 at a critical moment in both the history of the fur trade and that of the Prairie West.  He was an active participant in the final days of the Plains fur trade and in the promotion of the economic and social order that displaced it.  When success in his business ventures eluded him, Cowie found a career as an advocate for “pioneers” seeking government recognition and as an amateur ethnographer and historian preserving and promoting aspects of the western past, particularly the exploits of its early settlers.  Cowie’s “empire of possibilities” evoked the enduring and cherished myth of the orderly and peaceful nature of the Canadian West’s settlement and embodied his own personal hopes and dreams.  It overlooked, however, the people for whom “settlement” meant dispossession or marginalization, not opportunity.  By narrating Cowie’s own version of his life alongside stories of the Metis and First Nations with whom he lived, worked, and traded, whose land he bought and sold, and whose histories and material culture he collected, this project will re-contextualize Cowie’s narrative of the West and interweave the stories of “pioneers” with those of Indigenous peoples.  In so doing, it will open a new window on the processes of dispossession and repossession that made the Prairie West.

Jody Mason (Department of English Language and Literature): Workers, Readers, Citizens: Canada’s Frontier College, 1899-1950

This project will study the vast archive of Canada’s most significant adult literacy initiative, Frontier College.  The College, founded as the Canadian Reading Camp Association in 1899 by Protestant minister Alfred Fitzpatrick, developed a labourer-teacher model that enabled its work among immigrant labourers in Canada’s resource frontier.  Frontier College is an organization with roots in the social gospel movement and, by the interwar period, it was actively involved in discouraging political radicalism in work camps through its promotion of democratic citizenship and naturalization.

While much is known about the institutional history of Frontier College, I aim to use the organization’s archive at Library and Archives Canada to learn more about the workers as learners, as readers, and as consumers of culture in the first half of the twentieth century.  This research has several main objectives: it will study, synthesize, and analyze a large body of largely unstudied archival material, while enriching nascent work on the history of reading in Canada and fostering important interdisciplinary links among literary and cultural studies, labour history, book history and print culture studies, and the study of immigration and ethnicity.

Mohammed Rustom (College of the Humanities): The Philosophical Mysticism of ‘Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani (d. 1131)

Rustom’s first book on the famous Persian philosopher Mulla Sadra (d. 1640) has afforded him with the ability to understand how a number of key figures’ ideas came together in Sadra’s own synthetic project, the most prominent example being the work of the controversial Andalusian Sufi Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240) and the immediate generations of his followers (somewhat misleadingly referred to as the “school of Ibn ‘Arabi”).  Yet what can be said about the phase immediately before Ibn ‘Arabi, that is, the twelfth century?  We admittedly have a great deal of information concerning the early development of Islamic theology and philosophy from the eighth century to the beginning of the twelfth century.  But when we come to the twelfth century proper, many important questions remain unanswered.

In other words, the one area of inquiry which has largely been neglected is the phase between the famous Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1111) and Ibn ‘Arabi.  This period is particularly problematic owing to its indebtedness to the earlier Islamic philosophical tradition, particularly the work Avicenna (d. 1037).  Rustom’s background in Islamic theology and philosophy in general and the writings of Avicenna and al-Ghazali in particular, coupled with his work in Islamic thought from Ibn ‘Arabi onwards, has positioned him well in terms of grappling with the complexity of the twelfth century of Islamic thought, which, he argues, bears witness to a very unique shift in Islamic intellectual history.

Although there are a number of key authors who belong to the era in question, Rustom maintains that one of the most important is the great martyr ‘Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani (d. 1131).  This figure is famous for having been the student of Ahmad Ghazali (d. 1126) (the brother of the aforementioned al-Ghazali), and for having been put to death by the Seljuq government, ostensibly on charges of “heresy.”  Yet, to date, there is not a single, thorough presentation of ‘Ayn al-Qudat’s thought and influence.  Rustom’s project seeks to fill this lacuna by demonstrating ‘Ayn al-Qudat’s pivotal role in the development of the Persian poetic tradition on the one hand, and the Islamic intellectual tradition on the other.

Paul Mkandawire (Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies – Human Rights): Indigenous Knowledge Transfer and Adaptation to Climate Change Among Orphans in Malawi 

This research project aims at examining whether pathways for transmitting traditional ecological knowledge between the elderly and the youth are dissolving under the weight of heavy adult mortality in Malawi in a context where more than 1.3 million children live without one or both biological parents due to HIV/AIDS. While contributing the least amount of greenhouse gases, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) will experience the vilest impacts of global warming in the foreseeable future.  Unfortunately, the region also doubles as home to the overwhelming majority of the world’s orphaned and vulnerable children. The prime focus accorded to vulnerable groups in the global agenda on combating the negative effects of global warming means that future efforts aimed at building social resilience in communities in SSA cannot proceed without considering the unique needs of this expanding group of youth coming of age without natal parents.

While orphans’ vulnerabilities in other domains such as healthcare, schooling, discrimination, stigma, and HIV/AIDS have largely been documented, not much is known as to whether this cohort is similarly disadvantaged with regard to access to indigenous ecological knowledge vital for mitigating and adapting to climate change.  This study draws upon an ecosystem approach and employs qualitative approaches to explore how heavy adult mortality being triggered by the AIDS epidemic in Malawi is affecting the transfer of indigenous climatic knowledge between elders and youth. Though often bypassed in scientific discourse, indigenous knowledge, rooted in African smallholder farming systems and longstanding familiarity with local climatological events, can significantly improve the ability of marginalized populations to adapt to climate change.

Julie Murray (Department of English Language and Literature): British Women Writers and the Forms of Life, 1790-1840

In this project, Murray argues that the life-writing produced in the early decades of the nineteenth century is intimately linked to the politicization of “bare life” that writers such as Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, and before them, Edmund Burke, argue is a result of the discourse of the “rights of man.”  The link is a sure sign of the chilling effect that a universalizing concept of rights has on life understood as bios.  Murray’s hypothesis is that writers’ desire to clothe a newly politicized (or, as Agamben puts it, formerly “creaturely”) “bare” or “naked” life motivates a range of experiments in life-writing in the early nineteenth century.  The texts that she examines replay a tension, however, already internal to 1790s political debates about the relationship between chivalry and rights, discussions of which are saturated with metaphors of the “naked” and the “clothed.”  Ultimately, this project examines the relationship between the biographical and the biopolitical at the turn of the nineteenth century, and takes seriously the “life” in life-writing in order to explore how literature is intimately bound up with the discursive terrain of life in this period and beyond.

David Wood (School of Linguistics and Language Studies): An Idiodynamic Investigation of the Relationship between Willingness to Communicate and Speech Fluency in a Second Language

Second language (L2) speech fluency has typically been identified as a set of observable temporal features of speech, but has not been analyzed in relation to learner factors in performance such as willingness to communicate (WTC), which can be defined as readiness to engage in communication at a specific time and with specific interlocutors.  With the exception of exploratory case study work by Wood (2012), focusing on general links between overall WTC and fluency gain over time, no researchers have examined  the relationship between WTC and L2 fluency.  A clearer, evidence-based perspective on the link between WTC and fluency can have significant implications for classroom teaching and assessment. Among other benefits, it can help in determining whether dysfluency influences WTC, and whether lowered WTC can lead to dysfluency, or whether the relationship between WTC and fluency development is more complex than that.

The proposed study is an exploratory, case-study attempt at answering the question of what the interrelationship is between L2 speech fluency and WTC. It presents an examination of the influence of WTC on fluency in monologic speech of for Chinese learners of English L2, with a non-Chinese interlocutor, in intensive English as a foreign language (EFL). Monologic narrative speech samples from the Chinese EFL learners in Canada will be analyzed for markers of fluency and interpreted in light of the learners’ WTC profiles and retrospective self-analysis of WTC in stimulated recall.  The results can potentially illuminate the relationship between dysfluency and WTC, particularly the directionality of the relationship, whether fluency breakdowns lead to lowered WTC or vice versa. This can serve to establish a research methodology foundation for a larger-scale study in future, focusing on larger groups of learners in several different learning contexts, such as EFL abroad, and part-time and full-time EFL intensive programs in their own country.

Catherine Khordoc

Catherine Khordoc, Department of French, will be giving a talk on Wednesday April 3rd, as part of a series entitled Salon Double.  Salon Double organizes talks in Montreal, Ottawa and Québec City, on contemporary francophone literature and culture.

In her talk, Khordoc will discuss ‘Migrant Writing’ in Québec.  The lecture will question whether the concept of migrant writing in Quebec continues to be a relevant one. Khordoc will focus on the work of authors Kim Thuy (whose first book, Ru, was just recently translated into English) and Dany Laferrière (whose I Am a Japanese Writer is now also available in English).

The talk will be held in an informal setting: the Roast N Brew coffee shop on Rideau Street at the corner of Waller.  A lively discussion will follow the lecture.

All are invited to attend!

Roast ‘N Brew Café, 198 Rideau Street
Wednesday, April 3^rd, 2013 at 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
See poster (below) for more details

The Salon du livre de l’Outaouais is an annual book fair, bringing together authors, publishers, illustrators and readers, under one roof. This year’s event takes place from Feb 28- March 3rd at the Palais des Congrès in Gatineau (Hull). Catherine Khordoc, an associate professor in Carleton’s Department of French, will be signing copies of her recent book, Tours et détours: Le mythe de Babel dans littérature contemporaine, between 5pm and 6:30, on Thursday, February 28th, at the “Prologue” booth. In this book, which studies contemporary francophone literature and culture, Khordoc examines the use of the Tower of Babel myth in novels written by Québécois, franco-Ontarian, Guadeloupean, and franco-Spanish writers, which address various issues such as language diversity, translation, identity, multiculturalism, nation, and hybridity.

Catherine Khordoc

This is also an opportunity to discover what is being written and published in French in Canada and Québec.

The website for more information: http://www.salon-livre-outaouais.ca

When Tomasz Raubic came to Carleton University he hardly spoke a word of French.  Two short years later, now a French major, Raubic is well on his way to achieving his goal of becoming an English-French, French-English simultaneous translator.

Having already attained a degree in teaching English, and possessing an array of real world experience in teaching English as a second language, Raubic made the decision to further pursue French as a method of broadening his teaching horizons.

Currently, Raubic is a Teaching Assistant in the Department of French and is working a few hours a week in the department’s conversation practice drop-in service.  He is helping students who are learning the language get a handle on the skills needed to become functionally and/or fluently bilingual.  Raubic spends much of his time helping others, as he is teaching French in both a University setting, and off campus.

For a student to start in French as a true beginner, and then to continue on with the program to successfully become fluent in both of Canada’s official languages in such a short time period is hardly a regular occurrence.  In fact, what Raubic has accomplished is quite rare.  Though he has demonstrated a true gift for learning language – Raubic is also fluent in Polish, and functional in Spanish – he insists that his learning process is the same as anyone else’s.

“I simply apply the strategies that I employ while teaching my students a language – immersing oneself, dedicating, spending countless hours living in the ‘milieu’ – TV, radio, Internet, newspapers, even menus in a cell phone”, explains Raubic.  “Listen, imitate, go through millions of trial/error cycles and most importantly, never shy away from practicing.  Once you nail the fundamental grammar structures and manipulate the most common 800-1000 words, you’ve got it! From there, it is smooth sailing.”

Professor of French and Chair of the French Department, Catherine Khordoc, calls Raubic an “exceptional student”.  So exceptional, that the department has selected Raubic as their first ever participant in the Travel Bursary Program, which encourages students majoring in French to go on exchange in a French-speaking country.

Raubic will receive a $1000 bursary in order to help him pay for the costs associated with participating on an international exchange. He will be going to the Université de Grenoble III, as part of the Ontario-Rhone-Alpes exchange.

Raubic is hoping that his trip to France will refine his French speaking abilities.

“Essentially, the decision to go on the exchange relate to my willingness to achieve a polished, fluent, perfected, and fluid mastery of French”, says Raubic.

Upon his return to Canada, and the completion of his undergraduate degree in French, Raubic plans to pursue his Master’s in Translation and Interpretation and continuing his passion to teach.

When asked what it is he enjoys so much about possessing an intimate knowledge of French language and culture, Raubic explains that in many ways, French offers a pleasant discrepancy.

“I love translation and interpretation…switching between the rigid, organized structure of the Germanic language – English – into the soft, silky domain of the Latin one – French, in my view, creates that nice contrast of melodies. All in all, it’s the rhythm, ‘music’ and flow that I adore in the French language.”

Khordoc hopes Raubic’s experience in French will be inspirational to other students who have an interest in French.

“What I hope other students learn from Tom is that you can learn a language, and reach a very high level of fluency, but you cannot do that just by going to class for 3 hours a week.  Learning a language, and its cultures, takes a lot of time and you have to work on it, everyday, in a much focused manner.  You actually have to spend time listening, reading, speaking, memorizing vocabulary, grammar structures, analyzing what you read and hear, so that you can imitate it. Learning French, or any other language, requires a great deal of effort and concentration, but I hope that when students hear Tom, they will feel inspired, and they will feel that all the effort is worthwhile.  Hopefully, others will also be interested in participating in exchanges in coming years.”

By Hannah Yakobi

It’s a collaboration unlike any other – three talented researchers who are bringing together specialists from varied sectors and fields of study, uniting them all in transnational cultural analysis.

It all began in 2005, when Sarah Casteel, Ming Tiampo and Catherine Khordoc decided to form the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis at Carleton. The trios were all assistant professors at the time and had diverse backgrounds: Casteel was a professor in the Department of English, Khordoc in the Department of French and Tiampo in the Department of Art History.

“It emerged out of our friendship when we all arrived at Carleton in 2003,” says Tiampo. “We discovered that we had really important overlaps in our research interests and also very similar concerns about our own disciplines.”

Since then, the Centre has flourished. Its main focus is to organize conferences and seminars and build networks for researchers.

“We enable communication between projects and let others know what their colleagues are working on, because it’s not always obvious even in your own institution whose research is potentially in dialogue with your own,” says Tiampo. “We also try to reach out to researchers in other parts of the world – for example, we have a relationship with the Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry and the Université de Pau et des pays de l’Adour, in the south of France.”

“The Centre brings attention to the ways in which transnationalism and globalization are not just economic or political phenomena, or related to questions of policy, but also involve culture in very fundamental ways,” adds Casteel. “Our Centre highlights how in a globalized, transnational context, people construct their identities through a variety of forms of cultural expression, including literature, music, art and religion.”

Casteel, Tiampo and Khordoc are also able to contribute to the Centre in a unique way because of their varied personal interests and research: Casteel’s first book, published with the University of Virginia Press, was about landscape in the literatures of the Americas, and her second book is about Jewishness in Caribbean literature. Tiampo has just published a book on the Gutai group of Japan with the University of Chicago Press and is working on an exhibition with the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Khordoc’s book on the Tower of Babel myth in contemporary francophone literature will be published this spring by the University of Ottawa Press.

The team also works with a Cultural Mediations PhD student, Matthew Rushton, who is helping them run the Centre.

Some of the Centre’s projects so far include keynote lectures, a conference on multiculturalism and Canadian art, and a workshop on Sephardic Jewish studies. The Centre is funded by the Office of the Vice-President (Research and International), the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and ICI Berlin.

“The conferences we organize generate a lot of interest and are well-attended by students and professors,” says Khordoc. “For the last couple of years, we have also organized seminar series, in conjunction with the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture. We often co-sponsor events with other organizations at Carleton as well.”

“For example, we co-sponsored the workshop Sephardic Literary Studies and Comparative Methodologies in Iberia and the Americas,” adds Casteel. “It took place at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City in November 2011 and brought together a really exciting group of scholars from across the U.S. It was a great chance to bring exposure for our Centre and for Carleton.”

Over the years, the Centre has evolved from a small “organized research unit”, housed within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, to a Carleton University Research Centre. Its network of research associates has grown as well, as has its national and international exposure.

“By changing things on the level of research, we change the way we teach, the way people think about disciplines, and the way they approach their own projects – outside of university and after they graduate,” explains Tiampo. “The Centre provides an intellectual home to people working on transnational issues throughout campus, across the country and around the world, and gives us all a space for dialogue. It’s a wonderful and productive meeting of minds.”

Wajdi Mouawad will be discussing the city of Ottawa as a stage to perform and create in French. In March 2008, he was appointed as artistic director of French theater at the National Arts Centre for a five year term. With the term coming to an end, he will be speaking at Carleton to address the following questions: how difficult is it to present theater in French in Ottawa? How is theater a tool to teach outside of the classroom? An interpreter will be on site for the question and answer portion of the lecture, as the talk will be given primarily in French.

In his writing and in his directing, Wajdi Mouawad explores the tension between individual freedom and the renunciation of the self, quoting Kafka on the subject: “In the struggle between yourself and the world, back the world.” The general public will have heard of Incendies, translated by Linda Gaboriau as Scorched, which premiered in France in 2003.  In 2010, it was adapted as a film and was directed by Denis Villeneuve.  The film was subsequently nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film.

The Wajdi Mouawad lecture will occur on Wednesday February 8th at 3:00pm in Dunton Tower 2017.  A wine and cheese will follow the lecture. This event was organized with the generous support of Wajdi Mouawad, the French Department, the School of Canadian Studies and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Welcome to all, but seating is limited. Information: anne_trepanier@carleton.ca

The magazine was founded in 2007 by grad student Natalie Mezey and undergrad Morgan Faulkner, both in the Department of French. With support from the department, it began as a sister publication to In/Words, a literary journal produced by students in Carleton’s English Department. Mot Dit was a showcase for young francophone and francophile poets, writers and artists at Carleton.

Faulkner (MA French, 2010) and Merzey (MA French, 2008) have long since graduated but still edit Mot Dit along with Matt Rushton, another French department alumnus, (2010), who joined the magazine in 2008 to help produce the magazine’s third issue.

Now in its sixth issue, Mot Dit has grown to include writers, scholars, artists and photographers from across North America, Europe and Africa.

“It’s become more sophisticated,” says Rushton, now the production editor. “We’ve come to include more critical essays and literary reviews and the writing, in general, has matured.”

Rushton points out, however, that one of his favorite pieces—a short horror tale from Mot Dit 5 titled Le chien fantôme — was written by an eight-year-old second-grader from Montreal. “We initially thought it was submitted by a professor under a pseudonym,” Rushton says, “and I praised its clear writing and economy of words. I still do! It’s great little ghost story.”

Contributions vary with each issue. Mot Dit 4, for example, proudly featured poems by Ottawa poet Angèle Bassolé-Ouédraogo and by poet and Carleton University President Roseanne O’Reilly Runte.

“Mot Dit thrives because its founders and editors are students. Faculty act as advisers and proofreaders, but this is a student initiative. It is also encouraging that editors’ and supporters’ interests lie not only in creative writing, but in literary criticism and literary production,” says Catherine Khordoc, chair of the Department of French. “These interests are part of the specialization of our department and expertise of our researchers.”

Mot Dit 6, which launches November 28 at an event at Ottawa’s Raw Sugar Café, features contributors from Amsterdam (NL), Antigonish, Bournemouth (UK), Calgary, Gatineau, Iasi (RO), Lyon (FR), Manchester (UK), Moncton, Montpellier (FR), Montreal, Ottawa, Providence (US), Toronto, Trois-Rivières, Winnipeg and Waterloo. Carleton continues to be represented, as well. The issue features photography by architecture student Rotem Yaniv, literary non-fiction by French student Tan Nhat Ngo, and poetry by French Instructor Francine Benny.

For more information about Mot Dit and the upcoming launch event, contact the Carleton University Department of French (carleton.ca/french). You can also visit Mot Dit’s facebook page (facebook.com/la.revue.motdit) or find it on Twitter (@motditottawa).

If you ask any student who their favourite professor is, chances are they’ll choose a prof with a good sense of humour. All the world loves a clown, as they say. But how does laughter affect the learning process? Carleton University French professor Chantal Dion explores this issue in her doctoral thesis, which she successfully defended in December 2006. Her thesis is an expansive study of humour and laughter in the classroom, which draws upon Dion’s own experiences in teaching students a second language.

Although for some students, laughter greatly facilitates the learning process, for others it is a source of discomfort and embarrassment. This unpredictability makes it hard to say whether laughter is a useful teaching tool or not. Dion combines education study, psychology, sociology, linguistics, cognitive studies and any number of other disciplines in her thesis, which asks many key questions about the nature of education itself.

Dion concludes that although laughter can be a very valuable tool, it must be used carefully and deliberately, in controlled doses- too much humour can hurt the learning process. “Education is the most important thing,” she says, and it must be treated seriously and responsibly. She hopes that her work can help future educators better understand how best to teach.

Sébastien Côté is tackling one century at a time as he explores French literature spanning the first half of the 20th century and the four centuries that precede the modern era. Côté has recently joined the Department of French as an assistant professor.

While completing his doctoral studies at the Université de Montréal, in the Department of Comparative Literature, which he credits as being “located at the crossroads of French and North American criticism and thought,” he developed an interest in postcolonial studies. With this perspective, he decided to take a new look at contemporary French and German literature. Côté examined two major avant-garde writers of the 20th century – Michel Leiris and the lesser-known Carl Einstein, and was inspired by the theoretical perspectives put forward in James Clifford’s The Predicament of Culture. Côté analysed the literary representations put forward by intellectuals living in France, of the inhabitants and peoples of its African colonies.

Through his research, Côté hopes to gain a better understanding of the factors that contribute to the multiple representations of “otherness” in French literary history. As an example, Côté questions why many “French writers contributed first to invent the literary figure of the “noble savage” in the 16th century, and then to reinvent it unceasingly following every European territorial “discovery”?”

He is now beginning to work his way back through a plethora of tomes written over the course of four centuries. Due to the international influence of French literature, he will also pursue works written in German, Italian and English. Still, he laments the constraints of his multilingualism.

“My research would become even more interesting if I had a better knowledge of both Spanish and Portuguese.”

Côté’s work is not bound by language alone, to contextual the multi-national works he also needs to cross into other disciplines, among these, history, anthropology, art history and ethnography.

Prior to joining Carleton, Côté completed his PhD in Comparative Literature at the Université de Montréal , and spent a year researching at the Universität des Saarlandes, in Saarbrücken, Germany.