Research
Research activities constitute one of the advantages of studying Comparative Canadian Literature at the Université de Sherbrooke.
- The CCL programs enjoy an outstanding reputation based upon the high quality of faculty members’ published work and their collaborative research projects.
- Students may work as research assistants thanks to a number of subsidized research projects.
- The recent establishment of an institutional research group—the Groupe de recherche en études littéraires et culturelles comparées au Canada et au Québec / Research Group for Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies in Canada and Québec—made up of professors associated with the faculty of the CCL, Éudes françaises, and the Communications program, promotes the integration of new research themes as well as the evolution of comparative cultural studies.
More than 150 diplomas have been granted since the foundation of the programs.
A Few Examples of Master’s Thesis Projects
Students may write their theses in French or English, and may choose from a wide variety of subjects for their research projects. Here are a few examples of master’s theses completed by students of the program that illustrate the diversity of areas of research:
- The Black Madonna Figure as a Source of Female Empowerment in the Works of Four Italian-Canadian Authors (Sigrid Claasen)
- Shaping Identity under Colonial Systems: A Comparison of African and Canadian-Métis Texts by Chinua Achebe, Maria Campbell, James Ngugi, and Beatrice Culleton (Sarah Karambiri)
- Sacrifice and Redemption in Canadian and Quebecois Drama (François Martel)
- Pierre Nepveu, Transculturalism and Neo-Quebecois texts / Pierre Nepveu, le transculturalisme et quelques textes néo-québécois (Daniel Lewis)
- Mediation and Mediators in the History Plays of Sharon Pollock and Jovette Marchessault (Élise Cotton)
- Intertextuality as Internal Adaptation in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), Robert Lepage’s Le Confessionnal, and Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter (Pola Hallquist)
- Cultural Constructions of the Female Body: Narrative as Resistance in Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman, Adele Wiseman's Crackpot and Gabrielle Roy's La rivière sans repos (Jackie Hall)
- Beyond The Silence That Entails: A Translation of Four Short Stories by Clark Blaise (Shirley Fortier)
- Découvrir Cyril Dabydeen, un écrivain canadien, par le biais de la traduction (Louise Trudel)
- Traduction commentée du roman Le nègre crucifié de Gérard Étienne (Claudia Harry)
A Few Examples of Doctoral Thesis Projects
Students may write their theses in French or English. Research projects include but are not limited to gender studies, theatre, poetry, memoir writing, literary criticism, literary translation, and native, minority, cultural, intercultural and feminist studies, as demonstrated by the following theses completed by students in the program:
- Testimonial Life Writing as Cultural Survival: Indigenous Voices from Canada and West Africa (Natasha Dagenais)
- Latinocanadá: A Critical Anthology of Ten Latin American Writers of Canada (Hugh Hazelton)
- The Transmutation of Feminist Critique from Novel to Film: The Case of Les fous de Bassan (Elspeth Tulloch)
- Mythotextuality and the Evolution of Ideologies: The Reuse of the Epic of Gilgamesh in North American Texts (Christine Hopps)
- Contemporary Canadian Women's Fiction: A Jungian Reading of Ying Chen's L'Ingratitude, Christiane Frenette's La Terre ferme, Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees, and Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces (Janet Kennedy)
- The Displacement of Irony in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water and Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion (Marielle Mencé)