SSHRC Projects

2011

Sonorités balzaciennes: le paysage sonore dans La Comédie Humaine d'Honoré de Balzac

Investigator: Jean-François Richer 

The readers of The Human Comedy are exposed to not only the French society of the first half the 19th century, with its living quarters, trades, clothing and belongings, but they also hear the echoes of a world resound in their ears. Balzac's characters moan, shout, whimper, sigh and whisper, and around them a vast menagerie neighs, bellows, moos or barks. Places, animals, objects, people and their customs are unfailingly accompanied by their sounds. The project will analyze the multifarious soundscape of The Human Comedy, and its narratological and thematic functions.

2010

Echoes of Don Quixote in modern-day Central American Speech

Investigator:  Róbinson Ayala Mejía

Beyond its indisputable literary value, when Cervantes composed his renowned novel Don Quixote he was at the same time preserving a lexical time-capsule that contained idiomatic expressions and sayings used in Spain at the onset of the seventeenth century. The project concentrates on the analysis and interpretation of this proverb corpus, with a three-fold goal: 1) to explore the connection between proverbs and narrative action; 2) to provide a critical approach to the interpretation of the meaning and usage of proverbs in Cervantes’ time; and 3) to explain the role proverbs played in XVII century Spanish society.

Identity and Space in Two Novels by Carmen Boullosa

Investigator: Chantelle Hug

This project will investigate the subject of identity in Duerme and La otra mano de Lepanto. Identity has recently become an important topic in literature, principally owing to globalization and a world in which identities no longer tend to be permanent. Although this project is a literary analysis, focused on the representation of various identities through the symbol of blood and use of costume, it also proposes an alternative perspective on identity, one that could result in fewer violent conflicts between groups and individuals.

Rethinking the focus on grammar in Canada's Immersion program

Investigator: Katherine Mueller

Building on research in the field of Focus on Form, this project will investigate the effects of introducing explicit pro-active grammar instruction to Grade 12 French Immersion classes. French Immersion is traditionally a content- or meaning-based approach to language teaching, in which grammar instruction tends to be incidental and not necessarily contextualized. In this investigation, grammatical elements that continue to challenge French Immersion students at the university level will be delivered explicitly and in meaningful context at the Grade 12 level, to determine whether such intervention can lead to greater proficiency.

2009

Les lecteurs curieux du XVIII^e siècle français

Investigator: Anthony J. Wall

Studying those French Eighteenth-Century portraits which show a person reading, this project prods several hypotheses concerning the history of reading in the West. In particular, French portraits display a plethora of persons holding a "brochure", that is to say, an Eighteenth-Century "pocket book". The pages of the book are worn and the cover is totally crumpled: through the sense of touch, the artist sketches an image of continuity between reader and book and thereby contradicts many scholarly works that have suggested that people of the time would not read such flimsy books over and over again.

2008

Early Modern Spanish Non-literary Discourses in Cervantes’s Prose

Investigator: Rachel Schmidt

The project aims at furthering our appreciation of Cervantes’ literary technique and his own political and religious views, and illuminate the way a writer fashions fiction from non-fiction. The first step of the project will analyze the new non-literary genres―vocational training, religious orthodoxy, expanding commerce, among others―that emerged in Spain with print technology; the second will examine their incorporation in Don Quixote de la Mancha.

Towards a Plural Poetics:  Dialogue in and with Works by Octavio Paz

Investigator: Helena Dusmoor  

The Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz (1914-1998) worked on a series of collaborative projects with other writers and visual artists.  Literary criticism has not yet addressed these collaborations in a comprehensive way.  This project examines dialogue between bodies of writing, as well as between writing and visual mediums.  Dialogue in solo works by Paz is also considered.    

2007

Educational choices among recent African francophone immigrants to a non-francophone community

Investigators: Robert A. Stebbins (Sociology; Principal Investigator), Ozouf S. Amedegnato and Eileen Lohka

This research project explores the choices made by a sample of African francophone immigrant parents in sending their children to francophone schools in Calgary as well as their reasons for these choices and the subsequent evaluation of them. More...

Des pays d'en haut à l'Ouest canadien: variation et changement linguistique

Investigators:  Douglas Walker and France Martineau (University of Ottawa) 

The project deals with the evolution of French in Western Canada and its links with the French of the St. Lawrence Valley. At the centre of the project lies the region of Detroit, belonging to the area formerly known as “Pays d’en Haut”, the oldest French-speaking settlement in North America outside Quebec (1701). Further west the examination will focus on three other areas that have in common with Detroit French-speaking settlers from the St. Lawrence Valley, albeit from later periods: the region of Saint-Boniface in Manitoba; the Gravelbourg region in Saskatchewan; and the region of Peace River in Alberta.