Portraitfoto Jody Danard

Jody Danard

“Perdre le Nord”: Literary Subject Constructions in the Narrative Imagined Space of the North in French Canadian Contemporary Literatures from Québec, Acadie and Autochthonous Territories

The North as a contradictory figure between man and nature, space and history, fact and construction has always exerted a certain fascination on people in Europe and has increasingly been used as a spatial narrative frame in literature from Québec – but also of Acadian or autochthonous provenance. The fictional(ised) North has since come under the scrutiny of researchers as a cultural-geographical space of identitary negotiation, but especially as a literary-aesthetic space of identity construction. My PhD project focuses on the following research questions: In what ways have subject constructions with reference to the North been constructed literarily, aesthetically and narratively in exemplary French Canadian narrative texts since the 2000s? Which long-lived topoi and narratives play a role in the different corpora? What new narratives are emerging?

Research Interests
  • French Canadian Literature
  • Indigenous Literature
  • Space in Narratives
  • Imagined North
Vita
  • Since January 2022
    Research assistant, Department of French Literature, University of Bremen
  • 2019 – 2021
    M. Ed. English & French Philology, Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel
  • 2019 – 2021
    M. Ed. English & French Philology, Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel
  • 2018
    Abroad Study Semester at the Université de Montréal, CAU Scholarship
  • 2016 – 2019
    B. A. English & French Philology, Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel
Publications
  • 2023
    Dystopie, Fragmentation et Filiation dans Aquariums de J.D. Kurtness. Nordic Journal of Francophone Studies/ Revue nordique des études francophones, 6(1), p. 34–44. Accessible at: doi.org/10.16993/rnef.96.
Talks, Workshops and Events
  • 10. – 11.10.2024
    Conference ESF Conference „Territory, Tension & Taboo“ Emerging Scholars Forum of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-Speaking Countries, University of Bremen
  • 13.04.2023
    Talk Processus de négociations culturelles, filiation et identité dans Aquariums de J.D. Kurtness at the Forum Junge Romanistik: Migration und Transnationalisierung in der Romania, University of Passau
  • 05.03.2023
    Emerging Scholars’ Forum Solidarité féminine et écoguerrières nordiques dans la trilogie de Gabrielle Filteau-Chiba at the 44th Annual Conference of the GKS, Hotel am Badersee Grainau
  • 22.09.2022
    Talk Les littératures autochtones du Québec: le renouveau du roman de terroir francophone? at the 13. Kongress des Frankoromanistenverbands, University of Vienna
  • 30.08.2022
    Colloquium Acabride – L’Acadie hybride with Prof. Dr. Karen Struve and Dr. Benjamin Peter, University of Kiel
  • 25.07. – 05.08.2022
    European Summer School for Canadian Studies (ESSCS), Scholarship of the AIEQs (Association Internationale des Études Québécoises)
Teaching
  • Summer Term 2023 U Bremen
    Traduction littéraire français-allemandLesekurs zur Einführung in die französische Literaturwissenschaft
  • Winter Term 2022/23 U Bremen
    La littérature francocanadienne (Québec et Acadie): analyses de texte et préparation d’une exposition à la SUUB/Traduction littéraire
  • Summer Term 2022
    Einführung in die französische Literaturwissenschaft: Literaturgeschichte und Textanalyse
name contradiction

“Contradiction becomes real where someone names contradiction.”

Ingo H. Warnke
Bhabha on enlightenment and coloniality

“Homi Bhabha says about the contradiction between the ideals of the enlightenment, claims to democracy and solidarity and simultaneous colonization and ongoing coloniality: ‘That ideological tension, visible in the history of the West as a despotic power, at the very moment of the birth of democracy and modernity, has not been adequately written in a contradictory and contrapuntal discourse of tradition.’”

Kerstin Knopf
paradox

“The basis of law is not an idea as a systematic unified principle but a paradox.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
relational

“At first I thought contradiction was always a relational thing; but the more I ponder it, the more I think contradiction creates relation.”

Ingo H. Warnke
limits

“Resistance is a democratic right, sometimes a duty. With literature we can find models for this right and think about its limits.”

Gisela Febel