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Karen McPherson

Karen McPherson profile picture
  • Affiliation: Retired
  • Title: Professor Emerita of French
  • Interests: francophone literature (Quebec & Caribbean), translation theory and practice, women's writing, gender studies, autobiography, postcolonial studies
  • Curriculum Vitae

M.A. Program

French Period 4

Education

B.A., 1979, Oregon; M.A., 1983, Ph.D., 1987, Yale. (1998)

Research and teaching interests

Francophone literatures (Québec, Caribbean), modern French novel, women's writing, feminist theory, gender studies, translation theory and practice, narrative theory, memory and mourning, autobiography, postcolonial literatures

Professional activities

      Comité scientifique international,
       Editorial Board, Quebec Studies

     

Publications

Books:

Delft Blue & Objects of the World: Archives I and II by Louise Warren. Translation and critical introduction. Guernica Editions, 2013.

Archaeologies of an Uncertain Future: Recent Generations of Canadian Women Writing. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006.

Incriminations: Guilty Women/Telling Stories. Princeton University Press, 1994.

Poetry:

Skein of Light. full-length poetry volume. Airlie Press, 2014.

Sketching Elise. poetry chapbook. Finishing Line Press, 2012.

Selected Articles, Translations, Reviews and Interviews:

“Elle sera personnage: Nicole Brossard’s writing of the self” (article). Critical Review of Contemporary French Fixxion, fall 2012, Number 4: special issue on Self-fictions.

"L'écriture de l'accompagnement" (essay). Contre-jour: Louise Warren. De l'attachement. Fall 2012, 75-81.

Excerpts from Delft Blue by Louise Warren. Translated into English by Karen McPherson. Reunion. The Dallas Review, Vol. 2 (2012).

"The Closed Door" (short story) by Louise Dupré. Translated into English by Karen McPherson with introductory essay "Translating Louise Dupré." Translation Studies 82 (fall 2011), 52-58.

"We, unquiet words" (poems) by Louise Warren. Translated into English by Karen McPherson. Saranac Review 7 (2011), 46-49.

“Writing in the language of the other: Nicole Brossard’s La capture du sombre. ” Women in French Studies, 2011, 125-35.

Encyclopedia entry on Louky Bersianik’s La Main tranchante du symbole. Textes et essais féministes. In Aurélien Boivin (ed.). Dictionnaire des oeuvres littéraires du Québec, Tome 8, 1986-1990 (Montréal: Fides, 2011), 518-519.

"Observations" (eleven poems) by Louise Warren. Translated into English by Karen McPherson. Zoland Poetry Journal (spring 2011), 8-10.

"Des Châteaux en Suisse? Switzerland in the Quebec Imagination: Hubert Aquin and Nicole Brossard." In Transatlantic Passages: Literary and Cultural Relations between Quebec and Francophone Europe. Eds. Paula Ruth Gilbert and Miléna Santoro. McGill-Queen's UP, 2010.

Interview with Monique Proulx by Karen McPherson, Miléna Santoro and Galen Bascomb. French Review 83:3 (February 2010).

Review of Violence and the Female Imagination: Quebec Women Writers Re-frame Gender in North American Cultures by Paula Ruth Gilbert. Quebec Studies 48 (fall 2009/winter 2010).

Review of Visions poétiques de Marie-Claire Blais by Janine Ricouart and Roseanna Dufault, eds. Quebec Studies 48 (fall 2009/winter 2010).

Review of La forme et le deuil. Archives du lac by Louise Warren. American Review of Canadian Studies 39:3 (September 2009).

"Since Yesterday: Nicole Brossard's Writing After Loss." Nicole Brossard: Essays on Her Works. Guernica Editions, 2004.

"Maryse Condé's Desirada : The Myth of an Origin." MaComère 6, 2004.

"The Future of Memory in Louise Dupré's La memoria." Doing Gender: Franco-Canadian Women Writers of the 1990s. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001.

Work in Progress

"Growing Old and Realizing Life in Marie-Claire Blais's Soifs Cycle"  (article)

Form and Mourning: Archives of the Lake. Translation into English of the third volume of Louise Warren’s Archives trilogy (La forme et le deuil. Archives du lac) to be published by Guernica Editions.

Defining Stages in Women's Lives (co-edited volume of essays)

Collaborative Practices in 21st-century Canada (co-edited journal issue)

Other Literary Activity

Karen McPherson, poet website

Editor and Member of Airlie Publishing Collective.

Literary Executor for James Lowell McPherson estate.