April 3, 2025
@ 4:00 PM in
The Bangor room at the Memorial Union

Jean-Christophe Cloutier will discuss Jack Kerouac’s writerly coming of age from the perspective of his geopolitical and cultural-linguistic reality as a bilingual, first-generation immigrant Franco-American author. Cloutier will address the author’s private French manuscripts, preserved in his archive and published posthumously, to uncover an author who relied on self-translation to negotiate his lifelong dualism between French and English, and who willfully adopted what he called “the tone of a big American writer” to find literary success in the United States.

Jean-Christophe Cloutier is originally from Québec and is currently associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Shadow Archives: The Lifecycles of African American Literature, and editor of La vie est d’hommage, which gathers the original French writings of Jack Kerouac. He also translated into English two of Kerouac’s French manuscripts for the Library of America’s The Unknown Kerouac. In 2023, Gallimard released his stand-alone edition of Sur le chemin, Kerouac’s longest French manuscript. He is currently completing an extensive study of Kerouac’s oeuvre that explores the writer’s practices as a bilingual novelist, translator, and archivist.

For more information, contact: frederic.rondeau@maine.edu

Chase Cormier is a Louisiana author. He writes poetry and prose for Ancrages and Feux Follets. His novel, Mal, was published in 2024 by Éditions Perce-Neige; it offers an auto-fictive, fragmented take on butchering, masculinity, Cajun identity, Louisiana French(es), and the connections between past and present, memory and experience, speech and silence. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Xavier University.

For more information, contact: frederic.rondeau@maine.edu

Grants up to $4000 for 91¸ŁŔű Faculty

The Canadian-American Center at the University of Maine invites faculty to submit proposals for  Canadian studies course development grants. Proposals for graduate and undergraduate courses  are welcome from full-time faculty in all relevant disciplines.

What proposals are eligible for funding? 

     Proposals may use funds for one of the following: 

1. Create a new course in Canadian studies (100% Canadian content)
2. Include Canadian content in a new or existing course (25% or more)
3. Increase Canadian content in an existing Canadian  Studies course (to 50% or higher)
4. Redesign an in-person course with Canadian content  to an online format (in cooperation with CITL)
5. Develop online courses related to Canada (in cooperation with CITL)

To be eligible for funding, the course must contribute to the knowledge of Canada or of Canada’s  ties with the United States. Courses with the potential to be consistently offered or become  permanent additions to the Canadian Studies Minor will be prioritized.  

Stipends will be granted to faculty to support the revision of an existing course in the amount of $2,500 and to support the development of a new course in the amount of $4,000.

All work on the newly constructed course must take place between June 16, 2024 and August 30, 2024.

Stipends will be paid at the beginning of September, provided the obligations listed below are fulfilled and the following documentation is provided to the Director of the Canadian-American Center.

How to apply for a course development grant 

Download the application:

2024 Course Development Grant Application

Please include the following in your application:

1. Cover sheet
2. Description of how the new course or upgraded course will fit into the home

department’s goals for academic focus and its relevance for students studying that

discipline; please estimate the number of students expected to enroll.

• Description of the course to include learning objectives (not to exceed 1000 words)
• Draft syllabus of the new course. If this is a proposal to upgrade an existing course,

provide both the current syllabus and the proposed new syllabus.

• Brief description of the amount of work that will be required to develop the course (not to exceed 500 words)
• (Optional) Additional funding is available for the purchase of books through the Canadian Studies collection at Fogler Library. You may include a list of top titles useful for research in preparing for the new/upgraded course and/or for students taking the course.

To discuss your interest in this opportunity and any related questions, please contact Frédéric Rondeau: Frederic.Rondeau@maine.edu

Please note that all Center supported course development stipend projects require pre-approval from the Director of the Canadian-American Center.

Applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis between June 1st and June 15th, 2024. 

Submit applications by email to Dr. Frédéric Rondeau (Director of the Canadian American Center and Associate Professor of French): Frederic.rondeau@maine.edu.   

This May, sponsored by the Canadian-American Center, director Frederic Rondeau and center staff took students to Quebec for a week long francophone language immersion course. Students visited important cultural sites throughout the region, including the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Assemblée nationale du Québec, the Wendake indigenous site of the Huron-Wendat Nation, and more.

The 91¸ŁŔű College of Liberal Arts and Sciences shares the full story here.

Grants up to $4000 for 91¸ŁŔű Faculty

The Canadian-American Center at the University of Maine invites faculty to submit proposals for Canadian studies course development grants. Proposals for graduate and undergraduate courses are welcome from full-time faculty in all relevant disciplines.

Which proposals are eligible for funding? 

Proposals may use funds for one of the following:

1. Creating a new course in Canadian studies (100% Canadian content)
2. Incorporating Canadian content in a new or existing course (25% or more)
3. Increasing Canadian content in an existing Canadian Studies course (to 50% or higher)
4. Reformatting an in-person course with Canadian content to an online version (in cooperation with CITL)
5. Developing online courses related to Canada (in cooperation with CITL)

To be eligible for funding, the course must contribute to the knowledge of Canada or of Canada’s relationship with the United States. Courses with the potential to be consistently offered or become permanent additions to the Canadian Studies Minor will be prioritized.

The amount of each grant award (up to $4000) will be determined based on the percentage of Canadian content in the course. Time required by faculty to develop or restructure a course will be considered.

How to apply for a course development grant 

Please include the following in your application:

• A cover sheet
• A description of how the new course or upgraded course will fit into the home department’s goals for academic focus and its relevance for students studying that discipline; please estimate the number of students expected to enroll.
• A description of the course to include learning objectives (not to exceed 1000 words)
• A draft syllabus of the new course. If this is a proposal to upgrade an existing course, provide both the current syllabus and the proposed new syllabus.
• A brief description of the amount of work that will be required to develop the course (not to exceed 500 words)
• (Optional) Additional funding is available for the purchase of books through the Canadian Studies collection at Fogler Library. You may include a list of top titles useful for research in preparing for the new/upgraded course and/or for students taking the Course Dev. call for proposals (2023) course.

Applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis between April 1 and June 1, 2022.

Direct questions and submit applications by email to:

Dr. Frédéric Rondeau, Director of the Canadian American Center, and Associate Professor of French

Email: frederic.rondeau@maine.edu

Information and Application PDF:

Call for Proposals: Course Development in Canadian Studies

Dr. Stefano Tijernina, Canadian Studies Faculty at Maine Business School, will be conducting a field trip to Montreal, Quebec November 10-13, 2022 with students from his courses that focus on Canadian-U.S. economics and business. They will network with Concordia University’s business school and explore the business culture of Montreal via customer service, use of space, local business dynamics, bilingualism and business, marketing, public relations, and the adaptability of foreign businesses inside QuĂ©bec and Canada. They will also visit cultural sites such as the Chamber of Commerce and QuĂ©bec International.

Dr. Mark McLaughlin, department of History, and professor for the Introduction to Canadian Studies course at the University of Maine recently lead a course-related, weekend field trip to Fredericton, the capital of New Brunswick, Canada. Joining Dr. McLaughlin were students from his course, Dr. Howard Cody (professor emerita), and Dr. Hollie Adams from the department of English.

After over two years of being unable to travel due to COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions, the Canadian Studies program and the Canadian-American Center were pleased to offer a new field trip to Maine’s neighboring Canadian province and capital city of Fredericton, New Brunswick on October 28-30, 2022. The trip was an exciting opportunity for 91¸ŁŔű students to travel to a foreign country and experience Canadian geography, history, culture, politics, and society first-hand.

Grants up to $4000 for 91¸ŁŔű Faculty

The Canadian-American Center at the University of Maine invites faculty to submit proposals for Canadian studies course development grants. Proposals for graduate and undergraduate courses are welcome from full-time faculty in all relevant disciplines.

Which proposals are eligible for funding? 

Proposals may use funds for one of the following:

1. Creating a new course in Canadian studies (100% Canadian content)
2. Incorporating Canadian content in a new or existing course (25% or more)
3. Increasing Canadian content in an existing Canadian Studies course (to 50% or higher)
4. Reformatting an in-person course with Canadian content to an online version (in cooperation with CITL)
5. Developing online courses related to Canada (in cooperation with CITL)

To be eligible for funding, the course must contribute to the knowledge of Canada or of Canada’s relationship with the United States. Courses with the potential to be consistently offered or become permanent additions to the Canadian Studies Minor will be prioritized.

The amount of each grant award (up to $4000) will be determined based on the percentage of Canadian content in the course. Time required by faculty to develop or restructure a course will be considered.

How to apply for a course development grant 

Please include the following in your application:

• A cover sheet
• A description of how the new course or upgraded course will fit into the home department’s goals for academic focus and its relevance for students studying that discipline; please estimate the number of students expected to enroll.
• A description of the course to include learning objectives (not to exceed 1000 words)
• A draft syllabus of the new course. If this is a proposal to upgrade an existing course, provide both the current syllabus and the proposed new syllabus.
• A brief description of the amount of work that will be required to develop the course (not to exceed 500 words)
• (Optional) Additional funding is available for the purchase of books through the Canadian Studies collection at Fogler Library. You may include a list of top titles useful for research in preparing for the new/upgraded course and/or for students taking the Course Dev. call for proposals (2022)course.

Applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis between April 1 and June 1, 2022.

Direct questions and submit applications by email to:

Dr. Frédéric Rondeau, Director of the Canadian American Center, and Associate Professor of French

Email: frederic.rondeau@maine.edu

Information and Application PDF:

Call for Proposals: Course Development in Canadian Studies