I studied English and Romance Literatures and Languages, writing an M.A. thesis on Faulkner but also exploring surrealism, sociologie de la literature, Hegel, Marx, and in particular Benjamin and Bloch. After doctoral work on alterity in Canadian/Québécois comparative literature, I turned my attention to other areas of cultural difference, and to postcoloniality, race, and questions of recognition in North American and then Hemispheric Studies. The places of work and study on that way include the Universität Freiburg, the Sorbonne, Trent University in Ontario, the University of Toronto, the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Freie Universität Berlin, the English Department and then the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, the Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec, and now the University of Waterloo.

Selected Publications

BOOKS

Canada and Its Americas: Transnational Navigations. Ed. Winfried Siemerling and Sarah Phillips Casteel. McGill-Queen’s UP, 2010.

The New North American Studies: Culture, Writing, and the Politics of Re/Cognition. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. Grand Prix du Livre 2006 de la Ville de Sherbrooke. Available as electronic edition. French translation: Récits nord-américains d'émergence: culture, écriture et politique de re/connaissance, Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2010.

Bibliography of Comparative Studies in Canadian, Québec, and Foreign Literatures/ Bibliographie d’études comparées des littératures canadienne, québécoise et étrangères 1930-1995. By Antoine Sirois, Pamela Grant, David Hayne, Gregory Reid, Winfried Siemerling, and Maria van Sundert. Sherbrooke: Editions GGC, May 2001.

Cultural Difference and the Literary Text: Pluralism and the Limits of Authenticity in North American Literatures. Ed. Winfried Siemerling and Katrin Schwenk. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1996/1997 (Hardcover/Paperback). Available as electronic edition.

Writing Ethnicity: Cross-Cultural Consciousness in Canadian and Québécois Literature. Ed. Winfried Siemerling. Toronto: ECW Press, 1996. Available as electronic edition.

Discoveries of the Other: Alterity in the Work of Leonard Cohen, Hubert Aquin, Michael Ondaatje, and Nicole Brossard. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. Reissued as electronic edition by University of Toronto Press, 2008 (available through ebrary).

Artificial Intelligence in the Humanities: A Practical Introduction to Déredec. Toronto: Department of French, University of Toronto/Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1989.

ARTICLES

“Jazz, Diaspora, and the Writing of Black Anglophone Montreal.” Ed. Smaro Kamboureli and Christl Verduyn. Wilfrid Laurier UP. Submitted.

“Slave Narratives and Hemispheric Studies.” The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative. Ed. John Ernest. (commissioned, submitted).

“Canadian Literatures and the Postcolonial.” The Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature. Ed. Ato Quayson. Cambridge UP. (16,000 words). In press; forthcoming 2011.

Submitted, with Ajay Heble (Guelph). "Voicing the Unforeseeable: Improvisation, Social Practice, Collaborative Research." Cross-Talk. Ed. Diana Brydon and Marta Dvorak.

“Canadian Literatures, Language, Race.” Canadian Literature 204 (Spring 2010): 150-2.

“Lawrence Hill.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com. Posted April 2010.

“Transcultural Improvisation, Transnational Time, and Diasporic Chance in Wayde Compton’s Textual Performance.” West Coast Line 63 (March 2010). 30-37.

“Canadian Literature, Transnational Studies, Race.”Transplanter le Canada: Semailles / Transplanting Canada: Seedlings. Eds. Marie Carriere and Jerry White. Canadian Literature Center Studies / Cahiers du CLC 1. Edmonton: Canadian Literature Centre, 2010. 8-19.

“Bi-Culturalism, Multiculturalism, Transculturalism: Canada and Quebec." Special Issue on “Culturalism.” New Literature Review (Australia) 45/46 (2009): 133-56.

“Narratives of Cultural Emergence, Re/Cognition, and the Study of North America.” American Studies/ Shifting Gears. Ed. Michael Butter Christ, Christian Kloeckner, Elisabeth Schafer-Wunsche, and Michael Butter. Heidelberg, Germany: Winter Verlag, 2010. 143-75.

“Writing the Black Canadian City at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century: Dionne Brand’s Toronto and Mairuth Sarsfield’s Montreal.” Etudes Canadiennes/Canadian Studies (France) 64 (2008): 109-22.

With Sarah Casteel: “Canada and Its Americas: Transnational Navigations of the Literary.” Canada and the Americas: Multidisiplinary Perspectives on Transculturality. Ed. Afef Benessaie. Toronto: Antares, 2008. 69-78.

“Ethics as Re/Cognition: Oral Knowledge, Cognitive Change, and Social Justice in the Novels of Marie-Célie Agnant.” Special Issue on Ethics and Literature, University of Toronto Quarterly 76:3 (2007): 838-60.

“Trans-Scan: Globalization, Literary Hemispheric Studies, Citizenship as Project.” Trans.Can.Lit: Resituating the Study of Canadian Literature. Ed. Smaro Kamboureli and Roy Miki. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2007. 129-40.

“Postindian Re/Visions in Gerald Vizenor’s The Heirs of Columbus.” Discours d’exclusion et d’inclusion: dynamiques de la mondialisation dans les Ameriques. Ed. Patrick Imbert. Ottawa: Legas P, 2005. 167-79.

“’Lights’: Oral History and the Writing of the Other in In the Skin of a Lion.” Michael Ondaatje. Ed. Steven Tötösy. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2005. 92-103.

“May I See Some Identification?: Race, Borders, and Identities in Any Known Blood. Canadian Literature 182 (2004): 30-50. Rpt. in Siemerling and Casteel, Canada and Its Americas, 148-70.

“From Narratives of Emergence to Transculture: Parti Pris and Vice Versa.” Meeting Global and Domestic Challenges: Canadian Federalism in Perspective. Ed. Thomas Greven and Heinz Ickstadt. Berlin: Kennedy-Institut Materalien, 2004. 125-41.

“Comparative North American Literary History and Alterity: Bercovitch, Blodgett, and a Hermeneutics of Non-Transcendence.” Tendances actuelles en histoire littéraire/ Contemporary Trends in Canadian Literary History. Ed. Denis St-Jacques and E.D. Blodgett. Québec: Nota Bene, 2003. 27-51.

“The Metropolis Project and Literary Studies: In/visible Cities?” Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English Newsletter. Laurentian University, Sudbury: ACCUTE, 2002. 40-44.

“Cultural Plurality and Canadian Literature.” Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. Ed. W.H. New. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2002. 265-71.

“Michael Ondaatje.” Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada, Ed. W.H. New. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2002. 845-48.

“Interkulturalität in der Anglo- und Frankokanadischen Literatur.” With Peter Klaus. Anglo-Romanische Kulturkontakte vom Humanismus bis Postkolonialismus. Ed. Andrew James Johnston and Ulrike Schneider. Berlin: Dahlem UP, 2002. 246-79.

“W.E.B. Du Bois, Hegel, and the Staging of Alterity.” Callaloo: A Journal of African American and African Arts and Letters 24:1 (2001): 325-33.

“Other Canons: Margaret Atwood and the Québécois Reception of English Canadian Literature.” Journal of Indo-Canadian Studies 1:1 (January 2001): 48-59.

“US/ Canadian Writers’ Perspectives on the Multiculturalism Debate: A Roundtable Discussion at Harvard University.” Ed. with Graham Huggan. Canadian Literature 164 (Spring 2000): 82-111.

“Telling Differences: Reading Canada’s Literatures at the End of the Millennium.” Literary Review of Canada 8:3 (April 2000): 22-25 and 8:4 (May 2000): 24-26.

“Narratives of Canadian and Québécois Literatures in the Age of Multiculturalism and Globalization.” Estudios Canadienses en México. Ed. Roberto Rebolloso and Roberto Mendoza. Monterrey, Nuevo Léon, México: Asociación Mexicana de Estudios Canadienses, 1999. 103-21.

Fellowships and Awards

From 1996-2013, six SSHRC and one FCAR (Quebec) individual or team grants

2009 Associate of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University

2000 and 2008 Visiting Professor, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Berlin

2000 - 2008 Fellow (non-resident), W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, Harvard University

1994-2009 Professor, Université de Sherbrooke (Assistant Professor 1994-1997; Associate Professor 1997-2002)

1993-94 Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS/ Ford Foundation/ Mellon Foundation/ Fulbright) and Harvard University Visiting Scholar, Department of English

1991-93 Postdoctoral Fellow, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Berlin

Current Research

Transculturalism and Double Consciousness in Asian and African Canadian Writing in English and French. Individual research project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 2005-9.

Canada and Its Americas: Transnational Navigations. Book project and other research.

Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice. Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI/ GTRC) based at University of Guelph and McGill University, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 2007-13.

Canadian literatures, postcolonial and diaspora theories

Transculturalism and transnationalism

Areas of Graduate Supervision

Canadian Literature

Black North American Writing

Race and Ethnicity

Postcolonial Writing

Hemispheric Studies

Literary and Critical Theory (including Frankfurt School)

Jazz and literature