Research / projects

Scholarly inquiry focuses on comparative perspectives on Canadian culture, operating with a transnational consciousness that offers a global perspective on Canada. In particular, the researchers in FORUM CANADA examine specific literary, historical, political, geographic, and cultural conditions of Canada’s multicultural society. Research and teaching activities pay attention to relations between Canada and Europe, focusing on the mutuality of the relations and their embeddedness in a global, hemispheric and transatlantic context.

Some issues addressed in both research and teaching are:

• Issues of Difference, Belonging, Identitarian Spaces in Canada and Quebec
• Ethnic minorities and the Specificities of Marginalization
• Processes of Hybridization in Mainstream Canadian Society
• Transcultural Urban Spaces - The Metropolitan City in Canadaand the process of globalization (in culture, literature and media)
• Cultural Transfers between Canada, Quebec, the Americas and Europe

The objectives of the FORUM CANADA include the promotion of Canada-related exchange activities and the sparking of interest in Canadian Studies, encouraging students to go to Canada and intensifying research activities in terms of environment and energy between Saarland U and Canadian universities.

There is also a strong focus on regional studies. Prof. Fellner, Prof. Dörrenbächer, Prof. Lüsebrink and Prof. Vatter plan on working together on a project on transregional spaces within the newly created CEUS (TRIP: Transregional Spaces in Interdisciplinary Perspective).

Canadian Studies at NamLitCult (Prof. Fellner)

 Researchers in North American Studies (NamLitCult) conduct comparative research that moves beyond Canada to include trans-border questions in the contexts of a wider, hemispheric North American Studies. Projects deal with Canada-US bilateral issues, such as questions of cultural citizenship and Native American/First Nations cultural rights. Research on Canadian literature focuses, on the one hand, on feminist, postcolonial, and multicultural issues of Canadian literature. In particular, Prof. Fellner has been interested in the Afro-Caribbean Canadian writer Dionne Brand, the Anglophone Quebec writer Gail Scott, and the works of Latino Canadian writer Guillermo Verdecchia. On the other hand, she is also working on border literatures and colonial literatures in the Americas, analyzing different forms of New World encounters. Prof. Fellner’s current research project is entitled: “Border Spaces: Centres, Margins and the Spaces of the In-Between.”

Études culturelles francophones et communication interculturelle (Prof. Lüsebrink and Jun.-Prof. Dr. Christoph Vatter)

Les travaux dans le domaine des études canadiennes de Christoph Vatter concernaient essentiellement les rapports entre diversité culturelle, intégration et médias, tout particulièrement la télévision. En outre, il s’est intéressé au téléroman au Québec, notamment aux questions d’altérité dans les téléromans qui portent sur la période des années 1930 et 1940 et la représentation de l’Allemagne nazie dans ces œuvres ; des premiers résultats de recherche ont été présenté lors de la journée d’études « perception de l’Allemagne nazie au Québec dans la littérature et les médias de 1933 à nos jours » (Centre canadien d’études allemandes et européennes, Montréal, 9 décembre 2010).

Prof. Lüsebrink’s and Junior-Prof. Vatter’s most recent research project “Interculturalité en temps de guerre – Allemagne-France-Québec 1933-1947” deals with intercultural relations in the period of crisis and war between Québec and Germany (1933-45). It is conducted in collaboration with Prof. Dion (UQAM) and is sponsored by the Centre Canadien d’Études Allemandes et Européennes (CCEAE) and the DAAD (German Academic Exchange).

Department of Geography (Prof. Hans-Peter Dörrenbächer)

“Diversity. Mediating différence in transcultural spaces” – International Graduate Training Program between Université de Montréal – University of Trier – University of Saarbrücken (grant application in preparation for the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the CRSH)