Barbara Godard (1942 – May 16, 2010) was a Canadian critic, translator, editor, and academic. She held the Avie Bennett Historica Chair of Canadian Literature and was Professor of English, French, Social and Political Thought and Women's Studies at York University. She published widely on Canadian and Quebec cultures, on feminist and literary theory, and on translation studies.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Barbara Godard died in Toronto on May 16, 2010. Across Canada and throughout the world, poets, scholars, feminists, and friends mourned her death.[citation needed]

Barbara Godard
Born1942
Died16 May 2010 (2010-05-17) (aged 68)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
EducationPh.D.
Alma materUniversité de Bordeaux
Occupation(s)Professor, translator, critic
Notable workCanadian Literature at the Crossroads of Language and Culture (2008); Translation, Semiotics, and Feminism: Selected Writings of Barbara Godard (2022)

Translator edit

As a translator, she has introduced Quebec women writers Louky Bersianik,[7] Yolande Villemaire[8] and Antonine Maillet to an English audience. Her translations include Nicole Brossard's Picture Theory (1991) and France Theoret's The Tangible Word (1991). In 2004 her translation of Brossard's Intimate Journal was published as well as a revised edition of Maillet's The Tale of Don l'Orignal, also available as an audiobook as broadcast on CBC's Between the Covers. She is author of Talking About Ourselves: the Cultural Productions of Canadian Native Women (1985) and Audrey Thomas: Her Life and Work (1989) and has edited Gynocritics/Gynocritiques: Feminist Approaches to the Writing of Canadian and Quebec Women (1987), Collaboration in the Feminine: Writings on Women and Culture from Tessera (1994), and Intersexions: Issues of Race and Gender in Canadian Women's Writing (1996). Translation, Semiotics, and Feminism: Selected Writings of Barbara Godard appeared in 2022 in the Key Thinkers on Translation series (Routledge).

Editor edit

A founding co-editor of the feminist literary theory periodical, Tessera, Barbara Godard was contributing editor of Open Letter and The Semiotic Review of Books and book review editor of Topia: A Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. In 1998 she held the Gerstein Award for an advanced research seminar on Translation Studies in Canada: Institutions, Discourses, Texts. In 2001, with Di Brandt she organized the conference "'Wider Boundaries of Daring': The Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women's Poetry" whose proceedings are currently being edited for publication. A first volume, ReGenerations: Canadian Women Poets in Conversation, appeared in 2006.

Prizes edit

She is the recipient of the Gabrielle Roy Prize of the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures (1988), the Award of Merit of the Association of Canadian Studies (1995), the Vinay-Darbelnet Prize of the Canadian Association of Translation Studies (2000) and the Teaching Award of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, York University (2002) and of the Northeast Association of Graduate Schools (2002). In 2010, she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.[9]

References edit

  1. ^ Deleuze and Translation (Parallax 2000)
  2. ^ Notes from the Cultural Field: Canadian Literature from Identity to Hybridity (ECW 2001)
  3. ^ L'Ethique du traduire (TTR 2001)
  4. ^ Resignifying Culture: Notes from the Ontario Culture Wars (Money Art Value 2001)
  5. ^ Translation Poetics from Modernity to Post-Modernity (Translation Translation 2003)
  6. ^ Border or Babel? Logics of Relations in the Canadian Imaginary (2003)
  7. ^ "Louky Bersianik". www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca. Retrieved 2024-03-04.
  8. ^ "Villemaire, Yolande". www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca (in French). Retrieved 2024-03-04.
  9. ^ "New Fellows 2010" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-06.

External links edit