Barbara Godard

Professor Emerita Barbara Godard, the Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian Literature, died Sunday, May 16, from complications related to her illness. Prof. Godard was a professor of English, French, social & political thought and women's studies at York University. One of Canada's pre-eminent literary scholars, Prof. Godard broadly influenced the fields of Canadian and Quebec studies, translation studies, feminist poetics, semiotics and cultural studies. She was also a devoted mentor, as reflected by her numerous teaching awards, and served as editor on the editorial board of 22 journals, including Tessera, Open Letter, and Topia: A Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. Prof. Godard published widely in the fields of semiotics, translation, gender, textuality and the body, as well as archives, memorials, and the history and changing politics of cultural production. Her almost forty-year career as a translator, editor and author produced eight books (including translations of the work of Nicole Brossard and Antonine Maillet, as well as edited essay collections and academic monographs), 80 book chapters and 115 articles and catalogue entries. In 2008 her collected essays, Canadian Literature at the Crossroads of Language and Culture, which was edited by Smaro Kamboureli, was released from NeWest Press.

Adapted from an appreciation of Barbara Godard written by York humanities Professor Jody Berland, English Professor Julia Creet and PhD student Elena Basile (http://research.news.yorku.ca/2010/05/19/passings-prof-barbara-godard-pre-eminent-literary-scholar-influenced-many-fields-of-study/).

(Photo credit: James Gillespie.)