Graduate Studies
The French Department at HÂþ» offers an MA program with two streams—with and without a thesis—and a PhD program. We also receive postdoctoral candidates through the Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.
The Department's research interests involve not only individual areas of study, but they also reflect a modern emphasis on complementarity and interchange between French and Francophone literature and linguistics, as well as semiotics, cultural studies, and the study of French as a second language.
In the field of French literature, the study of contemporary and twentieth century writing has an important role and includes the study of modern and contemporary Quebec and Francophone literatures. The literatures of the Middle Ages, 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries are well represented.
In the field of French language and linguistics, major areas of concentration include: contrastive studies, lexicology, second language learning and teaching, semantics, sociolinguistics, terminology and translation.
Research in culture and civilization has an important place and is often linked to literary, linguistic, pedagogical or semiotic explorations.
Explore our faculty members’ webpage to find a supervisor whose expertise aligns with your academic and research aspirations.
The departmental graduate programs have produced outstanding professionals who have invariably succeeded well in their careers.
Acquiring teaching experience is a normal part of a graduate student's training at the French Department; thus, MA students are normally offered teaching assistantships, while PhD students may be assigned a number of lectureships in the course of their studies.
In addition to stipends for lectureships and teaching/research assistantships, graduate students may qualify for departmental bursaries, as well as for different provincial and federal scholarships, such as the (SSHRC) and the Killam Memorial Scholarships.
Our graduate students have regularly received significant external support from the SSHRC and the Killam Foundation.
More information on these awards is included in the Department’s program-specific pages: