Teaching

Gérard Bouchard

William Lyon Mackenzie King
Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies

Biographical Note

Gérard Bouchard is a Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi and is the William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies for the 2008-09 academic year. Professor Bouchard will teach two courses in the Sociology Department and will also organize the Canada Seminars for the Canada Program at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Trained in sociology and history, Bouchard has published his first book in Paris in 1972 : Le Village immobile : Sennely-en-Sologne au XVIIIe siècle (Plon). It is an essay in social history targeting a village of the Sologne region, in central France. Back to Quebec, he launched a huge social history project on the Saguenay region, located in North-Eastern Quebec and opened to settlement in the 1830s. One of the major goal of the project was to build a computerized population register to support the 125,000 reconstituted families of this regional population between 1838 and 1971. Over the years, the project has generated numerous articles and collections of essays, culmunating in 1996 in the publication of a synthesis book: Quelques arpents d’Amérique. Population, économie, famille au Saguenay, 1838-1971 (Montreal, Boréal).

The population register (called BALSAC) also gave birth to various research programs in the field of social history, historical demography, cultural studies, and human genetics (population genetics, genetic epidemiology). The various collaborations established through these research projects led to the creation of the Interuniversity Institute for Population Research (IREP) which Gérard Bouchard has headed until 1998. So, for twenty years, his research activities have covered many fields and disciplines from social history and historical demography to cultural history and human genetics.

Since he has left the direction of IREP, he remained responsible for the BALSAC Project, whose main objective is to cover the hole of the Quebec population since the begining of the settlement in the 17th century up to the recent years. In parallel, he has recently concentrated his research activities in the field of culture, particularly the comparative analysis of collective imaginaries. In 2002 he became holder of a Canada Research Chair in this area (recent publications : Genèse des nations et cultures du Nouveau Monde. Essai d’histoire comparée (2000); Les deux chanoines. Contradiction et ambivalence dans la pensée de Lionel Groulx (2003); Raison et contradiction. Le mythe au secours de la pensée (2003); La pensée impuissante. Échecs et mythes nationaux canadiens-français(1850-1960) (2004). In parallel, he also published two novels: Mistouk (2002) and Pikauba (2005).

Since Fall 2002, Bouchard has been a fellow of the Successful Societies Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR).

08/13/2008

Courses Offered This Academic Year

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Contact

617-496-3718 (Phone)
617-495-8292 (FAX)

218A CGIS Knafel Building
1737 Cambridge Street

Staff Contact

Mandy Bardsley

For matters relating to the Canada Seminar, email canada@wcfia.harvard.edu