Summer Newsletter
August 2026
Embedded Files
2026 Biennial News
2026 Biennial News
Bonne rentrée à toutes et à tous !
We're barely two months away from this fall's Biennial Conference! Acceptance letters have been sent out and the preliminary program is now available HERE. We'll be meeting at the Omni Hotel in downtown Montréal, November 12-15th, 2026. Our conference chair and the board have been hard at work in order to provide the best conference experience possible. We have a stellar line-up of keynote speakers, meal and reception events, roundtables, and so much more. See the special events flyer below. Detailed information on the events and speaker/artist bios can be found on our Biennial Conference page. Additionally, tickets to theater performances will be available for purchase via our website.
Don't miss the early registration deadline of September 15 for reduced price registration. The registration and membership package or individual purchases are HERE. Be sure to make your discounted hotel reservations by October 13. Rooms are limited, so move quickly. The reservation link can be found in your acceptance letter from "ACQS 2026" sent out on June 8, 2026.
Notes from the Executive Board
Notes from the Executive Board
Bonjour tout le monde !
Nous souhaitons une bonne rentrée à tous nos membres !
We hope everyone's semester is off to a great start. As usual there is a lot going on here at the ACQS, and we can't wait for the 24th Biennial Conference at the downtown Omni Hotel in Montreal. It is just around the corner! The conference will take place November 12-15th. The preliminary program is available on our website, and our special events are also highlighted here.
The conference chair and executive board have been hard at work this year getting ready to make the 24th biennial conference a great experience. We are thrilled about the many exciting events planned for this year.
There are also a few amazing resources available year-round for scholars in Québec studies. Be sure to check out the Bibliothèque des Amériques, a digital library and so much more with free membership provided by the Centre de la francophonie des Amériques: "Gratuite, unique et 100 % Franco-Amérique!"
For those looking for resources to introduce Québec in the classroom, the Association internationale des études québécoises (AIEQ) offers Le Québec, connais-tu?, an extensive online resource providing a rich and multifaceted portrait of Québec, including its history, geography, language, culture, society, and regions. Updated in 2025, the resource brings together texts, multimedia materials, and pedagogical activities that can be used to engage students with Québec and its cultural and linguistic heritage. Given the limited availability of comprehensive teaching resources focused specifically on Québec, Le Québec, connais-tu? is an especially useful resource for instructors looking to incorporate Québec into their courses. A review in the latest issue of Québec Studies examines the resource and its potential for teaching and learning about Québec. Le Québec, connais-tu? is available for purchase through the AIEQ website.
Let's continue to get our research out there and promote Québec studies far and wide!
Wishing you all a wonderful semester and looking forward to seeing you soon, bien cordialement,
The Executive Board of the ACQS
Québec Studies News and Updates
Québec Studies News and Updates
Dear Members of the ACQS,
I hope that you have had a wonderful summer and are ready for the 2026-27 academic year!
I start this newsletter with my sincere thanks to Ioana V. Pribiag for her work as our Associate Editor of Book Reviews, along with her assistant this year, Chimène Dupuis. Ioana had to leave her role on the Editorial Board due to an increase in administrative work at her home institution. I am so grateful for all the time and effort that she put into the book reviews for the Québec Studies volumes that appeared in 2025 and 2026. I am also incredibly thankful to Amy Ransom, our past Editor-in-Chief, for stepping in as our interim Book Reviews editor while we search for a new person to take on the role. You will find the official call for candidates in this newsletter and on our website; if you or someone you know is interested or has questions about the position, please contact me for more information.
We also have exciting news from our publisher, Liverpool University Press. 2026 was the first year of LUP’s “S2O” (Subscribe to Open) program. For journals like Québec Studies that are enrolled in this program, after we reach our subscriptions threshold for the year, all of the new articles for that year flip to Open Access. We reached our subscriptions threshold in April this year. Therefore, when volume 81 was published in June, all articles automatically flipped to open access. They will remain open to the end of 2026, and when volume 82 appears in December, it will also be open access. I am hopeful that this new program will increase circulation of our scholarly works throughout the world. And I thank all of you subscribers for helping us to reach our subscription threshold so early in the year!
Volume 82, our Fall/Winter 2026 volume, was just submitted to the press, with an expected publication date of December 2026. It includes an “SFQ” (Science Fiction du Québec) special dossier organized by Amy Ransom, with five articles on futurities, the dystopic, and alternate histories found in contemporary literature, film, and heavy metal music. This volume also includes three free-standing articles on literary texts: a comparison of poetry written by a Québécois and a Louisiana poet, a social justice approach to Gabrielle Roy’s works, and a study of color and chromatics in Kim Thúy’s recent novel, em.
As always, I am seeking special dossiers as well as individual articles for our 2027 volumes, so please keep Québec Studies in mind for your scholarly works. I am looking forward to hearing you present your latest research at the conference in Montreal in November, but if you are not attending our biennial event this year, please send me an email to let me know what you are working on these days.
A bientôt,
Juliette
Opening - Associate Editor for Book Reviews
Québec Studies seeks candidates for an Associate Editor for Book Reviews, beginning September 2026. Tasks include identifying relevant books, contacting publishers for review copies, inviting reviewers, and editing reviews for copy. The journal aims to publish 10-12 reviews per year. Preferred candidates are organized, meticulous, accustomed to writing in accordance with Québec Studies' style guides, and interested in developing networks of contacts in our field.
If interested or for more information please contact the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Juliette Rogers, at jmrogers@macalester.edu.
The ACQS Fifty Years On, special issue of Québec Studies
Guest editor: Dr. Alexandre Turgeon, Lakehead University
As the 50th anniversary of the ACQS draws near (2030), Dr. Alexandre Turgeon is currently preparing a special issue on the past, the present, and the future of the association, to be published in Québec Studies. Within this project’s framework, he is also working to restore the organization's institutional memory. To that end, he is particularly interested in obtaining past ACQS conference programs, especially the following: 1982, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004.
If you have copies of these programs to share, any questions or inquiries about this project, or simply wish to share some knowledge about our organization's history, please feel free to reach out to Dr. Turgeon by email (aturgeon@lakeheadu.ca). You can also connect with him at our next conference in Montreal, November 12-15, 2026.
Please remember to share your news about publications, events, and calls for papers with Holly Collins holly_collins@baylor.edu. We are happy to spread the good news, and I can update this page quickly as news arrives!
To have your information featured on the ACQS website, ACQS social media, as well as in the newsletter, please send your updates to Alexandre Turgeon, our social media and website coordinator: aturgeon@lakeheadu.ca
Funding Opportunities & ACQS Outreach
Funding Opportunities & ACQS Outreach
The Executive Board continues to seek to expand ACQS Outreach across the U.S. beyond our new conference sponsorship program. If you are interested in hosting an Outreach Seminar for local teachers at your institution, please reach out to Olivia Choplin ochoplin@elon.edu.
Québec Studies Outreach Grant
Québec Studies Outreach Grant
In order to promote the study of Québec at conferences where Québec or Canadian Studies are not the primary focus (e.g. disciplinary conferences for history, political science, languages, linguistics, etc.) this grant offers up to $250 of support towards conference registration fees for ACQS members presenting on Québec or Francophone North America.
Applicants should submit their conference acceptance notice and abstract to be considered for this grant. If chosen for the grant, applicants must submit a receipt of their conference registration and reimbursement will be issued after the conference date.
Given that this is an outreach initiative we ask grant recipients to tag the #ACQS in a social media post related to their conference presentation and include the ACQS logo on your conference slides or submit a brief report about their presentation to be included in our newsletter.
To be considered for this grant, please send the following information to: Olivia Choplin ochoplin@elon.edu
• Name of conference and sponsoring organization
• Date and location of conference
• Title of presentation
• Abstract
• Cost of registration
Applicants will be considered on a rolling basis and are limited to one grant per 12-month period. We look forward to learning how you represent the ACQS in other spaces!
About the ACQS
About the ACQS
The American Council for Québec Studies sponsors a biennial conference and publishes Québec Studies, a semi-annual bilingual journal.
The Council is administered by an executive board whose officers are elected every two years. The past president and the editor of Québec Studies (selected by the officers) also make up the executive board.
For further information about the ACQS, its membership, activities, conference, and publications, please refer to the Council’s website, which is located at http://www.acqs.org.
The 2026-2027 Executive Board
President
Olivia Choplin
Elon University
Vice President
Christina Keppie
Western Washington University
Secretary
Holly Collins
Baylor University
Treasurer
Erin Edgington
University of Nevada, Reno
Past President
Yulia Bosworth
Binghamton University
Councilor
Isabelle Fournier
Trent University
Social Media and Website Coordinator
Alexandre Turgeon
Lakehead University
Québec Studies Editorial Board
Editor-in-Chief
Juliette Rogers
Macalester College
Associate Editor (Social Sciences)
Leslie Choquette
Assumption University
Associate Editor (Book Reviews)
Amy Ransom
Central Michigan University
The ACQS Fund for the Future
The ACQS Fund for the Future
Writing or updating your will? Please consider making a bequest to the ACQS Fund for the Future. This fund will help ensure the continuity of our organization. Please contact the ACQS treasurer Erin Edgington for more information. eedgington@unr.edu
Renew Your ACQS Membership!
Renew Your ACQS Membership!
Memberships run for two years and include subscriptions to Québec Studies and to this newsletter. The membership form is available online at https://acqs.org/membership-conference-sponsorship/ Use Paypal to make a secure payment.
Calls for Papers
Calls for Papers
Do you have any calls, upcoming events, job postings, or book/publication announcements? Email holly_collins@baylor.edu to have your information added here!
Upcoming Events
Upcoming Events
Job Postings
Job Postings
Book Announcements
Book Announcements
Québec's Broken Futures: History, Speculative Fiction, and Identity, 1970–2015
Caroline-Isabelle Caron
Bloomsbury, Sept. 2026, 316 p., ISBN 9781666931013
"Speculative fiction, no matter how fictional, is an inherently historical literary genre. With this in mind, this book presents an in-depth analysis of Québec's identity question as viewed through the prism of Speculative Fiction. It proposes innumerable configurations of a future that is, more often than not, fractured and bleak. Caron argues that these works both fictionalize and amplify broader collective fears and social anxieties around long term survival, language, ethnicity, race, religion, fascism, oppression and colonialism, while projecting the contemporary interpretations of Québec's past into the future. In doing so, Speculative Fiction from Québec reveals a constant preoccupation with the meanings of agency, individuality, collectivity, nationality, and territory in the same period."
https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/qu%C3%A9becs-broken-futures-9781666931013/
Big American Writer
Big American Writer
The Bilingual Jack Kerouac
Jean-Christophe Cloutier
Columbia University Press
Jack Kerouac has long been mythologized as an all-American figure: the “King of the Beats,” forever hitchhiking on the road, who gave voice to a postwar generation of rebels. In fact, he was born Jean-Louis Kérouac to immigrant parents from Québec and was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. Throughout his career, Kerouac not only secretly composed French manuscripts but also served as a self-translator to negotiate between French and English. In his bilingual journals, Kerouac lamented the wounds of assimilation and what he called the impossibility of living in French in the United States.
Big American Writer recasts Jack Kerouac as an ethnic, bilingual author, demonstrating that his French Canadian upbringing and background were formative to his breakthrough literary achievements. Building on years of archival excavation, Jean-Christophe Cloutier demystifies the Beat writer’s complex compositional practices and techniques of self-translation. He reveals that Kerouac pioneered new ways of capturing the orality of North American French in his manuscripts and invented the “Spontaneous Prose Method” in part as a reaction to his thwarted hope to live in French. Reading Kerouac’s secret French manuscripts and multilingual prose poem Old Angel Midnight alongside well-known works such as On the Road, Cloutier demonstrates how Kerouac’s writing engages with the complexity of ethnic identity in the United States. Offering a new lens on an often-misunderstood figure, Big American Writer shows why Kerouac’s bilingualism changes how we understand his place in North American literature.
About the Author
About the Author
Jean-Christophe Cloutier is associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Shadow Archives: The Lifecycles of African American Literature (Columbia, 2019) and editor of Kerouac’s La vie est d’hommage and Sur le chemin. He also translated two of Kerouac’s French manuscripts for The Unknown Kerouac from the Library of America.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse