The award is given annually by the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures (ACQL) in honour of the best work of Canadian literary criticism published in English. Wider Boundaries of Daring (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009) was chosen by a jury from among the 13 books submitted this year, for its outstanding contribution to scholarship on Canadian literature. This is the second time it was awarded to Godard, the first being in 1988. mentioned the award at the funeral service for Godard on Friday, May 21 (see YFile, May 19).

“The essay collection is a productive, revealing critique of the masculinism of Canadian Modernism. One of the great strengths of the book is its detailed archaeology of the lives of Modernist women writers in relation to their works; the biographical scholarship contributes substantially to an understanding of the writers in question,” writes the ACQL. “The essays, on a remarkably wide range of authors and texts, collectively draw attention to the ways in which women writers work against, resent, and countermand Canadian Modernism.”

Left: Barbara Godard

Wider Boundaries of Daring looks at the exemplary contribution to Canadian modernism of women poets, critics, cultural activists and experimental prose writers. The contributors argue that these writers are the real founders of Canadian modernism for their innovative esthetic and literary experiments and for their extensive cultural activism. They founded literary magazines and writers’ groups, wrote newspaper columns, and created a new forum for intellectual debate on public radio. At the same time, they led busy lives as wives and mothers, social workers and teachers, editors and critics, and competed successfully with their male contemporaries in the public arena in an era when women were not generally encouraged to hold professional positions or pursue public careers.

A professor in the Department of English in the former Faculty of Arts and in the graduate programs of social & political thought, women’s studies and French, Godard began teaching at 91��ɫ in 1971. She published widely on Canadian and Quebec cultures and on feminist and literary theory and translated the works of several Quebec writers, including Nicole Brossard, Yolande Villemarie and Louky Bersiani. In 2002, she received teaching awards from 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Graduate Studies and the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools. Godard served as 91��ɫ’s first Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian Literature, was a founding co-editor of the feminist journal Tessera and the author and editor of several books.

For more information on the Gabrielle Roy Prize, visit the Web site.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Here, 91��ɫ humanities Professor , English Professor and PhD student Elena Basile offer an appreciation of Prof. Godard and her tireless work:

It is with great sadness that the Department of English at 91��ɫ announces the death of Professor Emerita Barbara Godard, a professor of English, French, social & political thought and women’s studies. A pillar of the 91��ɫ community and 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.

Right: Prof. Barbara Godard

She was a generous supervisor and mentor who trained and influenced a contemporary generation of cultural workers, including academics, writers and artists. The scope of her mentorship was fully recognized in 2002 when she became the recipient of teaching awards from 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Graduate Studies and the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools. Prof. Godard retired from full-time teaching in 2008, but continued a full intellectual and pedagogical life until her sudden passing.

Prof. Godard was a prolific and influential intellectual. An extraordinarily sharp and encyclopedic thinker, Prof. Godard’s interests encompassed semiotics, translation, gender, textuality and the body, as well as archives, memorials, and the history and changing politics of cultural production. With a keen eye for detail and a unique capacity for breadth of vision, she catalyzed interdisciplinary connections among culture, language, gender, politics, poetics and meaning.

After completing her doctorate at the University of Bordeaux, Prof. Godard began teaching at 91��ɫ in 1971 as a visiting assistant professor and was hired into a tenure-track position in 1976. She published eight books, 80 book chapters and 115 articles and catalogue entries. She translated the major writers of Quebec feminism, including Nicole Brossard, Yolande Villemarie and Louky Bersianik. She also served as editor or on the editorial board of no less than 22 journals. She was a founding co-editor of the feminist literary periodical , a contributing editor of and , and the book review editor for Topia: A Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. She also made long-standing contributions to , s and ECW among others.

Prof. Godard was committed to and passionate about her graduate students across the Departments of English, French Studies, Film and Visual Arts, the School of Women’s Studies and the Program in Social & Political Thought, supervising over 35 PhD candidates. She built bridges between people and modes of inquiry because of her genuine enthusiasm for ideas. She worked between and across languages which so often divide. Prof. Godard inspired her colleagues and students through her critical creativity and her unwavering commitment to interrogating and producing the conditions for full civic engagement in the University and in the public sphere. We will miss her greatly.

Funeral arrangements

A funeral service will take place at 11am on Friday, May 21, at St. James-the-Less, 635 Parliament St., Toronto. A reception for friends and family will follow at Prof. Godard’s house at 217 Major St.,Toronto.

Prof. Godard’s family has requested no flowers; in light of her earlier struggles, donations to the Canadian Cancer Society would be greatly appreciated.

As there may be other causes to which you might wish to make a memorial donation, the agency can inform Prof. Godard’s sister Elizabeth Cox at ecox27@sympatico.ca and her son Alexis at lex_o_matic@yahoo.com.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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