Research
Dr. Francis’ recent body of scholarship represents a significant contribution to the reshaping of research directions in French and Francophone literary scholarship in relation to the broader geo-political context of globalization. Her work has been internationally recognized as participating in generating new critical frameworks for understanding and interrogating relationships between language, poetics, subjectivity, gender and nation, especially within the context of postcolonial criticism in the French-speaking world.
Her research productions include numerous scholarly articles and book chapters devoted to Francophone literature and culture. She is the author of a scholarly book on the poetics of affect and subjectivity in the autobiographical writings of Gabrielle Roy. In addition, she has co-edited two volumes based respectively on the concept of world literature in the French-speaking world (la littérature-monde) and themes and aesthetics in contemporary Acadian literature. A third co-edited volume on transgression and legacy in francophone literature was published in 2017. She is presently completing a book manuscript entitled Reconfigurations du féminin postcolonial dans l’espace méditerranéen. Voix et regards éclatés.
The quality of Dr. Francis’ research productivity is evidenced by the fact that her book, Gabrielle Roy, autobiographe. Subjectivité, passions et discours, based on the inscription of affect and subjectivity in autobiographical prose, was one of three short-listed titles selected for the national Prix Gabrielle-Roy in 2007. Her scholarly article on France Daigle’s novel Pas pire (Voix et images, 3/84) earned her the ‘APFUCC Best Article Prize’ in 2004, granted by the Association des professeurs de français des universités et collèges canadiens.
Dr. Francis was recipient of the St. Thomas University Special Merit Award for Outstanding Research in 2014. She received the Wallace and Margaret McCain Award in 2010-2011 and has been successful in obtaining several external and internal grants, namely from SSHRC, the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie, the Bureau du Québec dans les Provinces atlantiques, the Arts Council of New Brunswick and the St. Thomas University Senate Research Committee.
In 2018, Dr. Cecilia Francis was appointed as a jury member of an Interdisciplinary Adjudication Committee for the Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada, SSHRC-CRSH, national granting agency. She is an elected executive committee member of the Conseil International des Études Francophones representing Canada (2016-2019).
As well, Dr Francis is an editorial board member for the Journal of New Brunswick Studies /Révue d'études sur le Nouveau-Brunswick and editorial review committee member for Dalhousie French Studies and Linguistics and Literature Studies.
Overview of Research Programs (research associations)
2013-2017 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, SSHRC Insight Grant, Co-investigator: "Vocabularies of identity II: the evolution of collective identity in Acadian and Loyalist texts published in New Brunswick newspapers from 1880-1938"; funding amount: $116, 940.00.
2010-2013 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, SSHRCC, Aid to Research Workshops and Conferences in Canada, grant: $21,115.00. This grant was the basis of a programme of research devoted to the concept of French World Literature.
2006-2009 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, SSHRC, Aid to Small University Grant; co-investigator and research team member to develop the New Brunswick Atlantic Studies Research Development Centre at St. Thomas University, $90, 000.00.
2001-2007 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada SSHRC Major Collaborative Research Initiative; research associate: « Le soi et l’autre. L’énonciation de l’identité dans les contextes interculturels ».