About French Graduate Programs

The Department of French at McMaster was among the first in Canada to make Francophone literature and cultures its primary field of research and teaching. Its current MA and PhD programs build on this tradition, while enriching it through critical analysis of diversity. If you are interested in Francophonie from a diachronic or synchronic, local or global perspective and if you are intrigued by diversity and relational complexity of phenomena, you have come to the right place to begin  your research project. French is the working language and the language of instruction in the Department.

Studying Francophonie at McMaster encompasses the literature and cultures of many regions of the world. We are thus exploring African, Asian, Caribbean, European, North-American and Québécois Francophonie, their cultural production across a variety of contexts and media, and the transfer of knowledge between different French-speaking communities. 

The concept of diversity includes the complex relationships between francophone literatures and other discourses (scientific, linguistic, artistic, philosophical and social, as well as that of the media) between canonical and non-canonical genres, between local cultures and a global economy, and between a long-standing language authority and a reappropriation of French language by diverse francophone communities, bearing also in mind a critical reading of diversity.