Contact
Professor, Faculty of Arts - Modern Languages and Cultural Studies Dept
- dlafores@ualberta.ca
Overview
Area of Study / Keywords
Health and Medical Humanities Digital Humanities Québec and Canadian Literatures French and Francophone Studies Comparative Literature Literature and Philosophy Literary and Critical Theory Media Studies Film Studies Image Studies Cultural Studies
About
Daniel Laforest is a writer, researcher, translator and professor of French and media studies in the Modern Languages and Cultural Studies Department at the University of Alberta. He studied literature and film, earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Université Laval in Québec and his doctorate from l'Université du Québec à Montréal. After a two-year Fulbright fellowship at the University of California Santa Cruz, he joined the U of A in 2008. Laforest also has experience as a visiting professor at the Universités de Limoges and Poitiers in France (2014) and Stanford University in the United States (2015), and has done artist residencies at the Banff Centre Leighton Colony.
Situated at the nexus between literary studies and medical humanities, Laforest’s research explores new frontiers. His work interrogates how tools for medical visualization — including digital technologies and diagnostic imaging tools — are shaping individuals’ self-visualizations and personal narratives. Currently, Laforest is tracing the ways in which the relationship between literature and the medical humanities has evolved since the 1950s and the interconnections between these two discourses. As an urban theorist with a background in literary studies, Laforest also specializes in urban, suburban and exurban phenomena and how each of these interface with literary representations in the Canadian context.
Laforest is a member of the editorial board for the journal BMJ Medical Humanities as well as of the book series Nouvelles Études Québécoises at the Presses de l'Université de Montréal. In 2010, he co-founded the interdisciplinary open-access journal Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, which — more than a decade after its inception — continues to enrich visual cultural studies literature. Laforest is a prolific writer, and his first monograph, L'archipel de Caïn: Pierre Perrault et l'écriture du territoire, received the Jean-Éthier Blais Award for Best Essay on Quebec Studies. Most recently, he contributed to Connections: Bringing Neuroscience and Art Together, a collection of 70 multimedia pieces and a few poems that weaves together the threads between mental health and the healing power of art.
Laforest is a dedicated member of the university community and an esteemed scholar. He is the area coordinator for the U of A’s Digital Humanities Program, which integrates computational methods and theories with the social sciences. A proponent of knowledge mobilization, his insightful 2017 TEDx talk called “We Contain Multitudes: Our Bodies and the Future of Storytelling” explored how the physical body and loss interact and influence personal identity and storytelling.
Research
Books and Monographs
Laforest, Daniel. Topor et le Cinéma. Nouvelles éditions Place, 2020.
Authers, Benjamin, Snauwaert, Maïté, and Laforest, Daniel, editors. Inhabiting Memory in Canadian Literature. The University of Alberta Press, 2017.
Laforest, Daniel, et al., editors. Lire le Corps Biomédical: Regards sur la Littérature Canadienne / Reading the Biomedical Body: From the Perspective of Canadian Literature. Presses de l’Université de Limoges, 2016.
Laforest, Daniel. L’âge de Plastique: Lire la Ville Contemporaine au Québec. Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2016.
Laforest, Daniel. L’archipel de Caïn: Pierre Perrault et l’écriture du Territoire. XYZ éditeur, 2010. — winner of the 2011 Jean-Éthier Blais award
Exhibition Catalogues
Harvey, Gillian, Daniel Laforest, et al., eds. Connections: Bringing Neuroscience and Art Together. Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute, 2022.
Oliver, Marilène & Daniel Laforest Dyscorpia Exhibition Catalogue. 2019.
Recent Journal Articles
Laforest, Daniel. “La Manducation Sentimentale”, MuseMedusa: Revue de littérature et d’art moderne, no 11, 2023. [online]
Laforest, Daniel. “La littérature et les humanités médicales: examen d’une tension irrésolue.” Tangence, no. 125–126, 2021, pp. 73–88.
Laforest, Daniel. “Health Biometrics and the Narrative Self.” PUBLIC, vol. 30, no. 60, 2020, pp. 166–74.
Laforest, Daniel. “Les Territoires de la Rumeur dans l’Oeuvre de Lise Tremblay: Une Approche des Régions comme Réseaux Langagiers.”.” Voix et Images, vol. 45, no. 3, 2020, p. 95.
Laforest, Daniel. “La Santé Publique et La Violence Des Proportions Dans Le Roman: Autour de Heather O’Neill et Rawi Hage.” @nalyses: Revue Des Littératures Franco-Canadiennes et Québécoise, vol. 14, no. 2, 2019, pp. 20–37.
Laforest, Daniel. “De limbes et de barricades: Les géographies affectives du cinéma québécois”, Nouvelles vues journal, no 18, 2017.
Laforest, Daniel. “The Satellite, the Screen, and the City: On Google Earth and the Life Narrative.” International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 19, no. 6, 2016, pp. 659–72.
Laforest, Daniel. “Le Ville Jacques-Cartier de Louis Hamelin: Infrastructures et Infrahistoire Du Récit Au Québec.” Voix et Images: Littérature Québécoise, vol. 41, no. 1 (121), 2015, pp. 65–74.
Laforest, Daniel. “Le Lascaux Mont-Royal de Normand de Bellefeuille et la honte du passé québécois”,Voix & images, Vol. 28: 2, 2013.
Recent Book Reviews
Laforest, Daniel. “Dans le Grand Air du For Intérieur”, Voix et images, no 143, 2023.
Laforest. “Les Chambres d’Écoute”, Voix et images, no 141, 2023.
Laforest, Daniel. “Il n’y a pas de Générations”, Voix et images, no 139, 2022.
Laforest, Daniel. “Les Mondes d’Après”, Voix et images, no 137, 2021.
Laforest, Daniel. “Les Déroutes Fécondes”, Voix et images, no 135, 2020.
Laforest, Daniel. “L’encre et la Bave: Le Lambeau de Philippe Lançon”, Spirale no 267, 2019.
Laforest, Daniel. “Des loups et des Hommes: L’habitude des Bêtes de Lise Tremblay”, Spirale no 264, 2018.
Laforest, Daniel. “La Force Magnifique du Doute: La Route du Pays-Brûlé. Archéologie et Reconstruction du Patriotisme Québécois de Jonathan Livernois”, Spirale 258, 2017.
Laforest, Daniel. “Un Corps à Corps Avec Les Astres” Canadian Literature, no. 232, Mar. 2017, p. 166.
“Pierre Perrault Est Vivant: Une Vie sans Bon Sens de Olivier Ducharme & Pierre-Alexandre Fradet”, Spirale no 257, 2016.
Courses
C LIT 242 - Science Fiction
An introduction to science fiction as an international genre and a survey of works and trends
DH 510 - Topics in Digital Theory and Culture
MLCS 495 - Honors Thesis
MLCS 652 - Critical Theory II
Literary and cultural theory in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries from around the world. Students will read primary texts. Prerequisite: consent of Department.