Midwest Canadian Studies Network

The Midwest Canadian Studies Network brings together Canadian studies scholars from across the US Midwest under the auspices of the MSU Canadian Studies Center. The Network provides a venue for scholars to present their research and share news about the field. Network events are open to students, scholars, and members of the public, providing a vehicle for faculty and graduate students to share their Canada-related work and to promote the field for the next generation of Canadianists. 

For more information about the network or to join, please email the Canadian Studies Center at csc(at)msu.edu. 

Upcoming Events

Transnational Perspectives on Quebec Cinema in the 21st Century

Part of the Fall 2024 Midwest Canadian Studies Network Webinar Series

The 2024 collection Quebec Cinema in the 21st Century: Transcending the National explores how the flourishing of Quebec cinema in the 21st century has opened the door to a move in remarkable and diverse new directions. As director and filmmaking professor Denis Chouinard affirms in an interview in the book, many filmmakers in the province have embraced a broad approach to the definition of Quebecois identity since the 1995 referendum. This talk will focus on contemporary Quebec cinema through a transnational optic looking at the diversity of origins, perspectives, and trajectories that inform Quebec's cinematic production today. I'll propose some lingering questions about the parameters of the Quebec label itself and discuss some fruitful ways to explore the question in classes. 

Michael Gott is Professor of Film and Media Studies and French and Head of the Department of Romance and Arabic Languages and Literatures at the University of Cincinnati. His research and teaching interests include transnational film and screen media, global screen industries and networks, border studies, mobility studies, diaspora and migration, and the cinema of Quebec. 

For questions about the webinar or the Midwest Canadian Studies Network, email MSU Canadian Studies Center Assistant Director Mitch Goldsmith at goldsm40(at)msu.edu. 

Past Events

Network Members

Pierre Atlas, Ph.D., Paul H O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University Indianapolis

Dr. Pierre Atlas is a senior lecturer and serves as Director of the Master of Public Affairs (MPA) program at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Indianapolis, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in public affairs and criminal justice. Prior to joining the O’Neill School in fall 2021, Dr. Atlas was Professor of Political Science at Marian University and, for 17 years, served as the Founding Director of The Richard G. Lugar Franciscan Center for Global Studies. His recent research and publications have examined the impact of (post 1865/1867) western frontier history and mythology on contemporary political differences between the United States and Canada, on issues such as Indigenous policy, violence and law and order, and gun laws and gun culture. 

Kevin J. Christiano, Ph.D., Department of Sociology, University of Notre Dame 

Professor Kevin J. Christiano is an associate professor of sociology and a faculty affiliate of the Higgins Labor Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame. He has been a visiting scholar in the Department of Sociology at Princeton University (1986–1987) and in the Canadian Studies Center at Duke University (1994–1995). Dr. Christiano is the author or co-author of three books: Religious Diversity and Social Change: American Cities, 1890–1906; Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Reason Before Passion; and Sociology of Religion: Contemporary Developments, with William H. Swatos, Jr., and Peter Kivisto. Professor Christiano is the recipient of the 2016 Prix du Québec from the American Council for Québec Studies and the 2019 J. Milton Yinger Award from the North Central Sociological Association.

Paul S. Ciccantell, Ph.D., Department of Sociology, Western Michigan University

Professor Paul S. Ciccantell is Professor of Sociology at Western Michigan University. His research examines a variety of extractive industries, railroad and ocean transport, and other global commodity chains. Dr. Ciccantell's Canadian research focuses on coal mining and its socioeconomic and environmental impacts in Western Canada, transport infrastructure, and the oil and gas industry.

James Endersby, Ph.D., Harry S Truman School of Government and Public Affairs, University of Missouri

Professor James Endersby is a professor of political science at the University of Missouri, having joined the university in 1991. He received his Ph.D. in 1990 from the University of Texas and specializes in American politics and government, political behavior (voting and elections), formal political theory, and research methods. Dr. Endersby served as the director of Canadian Studies at the University of Missouri. He was past president of the Southwestern Political Science Association (2015-2016) and the Midwest Association for Canadian Studies (2007-2009). 

Mitch Goldsmith, Ph.D., Canadian Studies Center, Michigan State University

Dr. Mitch Goldsmith is the assistant director of the Michigan State University Canadian Studies Center. Before joining the Center, Dr. Goldsmith was an instructor of record and teaching assistant in the social sciences and humanities at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, where he was also a long-term research fellow with the university's Posthumanism Research Institute.  Dr Goldsmith has published and presented extensively on environmental and animal studies in Canada and the U.S. Dr Goldsmith holds a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary humanities from Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, a master's degree from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and a bachelor's degree from James Madison College at Michigan State University. 

Michael Gott, Ph.D., Department of Romance and Arabic Languages, University of Cincinnati

Michael Gott is Professor of Film and Media Studies and French and Head of the Department of Romance and Arabic Languages and Literatures at the University of Cincinnati. His research and teaching interests include transnational film and screen media, global screen industries and networks, border studies, mobility studies, diaspora and migration, and the cinema of Quebec. 

Sara Beth Keough, Ph.D., Department of Geography, Saginaw Valley State University 

Professor Sara Beth Keough is Professor and Chair in the Department of Geography at Saginaw Valley State University. She is a cultural geographer whose research focuses on human environment relationships related to water, material culture, and resouce-dependent communities. She is the current Vice President and President-elect of Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS).

Brendan Kredell, Ph.D., Department of Film Studies and Production, Oakland University 

Brendan Kredell is Associate Professor of Film at Oakland University. He has spent his academic career researching the relationship between cities and media, with particular focus on media audiences and patterns of media consumption, cultural policy, urban development, and film festivals. He is the co-editor of two books: Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice (2016) and The Routledge Companion to Media and the City (2022). Recent work has explored the use of cultural analytics in the film festival circuit, the re-mediation of Albert Kahn’s architecture in contemporary representations of Detroit, the legacy of Edgar Allan Poe in the BBC’s Luther, and the geography of film exhibition in contemporary American cities. Prior to his current academic appointment, Kredell taught at the University of Calgary and served as a Fulbright Fellow at the Cities Center of the University of Toronto. 

Debra Leiter, Ph.D., Department of Political Science and Philosophy, University of Missouri- Kansas City. 

Professor Debra Leiter is an associate professor of political science in the Department of Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She received her B.A. from the University of California, San Diego, and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis. An award-winning researcher and teacher, she studies comparative politics, primarily in Western Europe and North America. Her research examines the intersection of elections, parties, and voting, and how context shapes political decision-making. Her teaching focuses on cross-national institutions and political representation, with a strong emphasis on undergraduate research. She also plays trumpet in Kansas City’s own Mid-America Freedom Band.

Rebecca Malouin, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S., Department of Family and Community Medicine, Michigan State University

Professor Rebecca Malouin is a professor of family and community medicine in the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Michigan State University. She also serves as the director of the MSU Canadian Studies Center and the Global Health Studies Program. Dr. Malouin has been engaged with the Canadian Studies Center for over 10 years as a faculty member, serving on the Advisory Board, the Core Faculty, and conducting U.S.- Canada research focused on health systems. Dr. Malouin received her Ph.D. and M.P.H. in international health from the Johns Hopkins University, and an M.S. in epidemiology from Michigan State University.  She completed her B.S. at the University of Michigan. 

Rebecca Mancuso, Ph.D., Department of History, Bowling Green State University

Professor Mancuso is an associate professor of history at Bowling Green State University. Dr. Mancuso earned her Ph.D. at McGill University in Montreal. She has been at BGSU for 20 years, specializing in the history of Canada, local history, and public history. She currently coordinates the Canadian Studies academic minor program at BGSU, and courses she regularly teaches include History of Canada, Introduction to Canadian Studies, and a senior research seminar on the French Empire in North America. Dr. Mancuso’s publications, appearing in an array of academic journals, explore immigration to Canada as a twentieth-century nationalist project with a focus on women migrants. In 2013, she held the Fulbright Research Chair at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. She has led public history projects in both Canada and the U.S. 

Karen Marrero, Ph.D., Department of History, Wayne State University

Karen Marrero researches, writes and teaches early North American and Indigenous history. Her book "Detroit's Hidden Channels: The Power of French-Indigenous Families in the Eighteenth Century" (Michigan State University Press & University of Manitoba Press, 2020) explores the means by which seventeenth and eighteenth-century Indigenous and French kin networks exploited Detroit’s status as a “transitional location” and diplomatic center to divert and revalue resources and amass political, economic and cultural prestige. Marrero's current project connects Indigenous, French- and Anglo-Canadian and American communities of the Michigan/Upper Canada border in an era of increasing efforts by Euro-imperial governments to enact race-based policies.

James T. McHugh, Ph.D., Department of Political Science, University of Akron

Professor James T McHugh received his Ph.D. in political science from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, having also studied within the Canadian studies programs of the University of Vermont and the University of Edinburgh. His scholarship related to Canada particularly emphasizes political institutions, political history, and political philosophy. He is a former president of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States and the founder of the Canadian politics section of the New England Political Science Association. 

Patrice J. Prolux, Ph.D., Department of World Languages and Literature, University of Nebraska Omaha 

Professor Patrice J. Proulx is currently Professor of French and Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Her research interests include contemporary Québécois and Caribbean fiction, francophone film, and the literature of immigration in France and Quebec. She has published several essays on the works of both Marie-Célie Agnant and Nancy Huston and has developed and coordinates an on-site French summer study abroad term in conjunction with Laval University in Quebec City.

Barry Rabe, Ph.D., Gerald Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan Ann Arbor 

Professor Barry Rabe is a political scientist who studies the political feasibility and durability of climate policy in federal systems such as Canada and the United States. His recent work has focused on the politics of carbon pricing, uses of executive power in climate policy formation, and the politics of non-carbon greenhouse gases such as methane and HFCs.