The Bibliographical Society of Canada (BSC) is pleased to announce Alexis Paquette-Lacasse, a master’s student of comparative literature in the Département de littératures et de langues du monde at the University of Montreal has been awarded the 2021 Emerging Scholar Prize. The BSC Awards Committee was impressed by Paquette-Lacasse’s scholarly accomplishments and excited by the originality of his proposed project that examines queer book history in Quebec in the mid-twentieth century.
Paquette-Lacasse will present a paper at the BSC annual conference, which will be held remotely between May 31 and June 1, 2021, on the publication, distribution, and reception history of Raymond Goulet’s L’âne de Carpizan or the Flying Bishop, which was self-published in 1957. Subtitled a “moral and philosophical tale for the use of all,” Goulet’s L’âne de Carpizan was a humorous novel that challenged that status quo, critiquing the Catholic Church, the Duplessis government, and French-Canadian society, while featuring the first transgender protagonist in a work of fiction in Quebec. Paquette-Lacasse’s paper on Goulet’s short novel is part of a larger project researching Quebec literature of marginalized sexual identities, published between 1944 and 1964.
Paquette-Lacasse will be invited to publish a revised, article-length version of his conference paper in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, subject to peer review. The prize also includes a grant of $500.
The Emerging Scholar Prize was established by the BSC in 2012 to support a scholar at the beginning of her or his career who is undertaking research in bibliography, book history, or print culture broadly defined, including the study of the creation, production, publication, distribution, and uses of manuscripts, printed books, or electronic texts.
Scott Schofield (Chair), Christopher Lyons, Alison Rukavina
BSC-SbC Awards Committee