Claire-Marie Brisson
Office Hours: Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:00 pm-1:00 pm or by appointment
Academic Degrees: Ph.D. in French (Cultural History), University of Virginia; M.A. in French (Cultural History), Wayne State University; B.A. in French Studies and Secondary Education, Minors in German and Political Science, University of Michigan-Dearborn.
Roles: Course Head for French 30, 40, and 64.
Research Interests: French and North American Francophone literature and culture from the sixteenth through the twenty-first centuries; early modern French America (1534-1763) and its nineteenth- through twenty-first-century afterlives; Huguenot and Acadian histories; religion, migration, memory, and identity; North American Francophone Studies; Québec and Canadian Studies; film, media, and podcasting; book history, print adaptation, and archival research; environmental humanities, liquid geographies, terroir, and wine cultures; Indigenous Studies; digital mapping and Digital Humanities; language policy and sustainable pedagogy; second language acquisition.
Websites: http://clairemariebrisson.com (Professional Website); http://thefrancophone.com (Podcast)
Dr. Claire-Marie Brisson is a Franco-Michigander whose scholarship bridges Michigan and Québec, situating her work within the broader framework of the North American Francophonie and her own upbringing in Dearborn, Michigan. As a Preceptor, she oversees, designs, and teaches intermediate and advanced courses on Francophone media, cinema, and North American French identity.
Her book Michiganaise (Wayne State University Press, February 2027) reframes the history of Francophone North America through the Great Lakes and Detroit River region. Drawing on archival research, press culture, oral traditions, and material landscapes, Brisson develops Michiganaise through the intersecting lenses of French and Francophone Studies, Cultural History, Religious Studies, Local Studies, and memoir as a critical mode of analysis. Structured through a series of microhistories, the book reinscribes the lives of nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century Francophone communities into broader questions of belonging, memory, and identity. By tracing rivers, parishes, print culture, and the shifting terminology of French identity, Michiganaise offers a new framework for understanding how Francophone traditions have been sustained, reshaped, and reimagined across North American borders.
Her second book project, The Afterlife of Refuge: Huguenots, Acadians, and the Making of French America, extends this work into the early modern period, drawing on archival research conducted in South Carolina and Louisiana. She is also editing Teaching Francophone North America for the Modern Language Association’s Options for Teaching series, and is a laureate of Le Lab at the Nous Foundation, where she is developing the first national searchable directory of Francophone and Francoresponsible businesses in the United States.
Dr. Brisson has published in Études Francophones (2025), Le Devoir (2025, 2026), La Presse (2025), and France-Amérique (2024), with work forthcoming in Rust Belt Studies (2026). She is a frequent keynote speaker at international conferences and institutions, including the Assemblée parlementaire de la francophonie (2023) and the Forum des jeunes ambassadeurs de la Francophonie (2024).
At Harvard, her teaching combines experiential learning with critical cultural inquiry, engaging students directly with Francophone authors, filmmakers, policymakers, and community leaders. Her course French 64, Exploring French Language in North America through Text, Image, and Culture, received a Curricular Innovation Award from the Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship and now counts as an Engaged Scholarship course at Harvard College. She is also a recipient of the ACTFL Klett Award for Sustainable Development Education in the World Language Classroom.
Beyond her academic work, she founded and hosts The North American Francophone Podcast (2019–). She serves as President of the Middle Atlantic & New England Council for Canadian Studies (2024– ), as Area Editor for Canadian, Francophone Canadian, and Indigenous Literature and Culture at The Literary Encyclopedia, and on the Modern Language Association’s Executive Committee for the Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Canadian Forum (2026–2031). Her scholarship and public engagement share a central aim: to reassert the intellectual, cultural, and institutional presence of Francophone North America, and to situate its waterways, cultural traditions, and communities within the broader currents of history, identity, and cultural transmission.
View her curriculum vitae here.