Department of French

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

PhD program

The Department of French at Dalhousie University invites applications for admission to the program leading to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in French.

Thesis research areas


Literature

Medieval and Early Modern literature of France; Modern and contemporary literatures of France, Québec, and Francophonie: literary theory, novel, cinema, poetry and poetics, theatre, art, and other cultural studies.

Linguistics

Theoretical and applied linguistics in the following fields: contrastive studies, lexicology, morphology, pragmatics, second language learning and teaching, semantics, sociolinguistics, terminology, text linguistics, and translation.

Admission requirements

In addition to the general requirements for admission to the Faculty of Graduate Studies, the candidates must satisfy the following specific requirements:

  1. An MA thesis degree in French.
  2. An excellent French oral and written proficiency.
  3. A scholarly interest in one of the PhD thesis areas (as indicated above).

The requirements after admission are the following:

  1. Two years of Dalhousie residency.
  2. Four full graduate credits (from the departmental offerings in the years of residency).
  3. A second language examination.
  4. Preliminary and comprehensive written and oral examinations (to be completed at least one year prior to submission of thesis).
  5. The PhD thesis (normally written in French) and its oral defence.

Scholarships

All applicants accepted into the PhD program are automatically considered for the Dalhousie Graduate Fellowship, which is usually linked with a teaching assistantship.

All applicants to the doctoral program who are Canadian citizens or permanent residents are strongly encouraged to apply for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [SSHRC] Doctoral Fellowship. Details on the Canadian Graduate Study (CGS) Doctoral awards are available at www.sshrc.ca.

Applications for the SSHRC CGS-Doctoral awards must be submitted through the Government of Canada’s Research Portal. Dalhousie-specific information on the award can be found here.

Most other Dalhousie awards for which you may be eligible can be applied for via Dalhousie’s scholarship platform, the Harmonized Scholarship Process. This program analyzes your application information, compares it to the available scholarships, and automatically submits your application for each scholarship which you are eligible for. To apply, follow this link for the Harmonized Scholarship Process.

Exceptionally strong candidates may be nominated for the prestigious Killam Scholarship. To be eligible, Canadian citizens and permanent residents must previously apply for the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship. International candidates are also eligible for this award and should contact the Department for details on applying.

More information

Dalhousie French Department Graduate Student Handbook (Dec 2023)