Répertoire du personnel administratif et enseignant

Brad Kent


Professeur titulaire

Département de littérature, théâtre et cinéma

418 656-2131, poste 407728

brad.kent@lit.ulaval.ca

Pavillon Louis-Jacques-Casault Local 3458

I was trained as an interdisciplinary scholar, holding a PhD in Humanities with a major in literature and minors in history and political science. My teaching and research interests are best defined by two areas that combine these fields: the intersections of literature and the political sphere; and literature and the history of ideas in their transnational dimensions.

These interests lie at the heart of my work on public intellectuals, which resulted in the publication of The Selected Essays of Sean O'Faolain by McGill-Queen's University Press in 2016. While O'Faolain was the leading public intellectual in Ireland from the 1930s to the 1950s, Bernard Shaw remains perhaps the most notable public intellectual and socialist writer of the modern period. My fascination with Shaw has led to several projects, including George Bernard Shaw in Context, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2015, and The Oxford George Bernard Shaw, an eight-volume series for which I served as general editor and that was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. Currently, I am completing a monograph on how modern writers organised socially, polemically, and politically to combat state censorship and social repression, as well as editing, with David Kornhaber, The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Theatre, which brings together seventeen leading scholars to produce the first analytical survey of global modernist movements in the theatre.

I have been a visiting fellow at Brasenose College and St Catherine's College, both at the University of Oxford, twice a visiting fellow at the University of Texas's Harry Ransom Center, and a visiting professor at Trinity College Dublin.

At Université Laval, I am fortunate to work with many talented students and I am always happy to hear from people interested in pursuing graduate studies in any of my areas of expertise.

 

Enseignement

  • British and Irish Literatures

Publications

Books

The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Theatre. Co-edited with David Kornhaber. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forthcoming in 2024.

Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, Saint Joan, by Bernard Shaw. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.

Man and Superman, John Bull’s Other Island, Major Barbara, by Bernard Shaw. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.

The Selected Essays of Sean O’Faolain. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016.

George Bernard Shaw in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Mrs Warren's Profession, by Bernard Shaw. London: Methuen Drama, 2012.

Book Chapters

“Censorship.” In Sean O’Casey in Context, edited by James Moran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forthcoming in 2024.

“Introduction: Modernist Theatre.” The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Theatre, edited by Brad Kent and David Kornhaber. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forthcoming in 2024.

“The Problem Play, the Discussion Play, and the Play of Ideas.” The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Theatre, edited by Brad Kent and David Kornhaber. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forthcoming in 2024.

 “Outside the Whale: Sean O’Faolain, Totalitarianism, and the European Public Intellectual.” In Irish Literature in Transition 1940-1980, edited by Eve Patten. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 46-65.

"Missing Links: Bernard Shaw and the Discussion Play." In The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre, edited by Nicholas Grene and Chris Morash. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 138-151.

"Censorship." In George Bernard Shaw in Context, edited by Brad Kent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 199-206.

"The Politics of Shaw’s Irish Women in John Bull’s Other Island." Shaw and Feminisms: On Stage and Off, edited by Dorothy Hadfield and Jean Reynolds. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2013.

Refereed Articles

“Tides of Influence: Bernard Shaw, the Irish Writer, and World Literature.” Irish University Review. Forthcoming in 2023.

“Towards a Progressive Ethics of Shamelessness: Heresy and Affect in Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan.” Modern Drama 63.3 (2020): 289-310.

“Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Faolain, and the Irish Public Intellectual.” Irish University Review 47.2 (2017): 331-49.

"Bernard Shaw, the British Censorship of Plays, and Modern Celebrity." English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, 57.2 (2014): p. 231-253.

"Eighteenth-Century Literary Precursors of Mrs Warren’s Profession." University of Toronto Quarterly, 81.2 (2012): 187-207.

"Censorship and Immorality: Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple." Modern Drama, 54.4 (2011): p. 511-533.

"An Argument Manqué: Kate O’Brien’s Pray for the Wanderer." Irish Studies Review, 18.3 (2010): p. 285-298. 

"Literary Criticism and the Recovery of Banned Books: The Case of Kate O’Brien’s Mary Lavelle." ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 41.2 (2010): p. 47-74.

“Shaw, The Bell, and Censorship in 1945.” SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, 30 (2010: 161-74. 

“Two Unpublished Letters from Shaw to de Valera.” SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, 30 (2010): 27-35.

“The Banning of Bernard Shaw’s The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God and the Decline of the Irish Academy of Letters.” Irish University Review, 39.2 (2008): 271-94.

“Sean O’Faolain and Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s Midcentury Critiques of Nationalism.” New Hibernia Review, 12.1 (2008): 128-45.

“Shaw’s Everyday Emergency: Commodification in and of John Bull’s Other Island.” SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, 26 (2006): 162-79.

“Zealots, Censors and Perverts: Irish Censorship and Liam O’Flaherty’s The Puritan.” Irish Studies Review, 14.3 (2006): 343-58.

“McDrama: The Sentimental in Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane and Conor McPherson’s The Weir.”  Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 28.2/29.1 (2002/2003): 30-45.

Bibliographical Essay

"George Bernard Shaw." Solicited contribution for Oxford Bibliographies Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

 

Curriculum

Université Laval

  • Professor, 2017-present
  • Associate Professor, 2012-2017
  • Assistant Professor, 2007-2012

Honours, Awards, and Fellowships

  • Visiting Fellow, St Catherine's College, University of Oxford, January-March 2023
  • Visiting Fellow, Brasenose College, University of Oxford, January-June 2022
  • C.P. Snow Memorial Fellow, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, April-May 2018
  • Visiting Professor, Trinity College Dublin, August 2013 - June 2014
  • Hobby Family Foundation Fellow, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, April-May 2009

Major Grants and Scholarships

  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Insight Grant, 2017-2021 ($84 215)
  • Publication Grant, Federation for the Humanities and Social Science’s Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, 2016 ($8 000)
  • Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture, Bourse de nouveaux chercheurs, 2008-2011 ($40 500)
  • SSHRC Institutional Grant, Bourse de développement de la recherche, Faculté des lettres, Université Laval, 2008 ($5 000)

  • SSHRCC Postdoctoral Fellowship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 2007-2009 ($81 000) (declined)

  • Ogilvy Renault Scholarship, Ireland-Canada University Foundation, 2006-2007 ($8 000)

  • SSHRCC Doctoral Fellowship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 2004-2006 ($40 000)

  • Power Corporation of Canada Graduate Fellowship, 2004-2006 ($10 000)

  • St Patrick’s Society Graduate Scholarship, 2003-2006 ($6 000)

  • Association of Millwrighting Contractors of Ontario Scholarship, 1999-2003 ($7 200)

  • Millennium Scholarship, Government of Canada, 1999-2000 ($3 000)

Intérêts de recherche

  • National Corpus: British and Irish Literatures
  • Eras: XIX-XXI Centuries, especially the modern period: 1880-1960
  • Genres: Novel, Theatre, Essay
  • Methodologies: Sociology and History of Literature, Historiography, Socio-critique
  • Key Subjects of Interest: Censorship, Nationalism, Modern Theatre, Irish Studies, Modern British Literature; Public Intellectuals, Affect Theory, Editorial Theory