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Abstract

1 Editor's Note This issue of Québec Studies includes articles that analyze literature from the colonial period through the present, an interview with author Gaétan Brulotte, a pair of articles that look at h o w Q u é b e c sovereignists view Canadian federalism and h o w university students from R O C (the rest of C a n a d a ) see Québec, and analyses of the 2007 elections and Q u e b e c ' s rela­ tions with the United States. M y illustrious predecessor, Emile Talbot, and m y wonderful associate editor, Kevin Christiano, are responsible for seeing these articles through the process from submission to revision to editing. The first piece is part of a larger project undertaken b y T h o m a s Carr to extend the study of Q u é b e c w o m e n writers b a c k to the colonial period. Carr reads the w o r k s of Canadian n u n s as examples of colonialist rhetoric rather than spiritual discourse. T h e s e early French-Canadian w o m e n wrote to promote their religious orders and to justify the imposition of European culture onto the colonized territory. H e includes an excellent bibliography that should encourage further study of an important, but little k n o w n corpus of w o m e n ' s writing. The next three pieces bring us up to the last three decades. Sandrina Joseph's article analyzes the diary written b y poet Marie U g u a y as she faced a premature death from b o n e cancer in 1981, at age twenty-six. Joseph presents U g u a y ' s Journal as an intimate look at her writing process, an excruciating account o f her losing battle against disease, and a poignant confession of her secret passion for the doctor treating her. Kirsty Bell focuses on Nicolas D i c k n e r ' s award-winning 2005 novel Nikolski. Invoking Michel Foucault's concept of "heterotopic," Bell calls the eclectic novel a "texte-collection," a decentered novel structured like m u s e u m collections. Steven Urquhart's interview with Gaétan Brulotte is an interesting conver­ sation about Brulotte's scholarship as well as his o w n writing practices. "Floribécois" (a Québécois in Florida) Brulotte has continued to pursue his career as an award-winning nouvelliste and dramatist, while teaching and writing scholarly essays. Two of the social science articles focus on h o w y o u n g people in the rest of C a n a d a see Q u é b e c and h o w y o u n g Q u é b e c sovereignists see Cana­ dian federalism. Scott Piroth and D a v i d Jackson analyze the results of their surveys of the attitudes of Canadian university students toward Québec, confirming their hypothesis that those w h o have a better knowledge of the French language and m o r e contact with Francophones are m o r e likely to have positive attitudes toward Q u é b e c . Andrea Perrella and Éric Bélanger survey the attitudes of y o u n g Q u é b e c sovereignists toward Canadian fed­ eralism, noting that c o m m i t m e n t to sovereignty is not particularly in­ formed by deep understanding of the federalist system. The second two social science articles deal with internal and external politics. J a m e s P. Allan and Richard Vengroff analyze the relative strengths of Q u e b e c ' s political parties and the results of the 2007 election. S o m e of their conclusions had to b e re-considered in light of the 2008 election. Earl H. Fry's contribution concludes this v o l u m e with an in-depth study of Que­ bec's relations with the states of the U.S. federal system. A longtime ob-