Homage to scholarly collaboration
Paula Ruth Gilbert (l) and Miléna Santoro
It is customary for researchers in the sciences to work together, write together, publish together, and receive awards… together! But for some reason humanities disciplines seem enamored of the solo scholar model, so much so that at tenure and promotion time committees can show a preference toward single-author work, even though co-authored books and articles may be much, much richer. Personally I find this preference for the standalone to be intellectually insupportable, but it is the state of the academy at the moment, although with enough creative pressure who knows, that may change.
Miléna Santoro, a professor in Georgetown’s French department, and Paula Ruth Gilbert, professor of French, Canadian, and women and gender studies at George Mason University, cheerfully defy the norm with their brilliant co-authored and co-edited work. Their recent book, Transatlantic Passages: Literary and Cultural Relations Between Quebec and Francophone Europe (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010) is a showcase both for the breadth of Quebec literature, cinema, art, music, photography, comics, and culture, and for the power of scholarly teamwork.