Canadian Studies is pleased to welcome a new Hildebrand Fellow for Academic Year 2022: Jennifer Kaplan, a doctoral student in romance languages and literatures. Her research examines the intersection of grammatical gender and social gender.
Jennifer’s Hildebrand Fellowship will fund her research into how non-binary or gender variant Francophone Canadians grapple with the dualistic grammatical gender inherent in French (masculine and feminine). She uses a mixed-methods approach to examine both what non-binary French forms are gaining popularity, and changing social attitudes toward these word forms. She will also explore how Quebec's complicated relationship with Anglophone Canada has complicated attitudes towards non-binary French today. Jennifer's fellowship will support her for six months of fieldwork in Montreal, where she will conduct ethnographic fieldwork while attending classes at the Université de Montréal.
Jennifer holds a B.A. in comparative literature from Barnard College and an M.A. in English and comparative literature with a specialization in feminist, gender, and sexuality studies from Columbia University.