Bertrand Gervais is full professor in the Literary studies Department at the University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM). He is the director of Figura, the Research Center on Textuality and the Imaginary, and of NT2, the Research Laboratory on Hypermedia Art and Literature. He teaches American literature and literary theory, specializing in theories of reading and interpretation, and on the Imaginary. He has published essays on literary reading and contemporary American literature (D. Barthelme, J. Hawkes, D. DeLillo, J. C. Oates, P. Auster, etc.), as well as French and Québécois literature (E. Carrère, M. Blanchot, P. Quignard, P. Yergeau, N. Chaurette). His last three essays have focused on the Imaginary in contemporary literature and film: on apocalyptic imagination and its relation to time and language (L’imaginaire de la fin, 2009), on Labyrinths, violence and forgetfulness (La ligne brisée, 2008), and on figures and their interpretation (Figures, lectures, 2007). He is also a novelist. His eighth novel, Comme dans un film des frères Coen (As in a Film by the Coen Brothers), was published in 2010.
