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Maxime Prévost, Assistant Professor, Département de français
What inspires you most about your work?
I take my role as a cultural agent very seriously. It’s very important to me to share the knowledge I presently have and continue to accumulate. I enjoy lecturing about authors and phenomena — be it literary, social or historic — that are not considered “current.” It allows my students to travel in time while baring our current society’s presuppositions.
What are you most proud of?
I am so grateful for the existence of my four-year old son, Charles-Alexandre. I hope my wife and I will allow him to grow to become a happy and autonomous adult.
If you had the power, what would you change in today’s world?
I would like people to be less imprisoned by the present. That is, allow people to acquire naturally and from a very young age an historical conscience that helps them make sense of the world. Our so-called information age is a society of the here and now, but I fear that our fascination with day-to-day events prevents us from actually understanding the present. In other words, I fear that an individual who is incapable of understanding a historical situation is ill-equipped to understand the most revealing current events.
What is one thing colleagues would be surprised to learn about you?
I subscribe to Hockey News.
What five people (dead or alive) would you invite for dinner and why?
I would like to question five relatively modern authors (so that they have the same basis from which to discuss). I would have them discuss the role of the writer in the city, the concept of power (positive or negative) not only of writers, but within the greater context of representation. So I would invite authors who could discuss this at length: Victor Hugo, Oscar Wilde, Norman Mailer and, if he promised to behave, Michel Houellebecq. I would complete the guest list by inviting Guy Debord even though it’s a given that he would end up insulting all the other party goers.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Right here!
