Hannah Fournier, Distinguished Professor Emerita
1941 - 2023
On Saturday May 20,2023, Hannah Fournier passed away at the age of 81. Colleagues, friends, and former students in the Department of French Studies will remember her as a talented administrator and a pioneering researcher in the field of Early Modern women’s writing and the digital humanities.
Hannah joined the Department of Classics and Romance Languages at the University of Waterloo as a part-time lecturer in 1966. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Western Ontario in 1976 and then joined the newly formed department of French Studies as an Assistant Professor. A specialist in 16th-century Renaissance and Reformation literature and in the history of French women writers, Hannah had a particular interest in the works of Marie de Gournay and Marguerite de Navarre and produced several critical editions of texts by female authors.
She is perhaps best known as a founding member, along with Jean-Philippe Beaulieu (University of Montreal) and Delbert Russell (Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Waterloo), of the MARGOT project which, in 1989, built a textual database of Latin and early French texts, using software developed at Waterloo for the computerization of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Using these tools, and with the help of graduate students, the group published several electronic editions of medieval texts and early modern works by women writers, creating the MARGOT website in the early 1990s. In 2008, in recognition of her important contributions to research, colleagues Guy Poirier, Christine McWebb, Delbert Russell and François Paré published a volume of essays in her honour: Dix ans de recherche sur les femmes écrivains de l’Ancien Régime : influences et confluences. Mélanges offerts à Hannah Fournier (Presses de l’Université Laval).
In addition to her work in the Department of French Studies where she served as chair from 2001 to 2003 and a term as Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies in the Faculty of Arts, Hannah was instrumental in the creation of the Women’s Studies program, for which she served as co-ordinator from 1981 to 1984. She was also a founding member and served on the board and as treasurer of the on-campus day-care centre Klemmer Farmhouse Co-op Nursery from 1972 to 1975. A generous colleague, Hannah mentored junior colleagues with grace and good humour.
Delbert Russell, Distinguished Professor Emeritus
1944 - 2023
Distinguished Professor Emeritus Delbert Russell passed away on September 24, 2023. Colleagues, friends, and former students will remember him as a mentor, a talented administrator, and an important contributor to the field of digital humanities.
Delbert Russell completed his Ph.D. in French Literature at the University of Toronto in 1973. After five years at Nipissing University, he joined the Department of French Studies at the University of Waterloo in 1978, achieving the rank of Full Professor in 1990. In addition to Chairing the department from 1990-95 and serving as the Resident Director of the Waterloo at the Université de Nantes program on four separate occasions, Delbert also served as the Faculty of Arts Associate Dean, Graduate Studies and Research, from 1996-99.
In 1983, Delbert published the first book-length study in English on the Québécois writer Anne Hébert. But his most important research contributions were in Medieval Studies. Delbert published a number of critical editions of early Anglo-Normand texts including La Vie seint Edmund le Rei (Oxford, 2014) and Verse Saints’ Lives Written in the French of England (ACMRS Press, 2012). His most recent work was a multi-year project with co-editors Jocelyn Wogan-Browne and Thelma Fenster resulting in the publication of Vernacular Literary Theory from the French of England: Texts and Translations, c.1120–c.1450 with Cambridge University Press in 2018. This edition of literary extracts was deemed a “landmark achievement in the ongoing reassessment of the place of French in medieval English culture.” In 1986, his work on critical editions led him to be the Co-Director of the University of Waterloo Centre for the New Oxford English Dictionary, the initiative to digitize the OED, and Delbert became an early champion of the digital humanities, holding a number of important SSHRC grants to advance work in this new field. He is perhaps best known as a founding member, along with Jean-Philippe Beaulieu (University of Montreal) and Hannah Fournier (Distinguished Professor Emerita, Waterloo), of the MARGOT project which, in 1989, built a textual database of Latin and early French texts, using software developed for the OED project. Using these tools, and with the help of graduate students, the group published several electronic editions of medieval texts and early modern works by women writers, creating the MARGOT website in the early 1990s. Under his leadership, MARGOT expanded to include several archival projects and databases that are used by scholars and students to this day.