Research

André Loiselle’s research has focused on two broad areas of study that often overlap: Canadian cinema and the relationship between film, theatre and literature. At the core of these two intersecting spheres of inquiry lies a single research interest in the tension between realism and artifice on screen. More specifically, Loiselle explores the question of how film articulates the interface between the unconstrained messiness of reality that the camera can record empirically and the controlled stylistic and narrative parameters that govern mainstream fictional cinema. This interaction finds a most instructive expression in film adaptations of plays and novels, especially within the horror genre, which is concerned with the clash between the realism of normality and the artifice or theatricality of the monster that threatens it. A similar interface is also at the core of much of Canadian cinema, where the lasting influence of the documentary tradition, especially unscripted direct cinema, often disrupts the carefully organized structure of narrative film.

Over the past thirty years, Loiselle has published six single-authored books, seven edited anthologies, twenty-seven book chapters, twenty refereed articles, two guest-edited issues of scholarly journals, as well as dozens of minor contributions in encyclopedias, magazines and other non-refereed venues. He has undertaken research on the theatricality of horror spectatorship, exploring the dichotomy between the artifice of audience participation in the film narrative and the reality of spectator response to horrifying images. He has also recently developed an interest the representation of leadership in horror cinema. He is currently co-editor with Liz Czach of The Canadian Journal of Film Studies.