Robert Gould
CES Associate Director

Rank: Adjunct Research Professor
Degrees: M.A. Oxford, Ph.D. Princeton
Email: robert_gould@carleton.ca
Phone: 613 520-2600 ext. 2113
Fax: 613 520-7501

Biography

Following university studies in England and the United States, Robert Gould began teaching and research in the German Department of Carleton University in Ottawa. After becoming interested in the theory and practice of rhetoric, he taught courses on the development of political language in Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This led eventually to an examination of contemporary discourses of immigration and identity in a range of European countries – Austria, Germany, Ireland, Spain, and Switzerland – as represented by political position papers and on-the-record public statements by politicians in those countries. In addition to being Adjunct Research Professor in the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, he holds a similar position in Carleton’s School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies. He is also Associate Director of the Centre for European Studies at Carleton University, an EU Centre of Excellence.

Recent Activities

Consultant for the project “Shrinking Citizenship: A Challenge to Civil Society and Participation”. This project is directed by PROVIDUS, a Latvian NGO, and monitors the language used by politicians, administrators and journalists when speaking of the minorities living in Latvia (December 2006 to December 2008).

Member of the Expert Advisory Group of the research project “Sprache und Identitätspolitik” centred at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland.

Recent papers / publications

‘The CDU’s Identity and Immigration Discourses and the Future of the European Union” Paper given at the research workshop “The Approach of Mainstream and Extremist Political Parties towards Immigration”, sponsored by the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (of the United Kingdom) and held at the University of Bath, 20-21 September, 2004.

“Das Gericht, die Entscheidung, die Politiker: Sprachanalytische Überlegungen zu Identitäts­bekundungen im Kopftuchstreit“, Kolloquium, University of Bielefeld, 9 May, 2005.

“Immigrants and the Nation: Political Discourses in Germany and Spain, 2002-2004” with Antonia Maria Ruiz Jimenéz, Departamento de Ciencia Política y de la Administración, Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología, UNED, Madrid, Biennial Conference of the European Community Studies Association – Canada, Victoria, B.C. 19 May, 2006.

“The European Paradox: Swiss Discourses of Identity between Dependence and Xenophobia”, in Language Ideologies, Policies and Practices: Language and the Future of Europe, ed. Clare Mar-Molinero and Patrick Stevenson, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

“Varieties of Discourse in the German Headscarf Debate”, Canadian Centre for European and German Studies, York University, 28 March 2007.

“New Populations in Europe: The German Headscarf Debate as Resistance and Accommodation”, Centre for European Studies, Carleton University, 24 September, 2007.

Identity Discourses in the German Headscarf Debate, Working Papers Series 15, Canadian Centre for German and European Studies / Centre canadien d’études allemandes et européennes, 2008.

“Speaking Immigration in a Globalising World. Establishing (Trans)National Identities in the EU: Ministers talking about Immigration” at the international conference “Transnational Europe: Promise, Paradox, Limits”, Carleton University, October 17 and 18th 2008.

“European Discourses in Inclusion and Exclusion” in the panel “Marginalisation and Legitimation of Societal Diversity in Political Discourses”, Baltic Studies Conference, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania June 12-14 2009.

«La ‘mort’ du multiculturalisme allemand : ce que cachent les propos chocs d’Angela Merkel» / “The ‘Death’ of Multiculturalism : What  Angela Merkel’s shock talk is hiding”, L’Actualité fédérale, décembre 2010, vol. 1 no. 2.

“The Rhetoric of the Right on Migrants and Minorities: Banality and Fear”, Inclusion Unaffordable: The Uncertain Fate of Integration Policies in Europe.  Ed. Maria Golubeva, PROVIDUS: Riga, 2010, 39-48.

Eds. Robert Gould and Maria Golubeva, Shrinking Citizenship: Discursive Practices that Limit Democratic Participation in Latvian Politics. Rodopi: Amsterdam and New York, 2010.

“Some Recent Discourses of Exclusion in the EU”, Shrinking Citizenship…, pp. 15-50.

“Managing Ambivalence and Identity: Immigration Discourses and (trans)national Identities in the European Union,” Joan DeBardeleben and Achim Hurrelmann (eds.) Transnational Europe: Promise, Paradox, Limits. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke: 2011, pp. 170-188.

“Slová a obrazy môžu spôsobit’ bolest’. Ako sa stavat’ voči obrazom a jazyku zameraným proti menšinàm” / “Words and Pictures Can Hurt: Dealing with Anti-Minority Images and Language”, Viktória Mlynáčiková and Zuzana Gáborová (eds.) Tí Praví … Zbornik prispevkov z konferencie o pravicovom extrémizme – Open Society Camp / The Right Ones … Open Society Camp – REX conference proceedings, Nadácia Otvornej Spoločnosti – Open Society Foundation Bratislava 2011, pp. 101-113 and 243-256.

“Headscarves and National Identity in Germany” at the conference “The Maturing of the Multicultural Experiment: European Challenges Coming to Canada?”  European Union Centre of Excellence, York University, 7 March 2011.

“’How much alien Religiosity can our Society take?’  Reconciling Conflicting Claims of Private and Public in Germany, Belgium, and France” at the workshop “Globalization, Illiberalism and Islam: Europe and Australia”, European Studies Centre of Monash University in Prato, 16th and 17th June 2011.

“Rejection by Implication: Christian Parties, German Identity, and the Power of Discourse”, Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, special theme issue:  Embracing the Other: Conceptualizations, Representations, and Social Practices of [In]Tolerance in German Culture and Literature,  48.3 (2012), pp. 397-412.

Recent Graduate Supervision

Ph.D. Thesis, University of Potsdam ( Germany)

„Zweitgutacher“ (external advisor and examiner) for the Ph.D. thesis at the University of Potsdam: “Tradition, Solidarity, and Empowerment: The Native Discourse in Canada: an Analysis of Native News Representations” by Steffi Retzlaff (2005).