Marc Lafrance
Biographic Data
| ID | 3585461 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marc Lafrance |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marc |
| FAMILY NAME | Lafrance |
| SIGNATURE | LAFRANCE M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Concordia University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0349-2031 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 98 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Men, Masculinities and Transnational Migration in the Canadian Context: A Scoping Review
Our paper examines how scholarly research on transnational migration has addressed gender identities, focusing specifically on the construction of masculinities among transnational migrant men in Canada. While research on transnational female migrants acknowledges their heterogeneous experiences of gender, research on transnational male migrants often presumes that their experiences of gender are largely homogenous. To fill this gap in the litera…
The fuss is only just beginning: Jordan Peterson and the mainstreaming of anti-gender ideology
In this paper, we show that best-selling author Jordan Peterson has become an influential promoter of anti-gender ideology, particularly in the context of rising radical right-wing populism. We demonstrate that Peterson’s promotion of this ideology has increased over time, beginning as an apparent defense of free speech in 2016 and escalating into a direct attack on trans people and gender-affirming care in 2022. Though his views on gender have s…
Engineering the Skin: Embodied Experiences of Healing from Acne Among YouTube Vloggers
We examine how 24 adult YouTube vloggers tell their 'acne stories' by means of videos posted on YouTube between 2015 and 2020. In doing so, we study the relationship between embodied experiences of acne and health-seeking practices, particularly as they pertain to managing the everyday life of the body, abandoning medical expertise and embracing lay knowledge, living with disability, and engineering an improved self. Overall, we suggest that the …
That is the skin of my brother’: Alterity, hybridity and media representations of facial transplantation
In this paper, I explore the 2012 face transplant performed on US recipient Richard Norris and how it was represented by the media as a 'makeover story'. Informed by press coverage from the date of the transplant to the present day, I examine a widely viewed and critically acclaimed investigative report that aired on CBS's 60 Minutes entitled 'My Brother's Keeper'. Through a close reading of both its form and content, I claim that the report's ma…
Sensing the skin: Acne Sufferers and the Dermatologization of Life
In this paper, we explore what we call the "dermatologization of life" and how it regulates the ways in which acne sufferers relate to their skin. We refer to these ways of relating to the skin as "skin sensing". Through an analysis of the online narratives found on the website acne.org, we demonstrate how the skin sensing bound up with dermatologization both converges with and diverges from biomedical understandings of acne in three key contexts…
Man Up but Stay Smooth: Hybrid Masculinities in Advertising for Men’s Grooming Products
In this article, we address the question of how masculinities are constructed in advertising for the burgeoning market of men’s grooming products. We present findings from a thematic analysis of all grooming product advertisements found in Esquire magazine from 2011 to 2013. Based on the results, we emphasize the ways in which these ads construct “hybrid” and “flexible” masculinities through combining symbols and narratives relating to bodywork, …
Interview: Cynthia Imogen Hammond and Marc Lafrance on Drawings for a Thicker Skin
In this interview, Cynthia Hammond sits down with Marc Lafrance in order to discuss the 30-year sketching practice that led to her exhibition, Drawings for a Thicker Skin, in 2012. In this practice, Hammond made small, quick drawings of the clothes she would need for trips or key professional events. As she explains, the drawings were not just essential to knowing what to pack; they were essential to being able to pack. While she never conceived …
Skin Studies: Past, Present and Future
In this article, I introduce the critical study of the skin in three parts. I start with a reflection on what makes the skin such a suggestive and, arguably, special phenomenon. I then provide a brief overview of the key works, recurring themes and ongoing debates that characterize the skin studies subfield. And finally, I end with a presentation of the articles that make up Body and Society's special issue on the skin, taking care to highlight h…
Skin Work: Understanding the Embodied Experience of Acne
In this article, we carry out a four-part study of why and how those with acne work on their skin. In the first part, we engage extensively with the clinical literature and reflect critically on what it has to offer. In the second part, we present our notion of 'skin work' and how it allows for a consideration of how acne sufferers relate reflexively to the surface of their bodies. In the third part, we discuss our data - which consists of over 2…
Race, gender, and the Billboard Top 40 charts between 1997 and 2007
An earlier study published in Popular Music and Society examined the gender-related trends on the Billboard Hot 100 music charts between 1997 and 2007 (Lafrance, Worcester, and Burns). Taking frequency distributions as indicators of gender equality, the authors found that male hits on both the sales and the airplay charts outnumbered female hits by a wide margin. More specifically, their findings demonstrated that male artists had more extreme hi…
Finding Love in Hopeless Places: Complex Relationality and Impossible Heterosexuality in Popular Music Videos by Pink and Rihanna
This paper presents an interpretive approach to music video analysis that engages with critical scholarship in the areas of popular music studies, gender studies and cultural studies. Two key examples-Pink's pop video "Try" and Rihanna's electropop video "We Found Love"-allow us to examine representations of complex human relationality and the paradoxical challenges of heterosexuality in late modernity. We explore Zygmunt Bauman's notion of "liqu…
Life Lessons: Learning About What It Means to Be Fat in the North American Mass Media
In this article, we argue that mass media representations of obesity operate biopedagogically and, in doing so, teach viewers how to think and feel about what it means to be fat. These teachings are what we call 'life lessons'-that is, lessons aimed at instructing viewers in how to relate to both their own bodies and the bodies of others-and are readily discernible in a wide variety of magazines, radio segments, and television shows. We suggest t…
Gender and the Billboard Top 40 Charts between 1997 and 2007
In this paper, we examine the gender-related trends on the Billboard Top 40 charts between 1997 and 2007. Building on similar statistical studies (Wells, "Women in Popular Music," "Women on the Pop Charts," "Nationality") our study aims to answer two questions: first, does the number of hit songs by male artists continue to exceed the number of hit songs by female artists as we move from the late 1990s into the early post-millennium; and, second,…
Confessions of the flesh and biopedagogies: Discursive constructions of obesity on Nip/Tuck
Informed by the work of Michel Foucault, the authors discuss the Nip/Tuck episode entitled "Momma Boone" and how it discursively constructs "obesity". They show how this popular media text can be understood as a crystallisation of the dominant discourse surrounding fat bodies. In the process, how the episode can be seen as a "biopedagogy" that instructs its viewers in how to think and feel about the fat body is examined. Foucault's formulation of…
Skin and the Self: Cultural Theory and Anglo-American Psychoanalysis
In recent years, a number of cultural theorists have made important contributions to the study of the body's surface. Despite their importance, however, none of these contributions provides us with a systematic framework for understanding why the body's surface - its skin - matters to the extent that it does. In this article, I seek to provide such a framework and, in doing so, to shed light on why the skin and the self seem to share a special an…
Embodied Subjectivities in the Lyrical and Musical Expression of PJ Harvey and Björk
Alternative female artists PJ Harvey and Björk negotiate themes of embodied female subjectivity not only as cultural concepts, but also as musical forms; their lyrical themes are crafted within a comprehensive network of creative textual and musical expression. This music challenges the analyst to explore systematically and describe coherently the links between the lived and embodied experiences developed in the song lyrics and the sonic and expr…
Embodying the subject: Feminist theory and contemporary clinical psychoanalysis
This paper presents a three-part reflection on the status of the lived body in feminist theory. In the first part, I argue that many influential feminist arguments have neglected questions of embodied experience. In the second part, I introduce the work of five clinically grounded psychoanalysts - Esther Bick, Frances Tustin, Donald Meltzer, Thomas Ogden and Didier Anzieu - while showing that it has much to offer those interested in making a crit…
Bibliographie d’histoire de l’Amérique française
les notices qui n'ont pas t releves car la Revue n'a pas publi de bibliographie de 1992 1994. Nous sommes encore en priode de rodage puisque notre bibliographie s'alimente maintenant diverses banques de donnes. D'ici quelques numros, elle devrait tre plus complte et ne comporter que des notices rcentes
Art militaire et technique de guerre: Le fort de Chambly de 1710-1711
En moins de cinquante ans, le fort de Chambly, considr en 1712 comme le rempart du Canada du cost d'en haut, devient, l'poque de la guerre de Sept Ans, un mauvais fort, une misrable bicoque 1 . Les historiens ont fait la mme remarque. Suite et Malchelosse s'exclament au sujet de la construction du fort: Rien de pareil n'existait dans l'Amrique du Nord, pas mme Qubec 2 , alors que Stanley, valuant le fort de l'poque de la guerre de Succession d'Au…
Chronique de la recherche
Skin Studies: Past, Present and Future
In this article, I introduce the critical study of the skin in three parts. I start with a reflection on what makes the skin such a suggestive and, arguably, special phenomenon. I then provide a brief overview of the key works, recurring themes and ongoing debates that characterize the skin studies subfield. And finally, I end with a presentation of the articles that make up Body and Society's special issue on the skin, taking care to highlight h…
Skin and the Self: Cultural Theory and Anglo-American Psychoanalysis
In recent years, a number of cultural theorists have made important contributions to the study of the body's surface. Despite their importance, however, none of these contributions provides us with a systematic framework for understanding why the body's surface - its skin - matters to the extent that it does. In this article, I seek to provide such a framework and, in doing so, to shed light on why the skin and the self seem to share a special an…
Confessions of the flesh and biopedagogies: Discursive constructions of obesity on Nip/Tuck
Informed by the work of Michel Foucault, the authors discuss the Nip/Tuck episode entitled "Momma Boone" and how it discursively constructs "obesity". They show how this popular media text can be understood as a crystallisation of the dominant discourse surrounding fat bodies. In the process, how the episode can be seen as a "biopedagogy" that instructs its viewers in how to think and feel about the fat body is examined. Foucault's formulation of…
Skin Work: Understanding the Embodied Experience of Acne
In this article, we carry out a four-part study of why and how those with acne work on their skin. In the first part, we engage extensively with the clinical literature and reflect critically on what it has to offer. In the second part, we present our notion of 'skin work' and how it allows for a consideration of how acne sufferers relate reflexively to the surface of their bodies. In the third part, we discuss our data - which consists of over 2…
Man Up but Stay Smooth: Hybrid Masculinities in Advertising for Men’s Grooming Products
In this article, we address the question of how masculinities are constructed in advertising for the burgeoning market of men’s grooming products. We present findings from a thematic analysis of all grooming product advertisements found in Esquire magazine from 2011 to 2013. Based on the results, we emphasize the ways in which these ads construct “hybrid” and “flexible” masculinities through combining symbols and narratives relating to bodywork, …
Gender and the Billboard Top 40 Charts between 1997 and 2007
In this paper, we examine the gender-related trends on the Billboard Top 40 charts between 1997 and 2007. Building on similar statistical studies (Wells, "Women in Popular Music," "Women on the Pop Charts," "Nationality") our study aims to answer two questions: first, does the number of hit songs by male artists continue to exceed the number of hit songs by female artists as we move from the late 1990s into the early post-millennium; and, second,…
Embodied Subjectivities in the Lyrical and Musical Expression of PJ Harvey and Björk
Alternative female artists PJ Harvey and Björk negotiate themes of embodied female subjectivity not only as cultural concepts, but also as musical forms; their lyrical themes are crafted within a comprehensive network of creative textual and musical expression. This music challenges the analyst to explore systematically and describe coherently the links between the lived and embodied experiences developed in the song lyrics and the sonic and expr…
Life Lessons: Learning About What It Means to Be Fat in the North American Mass Media
In this article, we argue that mass media representations of obesity operate biopedagogically and, in doing so, teach viewers how to think and feel about what it means to be fat. These teachings are what we call 'life lessons'-that is, lessons aimed at instructing viewers in how to relate to both their own bodies and the bodies of others-and are readily discernible in a wide variety of magazines, radio segments, and television shows. We suggest t…
Embodying the subject: Feminist theory and contemporary clinical psychoanalysis
This paper presents a three-part reflection on the status of the lived body in feminist theory. In the first part, I argue that many influential feminist arguments have neglected questions of embodied experience. In the second part, I introduce the work of five clinically grounded psychoanalysts - Esther Bick, Frances Tustin, Donald Meltzer, Thomas Ogden and Didier Anzieu - while showing that it has much to offer those interested in making a crit…
Sensing the skin: Acne Sufferers and the Dermatologization of Life
In this paper, we explore what we call the "dermatologization of life" and how it regulates the ways in which acne sufferers relate to their skin. We refer to these ways of relating to the skin as "skin sensing". Through an analysis of the online narratives found on the website acne.org, we demonstrate how the skin sensing bound up with dermatologization both converges with and diverges from biomedical understandings of acne in three key contexts…
Race, gender, and the Billboard Top 40 charts between 1997 and 2007
An earlier study published in Popular Music and Society examined the gender-related trends on the Billboard Hot 100 music charts between 1997 and 2007 (Lafrance, Worcester, and Burns). Taking frequency distributions as indicators of gender equality, the authors found that male hits on both the sales and the airplay charts outnumbered female hits by a wide margin. More specifically, their findings demonstrated that male artists had more extreme hi…
Chronique de la recherche
Art militaire et technique de guerre: Le fort de Chambly de 1710-1711
En moins de cinquante ans, le fort de Chambly, considr en 1712 comme le rempart du Canada du cost d'en haut, devient, l'poque de la guerre de Sept Ans, un mauvais fort, une misrable bicoque 1 . Les historiens ont fait la mme remarque. Suite et Malchelosse s'exclament au sujet de la construction du fort: Rien de pareil n'existait dans l'Amrique du Nord, pas mme Qubec 2 , alors que Stanley, valuant le fort de l'poque de la guerre de Succession d'Au…
Bibliographie d’histoire de l’Amérique française
les notices qui n'ont pas t releves car la Revue n'a pas publi de bibliographie de 1992 1994. Nous sommes encore en priode de rodage puisque notre bibliographie s'alimente maintenant diverses banques de donnes. D'ici quelques numros, elle devrait tre plus complte et ne comporter que des notices rcentes
Embodying the subject: Feminist theory and contemporary clinical psychoanalysis
This paper presents a three-part reflection on the status of the lived body in feminist theory. In the first part, I argue that many influential feminist arguments have neglected questions of embodied experience. In the second part, I introduce the work of five clinically grounded psychoanalysts - Esther Bick, Frances Tustin, Donald Meltzer, Thomas Ogden and Didier Anzieu - while showing that it has much to offer those interested in making a crit…
Embodied Subjectivities in the Lyrical and Musical Expression of PJ Harvey and Björk
Alternative female artists PJ Harvey and Björk negotiate themes of embodied female subjectivity not only as cultural concepts, but also as musical forms; their lyrical themes are crafted within a comprehensive network of creative textual and musical expression. This music challenges the analyst to explore systematically and describe coherently the links between the lived and embodied experiences developed in the song lyrics and the sonic and expr…
Confessions of the flesh and biopedagogies: Discursive constructions of obesity on Nip/Tuck
Informed by the work of Michel Foucault, the authors discuss the Nip/Tuck episode entitled "Momma Boone" and how it discursively constructs "obesity". They show how this popular media text can be understood as a crystallisation of the dominant discourse surrounding fat bodies. In the process, how the episode can be seen as a "biopedagogy" that instructs its viewers in how to think and feel about the fat body is examined. Foucault's formulation of…
Skin and the Self: Cultural Theory and Anglo-American Psychoanalysis
In recent years, a number of cultural theorists have made important contributions to the study of the body's surface. Despite their importance, however, none of these contributions provides us with a systematic framework for understanding why the body's surface - its skin - matters to the extent that it does. In this article, I seek to provide such a framework and, in doing so, to shed light on why the skin and the self seem to share a special an…
Gender and the Billboard Top 40 Charts between 1997 and 2007
In this paper, we examine the gender-related trends on the Billboard Top 40 charts between 1997 and 2007. Building on similar statistical studies (Wells, "Women in Popular Music," "Women on the Pop Charts," "Nationality") our study aims to answer two questions: first, does the number of hit songs by male artists continue to exceed the number of hit songs by female artists as we move from the late 1990s into the early post-millennium; and, second,…
Life Lessons: Learning About What It Means to Be Fat in the North American Mass Media
In this article, we argue that mass media representations of obesity operate biopedagogically and, in doing so, teach viewers how to think and feel about what it means to be fat. These teachings are what we call 'life lessons'-that is, lessons aimed at instructing viewers in how to relate to both their own bodies and the bodies of others-and are readily discernible in a wide variety of magazines, radio segments, and television shows. We suggest t…
Race, gender, and the Billboard Top 40 charts between 1997 and 2007
An earlier study published in Popular Music and Society examined the gender-related trends on the Billboard Hot 100 music charts between 1997 and 2007 (Lafrance, Worcester, and Burns). Taking frequency distributions as indicators of gender equality, the authors found that male hits on both the sales and the airplay charts outnumbered female hits by a wide margin. More specifically, their findings demonstrated that male artists had more extreme hi…
Finding Love in Hopeless Places: Complex Relationality and Impossible Heterosexuality in Popular Music Videos by Pink and Rihanna
This paper presents an interpretive approach to music video analysis that engages with critical scholarship in the areas of popular music studies, gender studies and cultural studies. Two key examples-Pink's pop video "Try" and Rihanna's electropop video "We Found Love"-allow us to examine representations of complex human relationality and the paradoxical challenges of heterosexuality in late modernity. We explore Zygmunt Bauman's notion of "liqu…
Interview: Cynthia Imogen Hammond and Marc Lafrance on Drawings for a Thicker Skin
In this interview, Cynthia Hammond sits down with Marc Lafrance in order to discuss the 30-year sketching practice that led to her exhibition, Drawings for a Thicker Skin, in 2012. In this practice, Hammond made small, quick drawings of the clothes she would need for trips or key professional events. As she explains, the drawings were not just essential to knowing what to pack; they were essential to being able to pack. While she never conceived …
Skin Studies: Past, Present and Future
In this article, I introduce the critical study of the skin in three parts. I start with a reflection on what makes the skin such a suggestive and, arguably, special phenomenon. I then provide a brief overview of the key works, recurring themes and ongoing debates that characterize the skin studies subfield. And finally, I end with a presentation of the articles that make up Body and Society's special issue on the skin, taking care to highlight h…
Skin Work: Understanding the Embodied Experience of Acne
In this article, we carry out a four-part study of why and how those with acne work on their skin. In the first part, we engage extensively with the clinical literature and reflect critically on what it has to offer. In the second part, we present our notion of 'skin work' and how it allows for a consideration of how acne sufferers relate reflexively to the surface of their bodies. In the third part, we discuss our data - which consists of over 2…
Man Up but Stay Smooth: Hybrid Masculinities in Advertising for Men’s Grooming Products
In this article, we address the question of how masculinities are constructed in advertising for the burgeoning market of men’s grooming products. We present findings from a thematic analysis of all grooming product advertisements found in Esquire magazine from 2011 to 2013. Based on the results, we emphasize the ways in which these ads construct “hybrid” and “flexible” masculinities through combining symbols and narratives relating to bodywork, …
Sensing the skin: Acne Sufferers and the Dermatologization of Life
In this paper, we explore what we call the "dermatologization of life" and how it regulates the ways in which acne sufferers relate to their skin. We refer to these ways of relating to the skin as "skin sensing". Through an analysis of the online narratives found on the website acne.org, we demonstrate how the skin sensing bound up with dermatologization both converges with and diverges from biomedical understandings of acne in three key contexts…
That is the skin of my brother’: Alterity, hybridity and media representations of facial transplantation
In this paper, I explore the 2012 face transplant performed on US recipient Richard Norris and how it was represented by the media as a 'makeover story'. Informed by press coverage from the date of the transplant to the present day, I examine a widely viewed and critically acclaimed investigative report that aired on CBS's 60 Minutes entitled 'My Brother's Keeper'. Through a close reading of both its form and content, I claim that the report's ma…
Engineering the Skin: Embodied Experiences of Healing from Acne Among YouTube Vloggers
We examine how 24 adult YouTube vloggers tell their 'acne stories' by means of videos posted on YouTube between 2015 and 2020. In doing so, we study the relationship between embodied experiences of acne and health-seeking practices, particularly as they pertain to managing the everyday life of the body, abandoning medical expertise and embracing lay knowledge, living with disability, and engineering an improved self. Overall, we suggest that the …
Men, Masculinities and Transnational Migration in the Canadian Context: A Scoping Review
Our paper examines how scholarly research on transnational migration has addressed gender identities, focusing specifically on the construction of masculinities among transnational migrant men in Canada. While research on transnational female migrants acknowledges their heterogeneous experiences of gender, research on transnational male migrants often presumes that their experiences of gender are largely homogenous. To fill this gap in the litera…
The fuss is only just beginning: Jordan Peterson and the mainstreaming of anti-gender ideology
In this paper, we show that best-selling author Jordan Peterson has become an influential promoter of anti-gender ideology, particularly in the context of rising radical right-wing populism. We demonstrate that Peterson’s promotion of this ideology has increased over time, beginning as an apparent defense of free speech in 2016 and escalating into a direct attack on trans people and gender-affirming care in 2022. Though his views on gender have s…
Sociology (14 works) · Art (13 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works)