Biography
Eric Fillion (PhD History) is director of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) and assistant professor in the School of Languages and Literatures (SOLAL – French and Francophone Studies) at the University of Guelph. His ongoing work on the social and symbolic importance of music—within countercultures and in international/intercultural relations—builds on the experience he has acquired as a musician. It also informs his current research on the postwar cultural public sphere in Canada, Quebec, and the Francophone world. His two main projects examine the emergence of the music festival phenomenon and the entangled sonic histories of diasporic social movements, with a focus on both intermediality and improvisation. Eric Fillion is the founder of the Tenzier archival record label and co-editor of the journal Critical Studies in Improvisation. The author of JAZZ LIBRE et la révolution québécoise: musique-action, 1967-1975 (trans. Soundtrack to the Revolution: Free Jazz and Leftist Nationalism in Quebec, 1967-1975) and Distant Stage: Quebec, Brazil, and the Making of Canada’s Cultural Diplomacy, he is also the co-editor (with Sean Mills and Désirée Rochat) of Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race, and History in the Life of Lou Hooper. Forthcoming via Temple University Press’ Insubordinate Spaces series, his next book (co-edited with Ajay Heble) is titled Ripple Effects: The Work That Music Festivals Do in the World.