Curriculum Vitae
François David Prud’homme, PhD
PhD in Semiotics · Sessional Lecturer — UQAM, UQAT, UQO
fdprudhomme@gmail.com · vimeo.com/fdprudhomme · ORCID: 0009-0001-1460-6594· Download PDF ↓
Research Profile
My work sits at the intersection of semiotics, film aesthetics and critical studies of generative artificial intelligence. Trained in possible-worlds logic and in the theory of interpretive cooperation, I develop conceptual frameworks for describing the semiotic regimes that generative systems institute. My doctoral thesis addressed the aesthetic accessibility of possible worlds in cinema; my postdoctoral work extends the concept of accessibility operators toward that of real perceptual operators, with direct implications for the redesign of higher education.
Postdoctoral Research Project
Interpretive Cooperation in the Age of Algorithmic Semiosis
Mapping, dwelling, resisting: toward a semiotic redesign of higher education
The pivotal concept is Eco’s interpretive cooperation: every semiotic object is a lazy machine whose gaps call for the reader’s inferential journey. Generative AI performs the inverse operation, which I call reversed interpretive cooperation. Optimised to converge on an audience’s semiotic attractors, generative systems deliver an object that arrives already interpreted, its credibility immanent to its form. Peirce’s unlimited semiosis gives way to probabilistic convergence.
The project unfolds through three gestures. Mapping describes the semiotic regime of algorithmic objects: statistical attractors, premature closure, regimes of perceptibility. Dwelling develops semiotic silence and inhabitation as anthropological conditions of interpretation, structurally absent from computational semiosis. Resisting proposes the second inquiry (enquête seconde) as an operative protocol — an “algorithmic Blow Up” that turns generated output from destination into probe. The generative system functions as an explicator in the sense of Rancière’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster; the second inquiry is the counter-conduct that restores to the interpreter the position of one who searches.
Empirical work runs across all three gestures: generative texts and images interrogated for their dominant attractors, university cognitive interfaces analysed as real perceptual operators, and student production read for traces of the inferential short circuit.
Education
PhD in Semiotics — Université du Québec à Montréal, 2022
Thesis: L’accessibilité esthétique des mondes possibles au cinéma [The Aesthetic Accessibility of Possible Worlds in Cinema]. Supervisors: Sylvano Santini and Bertrand Gervais.
Bachelor of Arts — Université du Québec à Montréal, 2013
Minor in Classical Studies (2010) · Certificate in Screenwriting (2009) · Certificate in Creative Writing (2008)
Awards and Distinctions
Research and Creation Grant — Canada Council for the Arts, 2022. Practice-based research: writing of a novel.
Département d’études littéraires Fund Scholarship — Interdisciplinary Doctorate in Semiotic Studies, UQAM, 2020
FARE Excellence Scholarship, twice awarded — Fonds à l’accessibilité et à la réussite des études, UQAM, 2018–2020
Publications
Edited volume
PRUD’HOMME, François David (ed.). L’occupation des territoires nordiques canadiens par une force étrangère. Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, forthcoming 2027. Edited collection on Arctic security.
Forthcoming
PRUD’HOMME, François David. “De machine et de mémoire : remédiation sémiotique et auctorialité distribuée dans la cocréation visuelle par requête” [Of Machine and Memory: Semiotic Remediation and Distributed Authorship in Prompt-Based Visual Co-creation]. In the proceedings of the international conference Auctorialités augmentées en régime numérique, CY Cergy Paris Université and Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle. Submitted July 2026.
In Preparation
PRUD’HOMME, François David. “Reversed Interpretive Cooperation: The Model Reader Sedimented in the Machine.” In progress. Target journal: Semiotica (De Gruyter).
PRUD’HOMME, François David. “Semiotic Silence: Dwelling in Slowness, Indecision and Boredom in the Space of Interpretation.” In preparation. Target journal: Signata — Annales des sémiotiques.
PRUD’HOMME, François David. “Second Inquiry: Interpretive Counter-Conduct and the Redesign of Higher Education.” In preparation. Target journal: Learning, Media and Technology (Taylor & Francis).
Digital Scholarship
Glossaire de la sémiose algorithmique [Glossary of Algorithmic Semiosis]. Evolving digital edition, fdprudhomme.com/glossaire. Organised across three registers.
Books, Articles and Reviews
PRUD’HOMME, François David. Watchmen, l’aube d’une humanité. Montréal: Les Éditions Ta Mère, Pop-en-Stock series. [Philosophical essay, monograph]
Reviews published in Cygne noir, revue d’exploration sémiotique (UQAM). Articles published in academic and graduate journals at UQAM.
Conference Proceedings
PRUD’HOMME, François David. Paper published in Les variations Jarmusch, Lettres et civilisations étrangères, Université d’Artois, 2014. Proceedings of the international conference Le Cinéma de Jim Jarmusch, Université d’Artois, Arras, France.
Conference Papers
International Conference — Auctorialités augmentées en régime numérique [Augmented Authorship in the Digital Regime] — CY Cergy Paris Université and Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle, Paris, 2–3 June 2026
“De machine et de mémoire: semiotic remediation and distributed authorship in prompt-based visual co-creation.” Panel “Algorithmic Authorship: Delegation, Remediation and Figures of the Visible,” co-convened with Bertrand Gervais (UQAM).
93rd Acfas Congress — Emerging Research in Communication — Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, 15 May 2026
“The eco-visible is already here — eco-vision remains to be invented.”
Deleuze Studies International Conference — Università degli Studi di Roma Tre, Italy, 2016
International Bilingual Conference — The Cinema of Jim Jarmusch — Université d’Artois, Arras, France, 2015
Proceedings published in Les variations Jarmusch, Lettres et civilisations étrangères, Université d’Artois.
“Une folie du voir dans l’extrême contemporain” — NT2 Laboratory and FIGURA, UQAM, 2014
Co-organiser and speaker.
Teaching Experience
Sessional Lecturer — Department of Literary Studies and Screenwriting — Université du Québec à Montréal, 2018–present
Literature and Cinema · Reading the Moving Image · Semiotics · Film Reading: Film Criticism · From Film Noir to Neo-Noir · Reading Screenplays · Plot and Screenplay
Sessional Lecturer — Creation and New Media — Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Rouyn-Noranda, 2022–present
Film Language · Screenwriting · Film Genres · Directed Studios in Creation and New Media
Sessional Lecturer — École multidisciplinaire de l’image — Université du Québec en Outaouais, Gatineau, 2023–present
Semiotics of the Image
Teaching and Research Assistant — Université du Québec à Montréal, 2016–2021
Student supervision, workshop facilitation, marking and research support.
Creative Work
Writing of a novel — in progress, supported by a research-creation grant from the Canada Council for the Arts (2022).
Independent filmmaker, screenwriter and director — Montréal, 2014–present
Short films, documentaries and films on art presented in festivals. vimeo.com/fdprudhomme
Languages
French (native) · English (fluent) · German (intermediate)