Denyse Baillargeon was born on January 15, 1954, in Verdun, a working-class borough of Montreal that was amalgamated by the city in 2002. She is the sister of Diane Baillargeon, an archivist at the Université de Montréal.[2]
She completed her master's thesis in history at the Universite de Montreal in 1981 on the topic of the United Textile Workers of America (OUTA) and completed her doctoral thesis there on the economic contributions of Montreal housewives to the survival of working-class families during the Great Depression. This would later by published in 1991 by Editions du Remue-Menage under the title "Ménagères au temps de la crise" and an English translation published in 1999 under the title of Making Do. Women, Family and Home in Montreal During the Great Depression. It was one of the first works of contemporary Canadian history to rely solely on oral testimony.[3]
Career
Baillargeon was hired by the Université de Montréal in 1994 and her research focused on the social history of women. She has published on the Sainte-Justine Hospital and infant mortality in Montreal in the early twentieth century and the medicalization of motherhood by institutions of the state and Church.[4][5]
In 2012, she published Brève histoire des femmes au Québec, an updated companion work to the previous work of the Clio Collective (made up of Micheline Dumont, Marie Lavigne, Michele Stanton and Jennifer Stoddart), The History of Women in Quebec for Four Centuries.[6] Her 2019 book Repenser La Nation: l'histoire du suffrage feminin au Quebec, (translated by Käthe Roth in the same year as To Be Equals in Our Own Country : Women and the Vote in Quebec), provides a survey of the history of women's suffrage from Lower Canada to the late twentieth century.
In a collaborative project with Josette Brun and Estelle Lebel of Laval University, Baillargeon analyzed the feminist discourse within the television program Femme d'aujourd'hui (1965-1982) broadcast by Radio-Canada, particularly how the show approached salaried work by women.[7]
English translation by Yvonne Klein, Making Do. Women, Family and Home in Montreal During the Great Depression, Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1999.
English translation by W. Donald Wilson, Babies for the Nation. The Medicalization of Maternity in Quebec, 1910-1970, Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009.
1998. Hilda-Neatby Prize. Canadian Historical Association. For article "Fréquenter les gouttes de lait. L'expérience des mères montréalaises, 1910-1965", Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française.
1997. Guy-Fregault Prize For article "Fréquenter les gouttes de lait. L'expérience des mères montréalaises, 1910-1965", Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française.
