CfP: Canada in The Making: 150 Years of Cultural And Linguistic Diversity

International Conference of the Italien Association for Canadian Studies, June 29 – July 1, 2017, University of Calabria, Italy

The Italian Association for Canadian Studies invites proposals for the international conference “Canada in the making: 150 years of cultural and linguistic diversity”. The conference aims at investigating the topic of cultural and linguistic diversity in Canada both diachronically and synchronically and welcomes theoretical papers and up-to-date case studies from the methodological perspectives of Language Studies, Literary Criticism, Cultural Studies, History, Geography, Law and Economics etc. The languages of the conference are English, French and Italian. 2017 marks the 150th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation, which was officially created on the first of July, 1867, with the enactment of the British North America Act. Since then, the colonies of Canada (subsequently divided into Ontario and Québec), New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that were united under the Dominion of Canada have gained political independence and expanded territorially to form the immense country we know today. From the very beginning, one of the traits that distinguished Canada was the coexistence of several cultures and languages, which has shaped Canadian identity ever since. Over the last 150 years, the First Peoples and those of British and French descent, Canadians from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds have contributed to redefining a national identity rooted in the concepts of multiculturalism and multilingualism. Over the 20th century such diversity has been turned into one of the foregrounding elements of Canadianness also from a legislative point of view, especially with the promulgation of the Official Languages Act (1969) and the Canadian Multiculturalism Act (1988), and the creation of Nunavut (1999). After 150 years, pluralism is still at the core of what it means to be Canadian even though (but also because) in the last decades the Canadian multicultural policies have been questioned and re-discussed in view of the challenges posed by the new Millennium.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words and a short bio-bibliographical note should be sent to this email address by 23 April 2017. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 7 May 2017.