Autor: GKS

Colloque interdisciplinaire, 12 avril 2018, Université de Sherbrooke

Dans le cadre de la 16e édition du colloque en littérature canadienne comparée de l’Université de Sherbrooke, sont invité·e·s étudiant·e·s, professeur·e·s et spécialistes des milieux pratiques de tous les horizons disciplinaires à se pencher sur la question anthropocène.

Dans son article « Écocritique et ecocriticism. Repenser le personnage écologique », Stéphanie Posthumus attire l’attention sur le changement de paradigme que connaît l’écocritique au tournant du 21e siècle. Alors qu’elle se centrait sur la nature et sur ses représentations littéraires (nature writing) dans les années 1990, elle s’ouvre progressivement aux représentations de lieux post-industriels, soulevant que les espaces intouchés par l’humain sont de plus en plus rares.

Ce renouvellement des pratiques écocritiques coïncide notamment avec l’apparition du terme « Anthropocène », renvoyant à l’époque géologique en vigueur depuis la deuxième moitié du dix-huitième siècle (Bonneuil, Fressoz, 2013). Celle-ci, caractérisée par un accroissement constant de l’empreinte humaine sur l’environnement depuis l’ère industrielle, fait état de l’influence des forces sociales et économiques sur la nature.

Il faut bien voir toutefois que la relation qu’entretient l’humain avec son environnement n’est pas unidirectionnelle. À l’instar des tenant·e·s de la géographie sociale (Di Méo, 2011; Massey, 1994), ceux de l’écocritique se penchent désormais sur les interrelations entre l’humain et l’espace, considérant que « le sujet écologique […] se construit comme un ensemble de rapport et d’interactions plutôt que comme une entité individuelle et isolée » (Posthumus, 2014). Or ces interactions procèdent aussi de rapports de pouvoir multiples reposant sur la classe, la race, le genre et l’orientation sexuelle; en rendent compte les études écocritiques féministes, postcoloniales et queer.

Deadline for proposals: Jan. 31, 2018.

Graduate School of North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, June 7-8, 2018

Notions of progress have remained pivotal to North American identities and academia. Discussions range from how “progress” may be evaluated empirically to whether the concept is a useful theoretical tool at all. In practice, visions for social and economic change are generally coupled with the idea of progress. Particularly in North America, competing perceptions of progress remain a driving force behind public and political discourses. Across the political spectrum, current debates often hinge on appropriations or differing interpretations of progress. These debates have intensified against the backdrop of technological innovation, sociopolitical upheavals, and programmatic schisms in progressivist movements.

The 11th Graduate Conference hosted by the Graduate School of North American Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin will explore interdisciplinary ideas of progress and consider their relevance across numerous fields of research. How is progress framed in various academic dialogues? What functions do concepts of progress and progressivism fulfill in North American societies? To what extent have American values promoted or obstructed progress? Which counternarratives exist? What are the contested theories and methods by which progress can be measured, if it can be measured at all?

As an interdisciplinary institute, the Graduate School welcomes abstracts for individual 20-minute papers from political science, history, economics, literature, cultural studies, and sociology, as well as related fields of research. Graduate students (M.A. & Ph.D.) and early career scholars are especially encouraged to apply.

Deadline for proposals: Feb. 01, 2018.

New Orleans, November 1-4, 2018

The ACQS is thrilled to announce an Emerging Scholars Colloquium to be held in conjunction with its 2018 biennial convention. With the participation of the Association Internationale des Etudes Québécoises (AIEQ), we plan to host a pre-convention series of panels for graduate students whose research touches on Quebec, Francophone Canada, and Franco-America. Acceptance into this colloquium is competitive, and the scholars chosen will benefit from close connections with other graduate students as well as from mentorship from senior scholars who will be affiliated with the colloquium. The scholars chosen, whom we expect also to attend significant portions of the full ACQS convention, will receive some financial and travel support. We further will encourage the best paper(s) from the colloquium to be submitted for publication in the peer-reviewed journal Québec Studies.

Deadline for application for the Colloquium: March 01, 2018.

Deadlone for submissions to the general conference: April 01, 2018.

September 28, 2018, Canadian Museum of History, 100 Laurier St, Gatineau, QC K1A 0M8, Canada

The Center for the Study of Canada at State University of New York College at Plattsburgh (New York), Fulbright Canada, and the Canadian Studies Program at Bridgewater State University (Massachusetts), in partnership with the Canadian Museum of History, invite paper proposals from all disciplines for a one-day colloquium entitled “1968 in Canada: A Year and Its Legacies.” The colloquium is open to proposals with a significant Canadian focus or explicitly comparative perspective. It will host a wide range of scholarly questions on the theme of Canada and 1968.

Deadline for proposals: April 01, 2018.

Swiss Association for North American Studies (SANAS) Biannual Conference, Nov. 2 and 3, 2018, Lausanne

North American Studies have always had an intense but ambivalent relationship to genre, as these narrative patterns have participated in nationalist processes as well as in narratives of resistance. Emerging at the beginning of the twentieth century from concerns about naturalism and realism, American literary scholarship after WWII avoided the politicized post-war atmosphere by making the ‘romance’ the quintessential American novel genre, while cinematic genres such as the musical or the Western contributed to amplifying the mythic dimension of American self-definition. Since then, American Studies scholars have pioneered influential work on melodrama, the American Gothic, the jeremiad and other genres. Concurrently, Canadian literature’s prominent nation-building narratives were framed as documentary tales of regionalism, historical novels and social realism before evolving into dystopian and postmodern fiction, most famously by Margaret Atwood. Thus, among the recurring questions posed by genre is the conflicted relationship between literature/art and ist social, historical, and cultural context. Terms such as ‘the political unconscious’ (Jameson), ‘cultural work’ (Tompkins), ‘narrative mode’ (Williams) and ‘performative’ (Austin, Turner) have been centrally determining, over the years, to help us understand how genres work and what they do. This conference therefore seeks to explore what roles genre plays in American and Canadian nation-building and counter-narratives, and how it evolves nowadays.

While the cultural concept of genre has been crucial in creating North American national literatures and identities, it shows equal potential for resistance, subversion and transformation of these constructed national characters. Thus, how does genre reconcile this seemingly contradictory potential for creating narratives of nationbuilding as well as counter-culture? How do feminist, queer, Indigenous, Latino/a, African-American/Canadian and Asian-American/Canadian writers use, appropriate, and subvert specific genres to resist and protest social injustices. How do they use genre to imagine alternative models or redeem social injustice? With Prof. Linda Williams (UC Berkeley) and Prof. Ronald Schleifer (University of Oklahoma), both experts on the role of genre in North American studies as our keynote speakers, this conference proposes to be a space for a renewed discussion about what genre has meant for North American studies as well as American and Canadian culture, and what its future might be.

See the full Call for Papers here.

Deadline for proposals: April 30, 2018.