Kategorie: Aktuelles

26-28 April 2018, Mount Allison University & Université de Moncton
Second and Last Call

This conference emerges from the growing sense that women who were writing in English and French across Canada from the end of the 1960s through the 1970s and into the early 1980s are poised to be recovered or recontextualized by our scholarly community. This period was seminal for the women’s movement and also for literature and literary criticism in Canada. As many literary scholars active in the 1970s reach the pinnacles of their careers, and as a younger generation researches that lively feminist period, it seems timely to come together to revisit this unique era.

Certainly, there are classics from the period that are alive and well in classrooms across the country. Atwood’s Surfacing (1972), alluded to in our conference title, is one example. We might also think of Anne Hébert’s Kamouraska (1970), Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed (1973), or Marian Engel’s Bear (1976). In addition there has been sustained and renewed interest in figures such as Claire Martin, Jane Rule, and Phyllis Webb. But what about lesser-known writers who were part of this vanguard of literary feminism? How might we remember and re-theorize texts like Constance Beresford-Howe’s The Book of Eve (1973) or the early poems of B.C. Indigenous writer Mahara Allbrett (formerly Skyros Bruce)? What about writers whose voices were marginalized at the time, whose work could be uncovered today?

Beyond particular writers and books, we wish to reflect more broadly on the literary and academic „scenes“ of the period in relation to writing and gender. The 1970s saw the founding of Women’s Press, La Nouvelle barre du jour, and Fireweed, and yet Barbara Godard recalled the „shock and incomprehension that greeted those first feminist critical analyses“ at literary conferences of the early 1980s („Women of Letters (Reprise)“ 260-261 in Collaboration in the Feminine). We look forward to critical reminiscences and historicized reconstructions of what it was like to be a feminist critic, writer, teacher, or student during this time.

To this end, the conference will feature special round-table keynote sessions with noted scholars and critics invited to reflect on and discuss women writers and writing of the late 1960s, the 1970s, and the early 1980s in Canada, and critical literary and cultural developments during the period. Please check the conference website from time to time for updates on confirmed keynote participants.

We invite proposals on any topic related to our conference theme. Here are some examples:

• Revisiting texts by writers such as: Adele Wiseman, Helen Weinzweig, Bronwen Wallace, Aritha van Herk, Audrey Thomas, Donna Smyth, Carol Shields, Libby Scheier, Suzanne Paradis, Libby Oughton, Alice Munro, Mary di Michele, Claire Martin, Joyce Marshall, Louise Maheux-Forcier, Andrée Maillet, Gwendolyn MacEwan, Pat Lowther, Margaret Laurence, Betty Lambert, Anne Hébert, Madeleine Gagnon, Diane Giguère, Mavis Gallant, Sylvia Fraser, Marian Engel, Solange Chaput-Rolland, Joan Clark, Adrienne Choquette, Maria Campbell, Denise Boucher, Monique Bosco, Constance Beresford-Howe, Joan Barfoot, Jeanette Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, etc…
• Recovering works by writers currently unknown
• The importance of this period for Indigenous women writers
• The work of researching women writers of this era: archival research, obscure texts, logistics, permissions, etc.
• The interconnectedness of “second wave” feminist activism and literature across Canada
• The literary industry at the time: feminist journals, publishers, reviews, magazines (examples such as Tessera, La Vie en Rose, F.Lip, Les Editions du Remue-ménage, among others)
• The impact of feminist scholars and critics
• Gender and literary events (readings, conferences, festivals) of the time

Proposals of 300 words, accompanied by a title, 50-75 word abstract, and a short biographical note
(~100 words) are welcome in English or French and for a variety of presentation formats.

• Organized panel: participants present 15 minute papers on a chaired panel topic
• Seminar workshop: participants complete their papers in advance and distribute them to other seminar participants prior to the conference. Participants offer 10 minute reflections responding to the papers, noting connections or tensions between them. Open discussion follows.
• Pecha Kucha: participants present a brief visual representation of their research, following
• Pecha Kucha guidelines (i.e. 20 slides x 20 seconds each)
• Creative session: participants read short excerpts from works in the conference time period, with a brief response comment on the selection.

Deadline for proposals: August 1, 2017. Please submit to Resurfacing@mta.ca

Reminder: The CfP for our 39th Annual Conference is still open until May 29, 2017!

39th Annual Conference of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-speaking Countries (GKS), February 16 – 18, 2018, Hotel am Badersee, Grainau, Germany

The Association for Canadian Studies in German-speaking Countries aims to increase and disseminate a scholarly understanding of Canada. Its work is facilitated primarily through seven disciplinary sections, but it is decidedly multidisciplinary in outlook and seeks to explore avenues and topics of, and through transdisciplinary exchange. For its 2018 annual conference, the Association thus invites papers from any discipline that speak to the conference theme of „GeschichteN – HiStories – HistoireS“ with a Canadian or comparative focus. (Papers can be presented in English, French or German.) We are particularly – but not exclusively – interested in the following aspects:

Writing History and writing stories are as closely intertwined as telling about the past and storytelling. Histories try to reconstruct the past in a narrative form, and stories are hardly conceivable without references to the past or to various pasts. Both construct and contain narratives and with them social, cultural, ideological, and physical landscapes. Narratives tell us of people(s) and their interaction, with each other as well as with the physical and social environment they live in. And narrative constructions form a basis of any kind of scholarship.

At the annual meeting of the Canadian Studies Association, we will explore differences, similarities, and interdependencies of narratives, stories and histories along these topics:

1) Are Canadian (Hi)Stories different?

Is Canadian history and writing about Canadian issues significantly different from that of other nations? Do Canadian authors, scholars, journalists and historians have different voices, are they voicing difference? How has the story of two “founding nations” and the fact that French Canada (and then Quebec) has developed its own national historiography influenced the writing of histories? How have Aboriginal oral and printed historical narratives influenced the perception of Canadian history? Are Canadian authors, scholars, journalists and historians looking beyond the arbitrary boundaries of the nation state or boundaries such as class, gender, and race? What are the narratives and ideas of the Canadian self, what is the nature of assumptions, (self-)images, narratives, maps, plans, documents and texts that construct Canada?

2) Authenticity, Historical “Truth” and beyond

How “authentic” can Canadian histories, stories of and about Canada be, how subjective need they to be? How do historians, scholars and other authors deal with multiperspectivity, contested and alternative histories, heterogeneous and plural forms of history? How do they deal with historiographic metafiction?

What is the relationship between “truth“ and “alternative“ facts in Canadian history, science, politics, media etc.? How do scholars and authors reflect upon the selection of their topics, their sources, their medium of expression, their own subjectivity and the goals they try to achieve?

3) Voices not Heard

Do Canadian historians, scholars, journalists and authors “lend their pen” to voices of those not heard and marginalized, of peoples that have no written record of their past, and possibly rely on transmediation? By what mechanisms are certain peoples and societal groups excluded and how do they gain a voice? How have these peoples and groups “taken the pen” and started “writing back”? And what role do alternative historical, cultural, societal, political, geographical, economic and literary discourses play?

4) Inscribing (Hi)stories – Authorship, Memories, City- and Landscapes

Do historians, scholars and authors and their narratives matter, and if so, how and for whom? How important are the specific medium (print, radio/television, internet, art etc.) and the genre (oral traditions, auto-/biographies, speculative fiction, historiographic metafiction etc.) they use for the narratives chosen? What are the (hi)stories that shape Canadian landscapes, cityscapes, cultural memories and public spaces? And how are these (hi)stories inscribed in images, maps, social and institutional structures, landscapes and environments of Canada?

Confirmed keynote speakers are:

Franca Iacovetta (University of Toronto)

Andrée Lévesque (Archives Passe-Mémoires, Montreal History Group – McGill University)

Glen Coulthard (University of British Columbia)

Contact and abstract submission

Paper proposals/abstracts of max 500 words should outline:

– methodology and theoretical approaches chosen,
– content/body of research
– which of the four main aspects outlined above the paper speaks to (if any).

In addition, some short biographical information (max. 250 words) should be provided, specifying current institutional affiliation and position as well as research background with regard to the conference topic and/or four main aspects.

Abstracts should be submitted no later than May 29, 2017 to the GKS Administration Office (gks@kanada-studien.de).