Autor: GKS

43rd Annual Conference of the British Association for Canadian Studies (BACS), 19-21 April 2018, Senate House, London, United Kingdom

On the centenary of the end of the First World War, BACS’ 2018 Annual Conference will look beyond the war itself, at its impact upon Canada, engagement with and use of memory, and Canada’s place in the wider world. Change in the past century will very much be explored in the broader context of today’s Canada and its future. As per usual practice, therefore, papers addressing other themes in Canadian Studies will be very welcome, including those that look at the 50th Anniversary of Pierre Elliott Trudeau becoming prime minister and Canada’s role in the ever-shifting politics of 21st century North America. The organisers of the conference encourage people to form panels on particular themes that will be of interest, e.g. Indigeneity, Canadian history, Canadian politics, Canadian literature, Quebec, foreign relations, etc.

Full Call for Papers

Submission Deadline: Nov. 30, 2017

Call for Conference Papers for the 48th Annual Conference of the Urban Affairs Association, April 4-7, 2018, Sheraton Toronto Centre Hotel, Toronto, CN

In an era of globalizing forces, the region has become an important arena for collaboration and contestation, as metropolitan areas work to craft their individual identities. As they do so, questions of equity, inclusion, and sustainability remain. What is the role of diversity, difference and singularity of social actors and communities when it comes to forging visions of urban development that are collective in process, cohesive in vision and sustainable in implementation? Furthermore, as global financial systems exert greater control over national, regional, and local economies, what is the role of innovative and/or insurgent social practices in an urbanizing region? What are the most effective strategies to create environmentally and economically sustainable communities in a regional context? How will different factions of regional actors evolve given conventional relationships, increased social and cultural diversity, and the contradictions of competitiveness and solidarity?

The conference site, Toronto, has become an international model of alternative approaches to urban policies, particularly in the areas of housing, immigration/diversity, social equity, and environmental sustainability. The city anchors the largest metropolitan area in Canada, a region that has emerged as a global leader in innovation. But significant tensions underlie this impressive image. Rising socio-spatial inequality, escalating housing costs, racialized patterns of growth, and inadequate transportation infrastructure, all threaten the region’s future prospects. Furthermore, social, economic, environmental and political cleavages between municipalities comprising the Toronto region continue to emerge. Yet, there are also examples of collaboration in planning and policy at the local and regional levels that have created opportunities for community engagement, grassroots place-making and larger scale city-building. The conference provides an opportunity to both extend our understanding of the Toronto metropolitan experience, and importantly, to examine the broader topic of contestation and promise of collaboration in regions globally. Ultimately, the conference will allow us to examine a fundamentally critical question: how can policies and actions within a regional context promote the development of communities that are both just and sustainable?

Further information: www.urbanaffairsassociation.org

Abstract/Session Proposal Deadline: Oct. 1, 2017

Call for Article Proposals for a Special Issue to Appear in Transmotion

In the contemporary moment, the world has seen an increase in transnational and decolonial activist movements around indigenous rights. Idle No More, Rhodes Must Fall, the BDS movement for a Free Palestine and the Dakota Access Pipeline protests have all garnered international attention and trans-indigenous calls of solidarity. These politics have found their ways to literary productions, and many have dubbed the increase in Native American writings and the rapid growth in Indigenous Studies a cultural, literary, and academic renaissance.

In recent years, there has been an increase in Native American scholarship that attempts to consider separate and distinct histories, cultures and literatures in a comparative frame. In 2011, Daniel Heath Justice observed the number of Indigenous Studies scholars globally, “reaching out, learning about themselves and one another, looking for points of connection that reflect and respect both specificity and shared concern.” Jodi A Byrd, in The Transit of Empire (2011), employs the concept “transit” to describe the interconnectedness and continuum of colonial violence that implicated multiple peoples and spaces. In 2012, Chadwick Allen established the concept ‘Trans-Indigenous’ to develop a methodology for a global Native literary studies and, elsewhere, scholars have explored the potential for comparing Native American socio-historic perspectives with those of other colonized and oppressed people. In his latest book (2016), Steven Salaita adopts “inter/nationalism” as a term that embodies decolonial thought and expression, literary and otherwise, that surface in the intersectional moments between American Indian and Palestinian struggles. Similarly, there is a long tradition of Native American Indigenous authors exploring the transnational politics of oppression and the multidirectional movement of memory (Rothberg, 2008) in fiction, poetry and on stage: from Leslie Marmon Silko’s transcontinental decolonial revolution in Almanac of the Dead (1991) to Sherman Alexie’s reflections on Indigenous and Jewish experiences of genocide in ‘Inside Dachau’ (2011). These academic and creative projects cross the traditional disciplinary boundaries of indigenous, postcolonial, and settler colonial studies, bringing together histories and cultures that have rarely been considered alongside one another. But what, if any, is the relationship between these cultures? What is to be gained from studying, ostensibly at least, disparate literatures and societies in the same frame?

This special issue seeks to explore this new direction of Indigenous Studies, focusing on the significance of Native American, First Nations, and Indigenous American narratives in a global arena. We invite work that engages with historical or cultural narratives, spanning literature, art, film, or other modes of cultural production. Bringing together scholars researching Native American narratives in relation to diverse geographical and historical contexts, we hope to interrogate questions surrounding what comparative indigenous studies might look like and what potential it holds for transnational exchange on a global scale. A comparative focus foregrounds the distinct but interconnected experiences of (post-) colonial and disenfranchised communities across the world. A lens of this kind can expand and ask global questions on what it means to be native in specific colonial spaces and the ways through which one can analyze literary expressions that work towards decolonization in these contexts.

Further details: http://bit.ly/2vBgd6J

Deadline for Abstracts: Oct. 1, 2017