Kategorie: Veranstaltungen

International Conference, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, November 13 – 14, 2017, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

While the mission of CANADA 150 is to celebrate Confederation in 1867, this conference foregrounds the commemoration of this moment of Canada’s history with a look at the early exploration and mapping of the territory that now forms the country. Proposals for well-illustrated papers are sought that address all aspects of the exploration and cartography of these lands, from Indigenous sources describing the encouter with Europeans to European and Settler explorations ranging in date from the voyage of John Cabot in 1497 to the Treaty of 1763.

Themes that the organizers hope will inspire proposals include the contributions of Indigenous mapping and geographical knowledge to European cartography and reports; the role of geographical myths in furthering exploration; how the instructions given to explorers changed over time; the mapping of natural resources; exploration on waterways versus exploration by land; the evolution of the cartography of specific regions over time; and how place and mapping influenced Canadian identity and culture.

Please send the title and abstract (max. 250 words) of your proposed paper by March 15, 2017, to Lauren Beck and Chet van Duzer.

 

International Conference, oranized by the University of Silesia, Poland and the University of the Fraser Valley, Canada, April 26 – 28, 2017, University of Silesia, Sosnowiec campus, Poland

Confirmed Speaker: Tomson Highway (Cree)

„Storytelling is at the core of decolonizing, because it is a process of remembering, visioning and creating a just reality […] [it] becomes a lens through which we can envision our way out of cognitive imperialism“ (Simpson 89)

The first of the intended series of conferences dedicated to the exploration of the complexity of Indigenous cultures of North America and minor cultures of Eastern/Central Europe is a joint project of the Department of English and Indigenous Affairs Office, University of the Fraser Valley (UFV), Canada, and the Canadian Studies Centre, Department of American and Canadian Studies, Theatrum Research Group and the Centre for the Stury of Minor Cultures at the University of Silesia (US), Poland. As Canadian and Polish scholars and educators working in the fields of Indigenous, minor, and transcultural literary and cultural studies, the organizers propose that the first conference will explore the traditional and contemporary expressions of culture in Indigenous America, specifically Canada, and in the Eastern/Central European territory of Upper Silesia, specifically Poland, with a primary focus on the acts of resistance, survival and celebration of culture as enacted in storytelling, drama, theatre and performance (DTP). Performance is interpreted broadly including traditional and contemporary music and dance as well as festival events understood as modes of cultural storytelling. The organizers envision the event as a meeting of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars representing a variety of disciplines and Indigenous Canadian and upper Silesian storytellers, writers, artists, performers, educators and community members.

The organizer’s aim is to explore the richness of Indigenous expressions of culture in storytelling and DTP in Canada and Upper Silesia. They believe that the transcultural dialogue between shcolars, artists and educators of marginalized cultures will be an enriching learning experience for all, but especially for Upper Silesians, colonized by diverse powers througout history, whose most recent struggle for recognition, including the processes of cultural and linguistic revitalization, can benefit from such transcultural encounters.

The exploration of Canadian scholarship on Indigenous literatures and cultures, and especially the work of Indigenous playwrights, artists, performers, scholars/critics and educators is of great interest to the critics of minor/Indigenous literatures and cultures in Europe. The organizers believe that in spite of many differences between Indigenous cultures of America and minor cultures of Eastern/Central Europe, critical insights and analytical tools offered by Indigenous research methodologies, epistemologies and pedagogical theories can provide instructive, alternative ways of approaching the under-studied and under-theorized works of European minor/Indigenous writers, performers and artists. A panel discussion by specialists in this area will explore diverse perspectives on these complex issues.

Prospective participants are invited to submit proposals for traditional and non-traditional presentations that broadly address the theme of the conference. Submissions from graduate and postgraduate students at any stage of their research are welcome. The following list of topics should be regarded as neither exhaustive nor prescriptive:

• Re-reading and re-writing of history in DTP
• Poetics, aesthetics and politics of identity construction in DTP
• Storytelling, drama, theatre and performance as tools of decolonization and pedagogy
• Storytelling as a repository and archive of Indigenous knowledge
• Interrogating the concept of indigeneity: theorizing indigenous and minor cultures perspectives
• Indigeneity of Upper Silesia
• Transindigeneity and a dialogue of cultures
• Indigenous ontology, epistemology, axiology, and methodology and their translation into storytelling and DTP
• Use of oral traditions, stories,  culture and history to promote activism
• Inventing home through stories and performance: a decolonizing approach to DTP
• Performing history and re-visioning of community memories DTP
• The role of the storytelling and DTP in the cultural revival of Canadian Indigenous cultures
• The role of the storytelling and DTP in the cultural revival of Upper Silesian culture and language
• (De)Construction of cultural identity in storytelling and DTP
• Traditional knowledge and values in storytelling and DTP
• Indigenous/ local knowledge and traditional and contemporary expressions of culture
• Performance of identity and  language recovery and revitalization
• Language recovery and revitalization and identity construction
• Methodological practices of Native Performance Culture (NPC) as a possible model for the Upper Silesian expressions of culture
• Diversity of the traditional Indigenous forms of cultural expression in the contemporary Canadian Indigenous and Upper Silesian DTP
• Theories of affect and the enactment of Indigenous cultures in storytelling and DTP
• Traditional knowledge versus folklore and its performance
• Folklore and theatre
• The role of folklore in preserving Indigenous and minor cultures
• The condition of ritual in theatre – Canadian Indigenous and Slavic perspectives
• Contemporary storytelling methods in DTP
• The poetics of place and aesthetic values
• Poetic auto-creation and mythologizing of Indigenous cultures and landscapes
• Indigenous values and cosmologies and their translation into DTP
• Heritage tourism and storytelling
• Cultural festivals and their role in preserving and inventing cultures

With a comparative project in mind, the organizers are initiating new avenues of research related to the marginalized local/ indigenous/minor cultures of Eastern/Central Europe studied in the context of Indigenous cultures of North America. They hope this pioneering venture in will lead to a greater understanding of the Indigenous and minor cultures functioning within major dominant national narratives of Canada and Poland.

Deadline for abstracts:  December 5^th 2016; notification of acceptance:  December 20^th 2016.

Proposal submission address: 

(i) Individual proposals should be 250-300 words.
(ii) For panels, in English, or Polish, please send the title of the panel and a 250-word presentation explaining the overall focus together with a 250-300 word abstract for each participant.
(iii) Please attach a short bio to your conference paper proposal.

All files should be clearly marked with the applicants’ name. Please make sure the files are in the PDF format.

Publication: selected papers based on the conference presentations will be published in a refereed  monograph.

The conference website will be opened shortly.

Please submit your proposals to this email address.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

University of Silesia:
Eugenia Sojka
Aneta Głowacka
Sabina Sweta Sen
Rafał Madeja

University of the Fraser Valley:
Michelle LaFlamme
Shirley Swelchalot Shxwha:yathel Hardmann

8th International Conference Organized by SACS (Association for Canadian Studies in Serbia) and the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade, 22 – 23 April 2017, Belgrade

James Cameron, a widely acclaimed contemporary Canadian film director, defines the cruy of the filmmaking business in a nutshell: „I’m a storyteller; that’s what exploration really is all about. Going to places where others haven’t been and returning to tell a story they haven’t heard before“ (USA Today, May 24, 2013).

As if to confirm this view, on April 29, 2014, the first public celebration of National Canadian Film Day was organized, including widely popular screenings of Canadian films, panel discussions hosted by recognized Canadian filmmakers and numerous debates about Canadian films across the country. Due to a significant print and media coverage and even the recognition in the House of Commons, this inaugural event instantly became a huge success. From this day onwards, National Canadian Film Day has become an annual event held all across Canada with the main purpose of celebrating Canada through Canadian film. The organizers of this national event state that way back in the past it was the railroad that tied Canadians all together, whereas in th 21st century another kind of cohesive track is needed – film!

Inspired by the recent public recognition of film in Canada, the Association for Canadian Studies in Serbia (SACS) and the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade are pleased to announce the 8th International Conference hosted by the Faculty of Philology to be held in Belgrade, Serbia, 22 – 23 April 2017. It is relevatnt ot note that the title of the conference primarily refers but is not limited to films created in Canada and directed by Canadian directors. Any examples of films testifying to Canadian experience and made outside Canada by non-Canadian filmmakers are extremely welcome!

The organizers are pleased to announce that the confirmed plenary speaker is Janice Kulyk Keefer, a renowned Canadian novelist, poet and critic. She was short-listed for a Governor General’s Literary Award in 1987 and 1996. In 1999, she received the Marian Engel Award for a female Canadian writer in mid-career; in 2008, she was awarded the Kobzar Literary Award. Keefer taught literature and theatre in the graduate studies department at the University of Guelph, where she is now Professor Emerita.

Papers to be presented in either English or French are warmly invited from all disciplines as well as from multidisciplinary perspectives. In the general context of film, the Conference would like to achieve a clearer picture of contemporary Canada and its modern sensibility represented through this artistic medium.
The following suggestions for topics move from the very broad to the more particular and circumscribed, but of course in no way do they exhaust the multitude of possibilities:

• social issues (abortion, divorce, gambling, gay marriage, prostitution, marijuana and hard drugs)
• problems facing the Aboriginal People of Canada (Child Welfare Programs, Cases of Missing Aboriginal Women, destiny of native langs, history of residential schools, mythology)
• multiculturalism and ideology of democracy and equality in education, arts, sports
• Economy, globalisation and geopolitics: challenges and perspectives
• Class, race, gender, age, minority differences in the context of thnic and cultural diversity
• Canada: current political challenges (Temporary Foreign Workers, healty environment, identity politics)
• Canadian literature on film: adaptations, influences, developments, trends
• Canada in visual arts: theatre, photography, video, architecture, drawing, painting, performing arts, conceptual art

Contributions may come from the fields of films tudies, sociology, history, literature, psychology, economics, linguistics, geography, arts, architecture, social sciences, philosophy, journalism, etc.

Please send your proposal to Vesna Lopičić.

Deadline for submissions: January 1, 2017.

Plesase submit your theme, a 200-word abstract, your affiliation and a five-line CV. Please find the registration form here.