Kategorie: Veranstaltungen

Conference, 5 – 7 October 2017, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada

The year 2017 will bring celebrations of the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s supposed posting of his 95 Theses as a signal event of the Protestant Reformation, as well as celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Dominion of Canada. This dual anniversary will be celebrated with an exhibition of Reformation library treasures and an academic conference at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, jointly organized with the University of Ottawa and the University of Erfurt, and with support from the National Library and Archives of Canada, the Gotha Research Library, and the Embassy of Germany in Canada.

The exhibition “The Reformation – Translation and Transmission: Library Treasures from Germany and Canada” will provide a unique illustration of the worldwide impact of the Reformation by bringing together original editions and translations of Martin Luther’s works and other key Reformation texts from the Gotha Research Library, Saint Paul University and the National Library and Archives of Canada.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the academic symposium “From Reformation to Globalization in Canada, Germany, and the World” will explore the myriad and seminal forms of impact that the Reformation has had and continues to have on many aspects of religion, politics, society and culture in Canada, Germany, and in the wider world. Academic experts from many disciplines and community activists will explore these connections in panels and roundtables. The organizers also envision a graduate student workshop or seminar. The themes addressed at the conference could include but are not limited to the following:

• Spreading the word: the Reformation and the impact of new media on society from print to the internet
• The impact of the Reformation on philosophy and ideas, on worldviews (especially Western
• Modernity and secularization), on politics, on economics, on history, …
• Reformation and Migration
• Reformation and Justification: The Project “Not for Sale”, Resistance to Social and Ecological
• Injustice
• Religious Tolerance and Diversity in the past (Treaty of Westphalia, Augsburg) and current times
• Religion and Violence
• Reformation and Literature and the Arts
• Reformation and Language (Bible translations and the standardization of language)
• Dialogue: between Protestants and Catholics, inter-religious dialogue, religious-secular dialogue

The organizing committee invites proposals for papers (maximum 20 minutes) on these and other topics related to the conference theme, in English or French, as well as for academic posters. Graduate student participation is specifically encouraged. Proposals of not more than 300 words and a CV should be sent by email to Joerg Esleben by the submission deadline of 1 December 2016.

The organizing committee:
Catherine Clifford, Saint Paul University.
Joerg Esleben, University of Ottawa.
Louis Perron, Saint Paul University.
Myriam Wijlens, University of Erfurt.

38th American Indian Workshop, July 4 – 6, 2017, at Goldsmiths, University of London

Proposals are invited for the 38th American Indian Workshop, to be held at Goldsmiths, University of London from July 4 – 6, 2017. Papers are welcome from all fields and on any topic, though priority will be given to those that speak of the conference’s key theme.

This year’s conference will focus on the art of resistance and resurgence in the broadest terms. This includes manifestations of activism, political insurgency, conservation work, language and cultural revitalization, cultural resurgence and historical and anthropological analysis alongside more literal literary and visual representations and occasions of resistance. Resistance, similarly, may be interpreted broadly (to settler colonialism, extra-national imposition, and so on) or more specifically (to pipelines, cultural appropriation, and more).

A number of analyses focusing on the cultural and political concerns of Native American artists have been offered in recent times. Accordingly, many scholars working in the field of Native American Literary Studies have bevome interested int he connection between aesthetics and activism. The theme of the 38th AIW has been chosen in recognition of this fact, and the increased amount of attention that is being paid to the intersection between indigenous arts and contemporary tribal contexts. Papers will exmaine the complexity of the relationship between various artistic mediums and the day-to-day concerns of the Native artist; the relationship between the arts and community; and the aesthetics of resistance and resurgence. The organizers hope that speakers will examine those points of connection, continue the debate concerning the links between indigenous art and cultures, and suggest that resistance and resurgence are discernible within a broad range of work by indigenous writers, directors, musicians and artists.

Topics to consider may include:

• Art and acticism
• The art of Idle No More
• Visual and literary responses to NoDAPL (No Dakota Access Pipelines)
• Language revitalization
• Cultural conservation programmes
• Visual sovereignty
• Digital arts
• Mixed media responses to mineral extraction
• Literature and the art of rhetorical sovereignty
• Indigenous performance art
• Honoring the treaties
• Gameplay and tribal arts and languages
• Exhibitiing indigenous art
• Anticolonial/Decolonial art practices
• Cultural engagement work
• Visual cultures of protest
• Indigenising new media
• Graphic novels

The organizers may be in a position to exhibit a small number of artworks and therefore invite submissions from visual artists and filmmakers as well as writers and scholars.

Please send proposals of no more than 400 words + brief CV to Padraig Kirwan and David Stirrup by December 15, 2016. Speakers will be notified by January 15, 2017.

Chapter of the Americas Conference, The International Auto/Biography Association, Centre for Feminist Research, York University, Toronto, ON (Canada), May 15 – 17, 2017

The organizing committee invites proposal for the third biennial meeting of IABA Americas that will be held at the Centre for Feminist Research in Toronto with support form the US Fulbright Program. The conference will explore the multiple lines that gendered lives in the Americas cross, both physical boundaries and intangible crossings. The conference is dedicated to the celebration of the scholarship of Marlene Kadar, a Canadian theorist and critic whose contributions have dramatically changed the field by pushing the conceptual boundaries of what constitutes life writing and expanding its interdisciplinary methods of study.

The themes suggested below relate to and amplify Kadar’s research interests and are clustered around issues of gender and genre with special attention given to trauma and illness studies, archival methodologies, and transnational themes in the Americas. Potential subjects include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Gender in migration, dislocation, displacement, transit
• Gender constructions on and across borders
• Transnational and decolonial practices of gender and embodiment
• Intersectional interrogations of gender and sexuality with race, class, body size, health and ability
• Fluidity of genders, sexualities, becoming bodies
• Bodies in extremis, bodies in pain, medicated bodies, permeable bodies
• Creativity and illness; living with life-threatening illness; living with death/dying
• End-of-life interview and (auto)pathographic genres
• Intimacies of health care biopower
• „Traumatics“ (comics of medical trauma, violence, abuse, and war)
• Plasticity of life writing
• Hybrid forms and practices
• Multimedial and multimodal life writing
• Emerging genres (Instagram, selfie, I-doc, digital diary, etc.)
• Secret as a genre, unpublished secrets
• Pracitces of testimony in multiple modes (oral, digital, photographic, film, documentary, writing)
• Intersections of life writing and the life sciences
• Gendering and racializing the archives
• Sensorial and affective encounters in the archives
• Empathy, sympathy, and compassion
• Interdisciplinarity of archival work
• Methodological practices related to gender and genre; and
• Pedagogical intersections of gender and genre

Please send 300-word abstracts with brief biographical statements as email attachments to the convenors: Eva C. Karpinski, York University and Ricia Anne Chansky, University of Poerto Rico at Mayagüez by October 31, 2016. Decisions will be made by January 15, 2017. Please be aware that space is limited. Inquiries are welcome.

Website of the International Auto/Biography Association – Chapter of the Americas.

Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON (Canada), March 3 – 4, 2017

From Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes (1945) to La revue acadienne’s ironic suggestions of Chiac as a tool to „prendre ces deux solitudes-là pis en faire une seule solitude“ („Le Chiac est la solution“), the image of Canada as a country of two peoples or communities – English and French (or, more specifically, English and Québécois) – has become a commonplace. Recent scholarship has questioned the applicability of this image, as „the old epics of identity“ (Simon 2006, 8) are increasingly unable to represent the current multicultural and polyglot reality of Montreal and Toronto, historically the Francophone and Anglophone literary centres of Canada. In fact, Catherine Leclerc (2010) has argued, the two languages interact, „cohabit“ much of contemporary Canadian literature and occasionally blend to the extent that the very notion of a „primary“ language for a given text begins to blur. As the model of „Two [geographically specific] Solitudes“ begins to crumble, an equally dreary tension emerges, this time between the image of Canada as an officially bilingual-bicultural state and the more progessive ideal of Canada as a „varied, rich cultural mosaic“ („Canada’s Enthnocultural Portrait: The Changing Mosaic“). One could read this as a step towards greater diversity, and away from nationalism tout court, or simply as a reiteration of the Canadian n ational narrative, now a fortress rendered even more impenetrable by virute of its seemingly open gates and attractive welcome mat.

E.D. Blodgett’s article „Canadian Literature Is Comparative Literature“ (1988) notes that while Canada is home to a diverse range of literature – English and French, but also other, less grequently studied settler literatures (German, Icelandic, Ukranian, Gaelic et al.), as well as a wide range of Indigenous literatures – there are few scholars who „compare the Canadian literatures,“ and that most of these focus on only one point of comparison, namely „the relationship between the anglophone and francophone literatures of Canada, Comparative Canadian Literautre in the official sense“ (905). In light of the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation, the organizing committee invites contributions exploring Canada – or Canadas – in all the term’s varied meanings.

A few questions to consider:

• How might we bridge the gap between the „Two Solitudes“ of Canadian literature? In what ways does translation between the two official languages, as well as other languages, contribute (or not) to bridging this gap and other cultural and linguistic gaps in Canada?
• How can the language of multiculturalism/interculturalism/hybridity inform Canadian scholarship? What critiques or complications of this frame emerge in Canadian contexts?
• How do diasporic or minority literatures fit into the broader field of „Canadian literature“? How does the presence of these other traditions (Indigenous, Black, queer, immigrant, et al.) complicate our understanding of „Canada“ and „Canadian literature“?
• How do settler and immigrant literatures in Canada relate to their parent literary traditions (e.g. Chinese Canadian literature to Chinese literature(s) in Asia)?
• What is the significance of environmental themes, ecological criticism, and the notion of landscape in Canadian literature(s)? How does „nature“ fit into these questions of language? How do these literatures figure the interplay between „nature“ and „indigeneity“?
• What is the place of other solitudes – literatures that do not fit (or do not fit easily) into the paradigm of „anglophone“ and „francophone“ literatures? What is there to be said of the East and West geopolitical divide, a reframing of Canadian solitudes?
• How might we centre Indigenous experiences and consider Canada as Kanata? What is the relationship between Indigenous literatures and communities and the culture(s) of settler colonialism in Canada? How do Indigenous literatures work with/against, inside/outside of „Canada“? The organizing committee especially welcomes submissions discussing works in Indigenous languages.
• Where and how do Canadian ltierary and cultural productions fit in an international context?
• How has Canadian critical and theoretical writing been received or applied, and how might it be applied, beyond Canada? The organizers welcome sumbissions working with Canadian theoretical work in classical, medieval, or early modern contexts.

Artistic sumbissions that explore these themes and discuss or problematise these or related questions are also welcomed.

The organizers invite joint proposals for panels/roundtables as well as proposals for individual talks. They also encourage proposals for alternative and creative presentations that include a description of length and format. Proposals should be a maximum of 150 words (this limit is for the purposes of funding applications for the conference) and may be accompanied by a longer description of around 250 words. Individual talks sould be approximalety 20 minutes in duration and altogether, panels/roundtables should not exceed 90 minutes. If you are participating in a roundtable, please be prepared to speak for no more than 10 minutes in order to facilitate discussion. The organizers also request that you include a biographical statement of no more than 50 words. Please submit your abstract by 11:59pm on October 14, 2016.

For submission, please visit the conference’s website.