Call for papers

Call for Papers: Canadian Identity/Identities and Global Change

The annual conference of the French Association for Canadian Studies (AFEC) will take place on June 8, 9, 10 and 11 in Grenoble. This event will be the opportunity to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the AFEC and assess the progress of Canadian studies since 1976, all the while analysing the evolution of Canadian society over the past 40 years.

Indeed, Canada has been playing an active role in the acceleration and increase in exchanges caused by globalization, a process that will be analysed by a study group including doctoral students specializing in Canadian studies on 5 and 6 November 2015  (http://canadatogether.hypotheses.org/1478). However, the country also has to face the consequences of events that concern the whole planet, otherwise known as “Global Change”.

If this notion of global change is widely accepted today in the field of environmental science and technology, other fields of expertise have just begun to analyze its effects, and this approach has opened up new perspectives on how to articulate events at different scales.

A conference devoted to this notion of global change could serve to link these fields and raise important questions on how Canada defines or redefines its position in a context of global change, and more particularly in the light of former representations of the country’s identity/identities.

Global change can refer to climate change, global economic recession, new energy debates, terrorism, the immediacy of information, and to their consequences, ranging from recent political standpoints and migration waves to the latest language and identity practices – including the fields of literature, photography and cinema.

Here are three guidelines for proposals:

-       Climate change and the environment:

• Will Canada be able to go on asserting its position in the world in a global context of climate change and become a country that will have to face a « third industrial revolution » (Rifkin)?
• To what extent is the image of the country as a protector of the environment changing, given the country’s decision to exploit oil sands and shale gas (Deneault)?
• What is the impact of climate change on the Arctic region and how does the country deal with such issues in the area (First Nations, natural resources, national security) (Nutall, Griffiths)?
• To what extent have contemporary environmental concerns changed how writers, photographers and filmmakers represent the environment, nature, other species and the climate?

-       Migration, borders and exchange :

• How can we assess the impact of global recession on Canada, on trade within the country and with its main partners, namely with the United States?
• How has the country redefined its foreign policy to respond to the threats of global terrorism? How can Canada maintain its role as a peacekeeper when the country is involved in wars alongside its American ally?
• What is the impact of global change (with its increasing waves of migration, internationalized conflicts and very first climate refugees) on Canada’s immigration policy, a policy that was formerly perceived as generous?
• Can a writer still be socially and politically committed in a world where authority is more difficult to identify and where porous borders are constantly shifting? Do such global changes encourage writers to reassess generic categories? To what extent has the altered image of the country affected contemporary Canadian (and world?) literature?

- Society, culture and identity; from one Trudeau to the next:

• What is the impact of global change on the latest identity issues in the country and to what extent have they challenged the pillars of Canadian identity (multiculturalism and bilingualism) that Pierre Elliott Trudeau defended so fiercely?
• In this context, what has changed regarding language and multilingual practices (Duchêne & Heller)? How can we analyze these changes in the light of the language policies of the “Trudeau years”?
• To what extent has global change exacerbated the social divides (Piketty) within the “just society” that Pierre Elliott Trudeau was hoping for? Has it changed Canadian society, politics and economy as well as the country’s future as seen by both Pierre Elliott and Justin Trudeau?
• How do artists represent the impact of globalization (issues related to regional and post-national identity, glocalization, etc.) and to what extent are they changing the country’s cultural landscape? How do they recreate their own identity (the positioning of identity (Hall), the statelessness of identity, post-national identity)?

Abstracts can be submitted individually or as a panel (group of 4 proposals around the same topic), in French or in English.

-       Deadline to submit abstracts (400 words) and short bio : October 30, 2015.

-       Notification of acceptance : November 30.

CONTACT : afec2016@gmail.com

Website : http://afec2016.sciencesconf.org

Selected papers from this conference will be published in an issue of the journal Études Canadiennes/Canadian Studies.

Références bibliographiques / Bibliography

AXWORTHY, Thomas S. et Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Towards a Just Society. The Trudeau Years. Markham, Ont. : Penguin, 1990.

BARLOW, Maude. Too close for comfort : Canada’s Future Within Fortress North America. Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 2005.

BOILY, Frédéric. De Pierre à Justin Trudeau : portrait de famille de l’idéologie du Parti libéral du Canada (1968-2003). Laval, Qc : Presses de l’Université Laval, 2014.

CLARKSON, Stephen et Christina McCall. Trudeau. L’homme. L’utopie. L’histoire. Montréal : Boréal, 1991.

CLARKSON, Stephen et Christina McCall. Trudeau. L’illusion héroïque. Montréal : Boréal, 1995.

DENEAULT, Alain. Paradis sous terre. Comment le Canada est devenu une plaque tournante pour l’industrie minière mondiale. Paris : Écosociété, 2012.

DIAMOND, Jared. Collapse. How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New-York : Viking, 2005.

DUCHÊNE, A. & HELLER, M. (eds). Language in Late Capitalism : Pride and Profit. New-York : Routledge, 2012.

FEENBERG, Andrew. Pour une théorie critique de la technique. Flammarion Québec – Lux Editeur, 2014.

FLORBY, Gunilla, Mark Shackleton & Katri Suhonen, eds. Canada: Images of a Post/National Society. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2009.

GRIFFITHS, Franklyn, Rob Herbert et Whitney Lackenbauer. Canada and the Changing Arctic. Sovereignty, Security and Stewardship. Waterloo : Wilfried Laurier University Press, 2011.

HAGLUND, David. Ethnic Diasporas and the Canada-United States Security Community. Lanham, Maryland : Rowman and Littlefield, 2015.

HALL, Stuart. Identités et cultures. Politiques des Cultural Studies, édition établie par Maxime Cervulle, trad. de Christophe Jaquet, Paris, Éditions Amsterdam, 2007.

HARVEY, David. The New Imperialism. New-York : Oxford University Press, 2003.

JOHNSON, William. Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada. Toronto : Douglas Gibson, 2006.

KAMBOURELI, Smaro & Robert Zacharias, eds. Shifting the Ground of Canadian Literary Studies. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012.

KRöLLER, Eva-Marie, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

NEW, William H. A History of Canadian Literature. 2^nd edition. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003.