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Producing Canadian and Québecois Literatures at the Borders
full name / name of organization:
Association of Canadian and Québecois Literatures
This year’s Congress theme, “Borders without Boundaries,” encourages us most obviously to think about geopolitical borders. In the contemporary context of neoliberalism and globalization, such questioning is increasingly compelling and necessary. Numerous recent studies of Canadian and Québecois literary cultures (e.g., Casteel and Siemerling’s Canada and Its Americas, Khordoc’s Tours et détours, Wyile’s Anne of Tim Hortons) insist on the cultural and political urgency of examining contemporary geopolitical borders.
Indeed, many kinds of borders, both literal and metaphorical, matter or have mattered to Canadian and Québecois literary studies. As a means of recognizing the material turn of Canadian and Québecois literary studies, represented most obviously by the national book histories that emerged from English Canada and Québec in the last two decades, we might investigate how literal and metaphorical borders have contributed to the production of Canadian and Québecois literatures, both in the contemporary moment and in earlier periods. How have such borders nourished the study of literature and culture in Canada; or, conversely, how have such borders functioned as barriers to its growth?
Topics might include, but are not limited to:
-institutional borders: the organizing of Canadian and Québecois literatures in distinct departments (English and French); the institutional housing of Aboriginal literatures, etc.
We also welcome member-organized sessions on topics related to any aspect of Canadian and Quebec literatures. Calls for member-organized sessions should be no more than 200 words. They are due on or before 30 November 2013 and will be posted on the ACQL website.
All paper or session proposals can be written in French or English. Those who propose papers or sessions must be members of the ACQL by March 1, 2013. See the ACQL website (www.alcq-acql.ca) for membership and registration information.
Please send paper proposals (no more than 300 words) with a short biography and a 50-word abstract in Word or RTF to one of the coordinators listed below by 15 January 2013.