The abstract submission deadline for the 2023 CAPS conference at Congress has been extended to January 15, 2023. You can find more details on our CFPs and Conferences page.

Check out our Resources page for job listings, including a posting for a Tenure-Track Professor in Gender & Women’s Studies at UNB.

CAPS will be returning to Congress, to be hosted at York University, from May 28 to 31, 2023. For more details on our conference, including the CFP (deadline December 15, 2022), please see our CFPs & Conferences Page. We look forward to welcoming cohosting keynote speakers Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Robyn Maynard alongside the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA). We hope to see you there!

EACLALS Triennial Conference 2023: 6-10 June 2023, Sorbonne Nouvelle University

“Imagining Environmental Justice in a Postcolonial World”

CALL FOR PAPERS

For the 2023 conference of EACLALS (European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies), we invite delegates to:

• bring postcolonial literatures and arts into conversation with environmentalism;
• investigate the power of narratives in all literary genres, as well as images and artistic performances, to evoke environmental injustice; and
• explore the breadth of what environmental justice may mean in postcolonial contexts.

We invite contributions for 20-minute papers or 90-minute panels addressing the conference topic. Please send a 300-word abstract for individual papers or 450-word abstract for panels, accompanied by a short biographical note on all speakers (100-150 words) and 5-6 keywords to EACLALS2023@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr by 15 October 2022.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Amanda Boetzkes (University of Guelph, Canada)

Elizabeth DeLoughrey (University of California, Los Angeles, US)

Graham Huggan (University of Leeds, UK)

Imre Szeman (University of Waterloo, Canada)

The global ecological and climate crisis is strongly linked to modernity and its history of imperialism, colonisation, capitalism, and exploitation of resources. Postcolonial literatures foreground these connections: key texts include Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist (1974), Judith Wright’s “For a Pastoral Family” (1985), Patricia Grace’s Potiki (1986), Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water (1999), Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2005), Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (2006), Helon Habila’s Oil on Water (2011), Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner’s “Tell Them” (2012), Uzma Aslam Khan’s Thinner than Skin (2012), and Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were (2021). These powerful stories reveal the colonial origins of ecological devastation and its dramatic consequences for the Global South. These texts have also prompted new theoretical concepts such as the “slow violence” of delayed destruction (Nixon 2013) and the “plantationocene” (Haraway 2015).

After a turn to ecocriticism developed in the anglophone world in the 1980s, with influential voices coming out of the Americas, a fruitful dialogue in the mid-2000s between the fields of postcolonialism and environmentalism (Huggan 2004, Nixon 2005) gave rise to postcolonial ecocriticism and its distinctive approach to environmental questions.

Postcolonial ecocriticism tends to focus on social ecology and its tensions, and considers nature in the contexts of human uses, built environments and degraded landscapes. Postcolonial ecocriticism sheds light on the links between colonisation and contemporary social, economic, and environmental issues. It pays heed to ways in which human exploitation transforms ecosystems, limits access to natural resources, and generates pollution and other hazards. It is wary of nostalgia for a pure landscape standing outside history, and conscious of the difficulty of representing the nonhuman environment (Cilano and DeLoughrey 2007).

To make these links between colonisation and environmental issues, postcolonial ecocriticism redirects customary postcolonial questionings by triangulating them with the relations between the human and the nonhuman. In doing so, it often favours a materialist approach, attempting to make sense of environmental issues by drawing on climate science, environmental law, geography, and other sciences, which it sometimes challenges. It is also aware of the local specificities of ecological issues linked to colonial history, while acknowledging their global context. As awareness spreads of the need to share the earth’s resources sustainably and fairly, shifting perceptions of the environment are changing people’s sense of responsibility and accountability, individual and collective. In this context, postcolonial ecocriticism reflects on better ways of inhabiting the world and promoting environmental justice.

In one of its best-known early formulations, environmental justice was what grassroots activists in the United States in the 1980s demanded in answer to the environmental injustice and racism that forces disadvantaged, vulnerable, racialised populations to bear the brunt of environmental degradation and pollution (Holifield, Chakraborty and Walker, 2018). Use of the notion of environmental justice then spread beyond the United States, in particular through the action of Indigenous peoples and the development of ideas related to social ecology, such as the “environmentalism of the poor” (Martínez-Alier 2002), social justice, and climate justice.

Topics and approaches can include, but are not limited to:

– eco-injustice and race / ethnicity

– eco-injustice and indigeneity

– eco-injustice and poverty / marginality

– environmental justice discourse and literary genre

– the language of environmental justice discourse

– the rhetoric of “toxic discourse” / “toxic politics”

– environmental justice, monolingualism, and translation issues

– environmental justice in relation to local and global contexts

– environmental justice in comparative context

– environmental justice and:

aesthetics

affect

artistic activism (“arctivism”)

capitalism

climate justice

conservation / discourses of purity / “postcolonial pastoral”

decoloniality

ecofeminism

human rights

interdisciplinarity

intersectionality

materialist approaches

multispecies justice

nature protection

neocolonialism / “toxic imperialism”

pedagogy

petrocultures

science

the nonhuman

the writer activist

tourism

transnationalism

Scientific committee: Aline Bergé (Sorbonne Nouvelle), Kathie Birat (U. of Lorraine), Jaine Chemmachery (Sorbonne U.), Cédric Courtois (U. of Lille), Xavier Garnier (Sorbonne Nouvelle), Fiona McCann (U. of Lille), Marie Mianowski (U. Grenoble Alpes), Claire Omhovère (U. Paul Valéry – Montpellier), Alexandra Poulain (Sorbonne Nouvelle), and Kerry-Jane Wallart (U. of Orléans).

For more information, please contact Christine Lorre-Johnston (Sorbonne Nouvelle, convener) at: EACLALS2023@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr

Miriam Mabrouk (University of Alberta) wins the 2022 CAPS Graduate Student Presentation Prize for the paper “‘The Moment is a Wound’: Perpetual Temporality of War and Occupation in Sinan Antoon’s The Book of Collateral Damage.“

Congratulations to Miriam Mabrouk, PhD Candidate in English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, for winning this year’s Graduate Student Presentation Prize. Congratulations also to the runners-up on on this year’s panel, Jumoke Verissimo (University of Alberta), Jonathan Nash (University of Victoria), and Thomas Hanson (Brock University). All panelists delivered compelling and original papers, which collectively made for one of the highlights of this year’s conference.

For more details, please see the judges’ comments below. Read more ›

Trent University invites applications for a one-year Limited Term Appointment in Racial Justice, Literature, and Culture in the Department of English Literature at the rank of Assistant Professor, starting August 15, 2021. Please note that this position is subject to budgetary approval.
Candidates for this position should have teaching experience and published or developing research in fields such as critical race theory, social justice, and diasporic, post-colonial, and/or global south literatures and cultures.

The candidate will be expected to teach one course during the summer term of 2022, in addition to teaching a course load of 3/3 in the regular academic sessions. Candidates should also have experience teaching introductory literature courses. This is a teaching intensive position and a record of excellence in teaching is expected. Courses to be taught will include an introductory level English literature course, ENGL 2703H “Literature and Social Justice,” ENGL 3605H “Race, Ethnicity, and Literature,” and ENGL 4451 “Postcolonial Texts.” Courses taught could also include several from among ENGL 3307H “In the Borderlands: Latino/Latina US Literature,” ENGL 3309H “African American Literature,” ENGL 3451 “Contemporary African Literature,” ENGL/CAST/INDG 3481 “Indigenous Fiction,” ENGL/CAST/INDG “Indigenous Poetry,” and ENGL 3707H “Literature and Globalization.”

Candidates are expected to have a completed PhD in English by the time of appointment or soon after is preferred. Preference will be given to candidates who self-identify as racialized (visible minority) and/or Indigenous who demonstrate an understanding of systemic racism in their research and teaching.

Candidates are invited to submit applications as PDF format via email to englishjobs@trentu.ca clearly indicating the application is for Racial Justice, Literature, and Culture. Applications should include a covering letter identifying the position for which the candidate is applying and detailing the candidate’s suitability for the position, including the relevance of the candidate’s research and teaching experience; a full curriculum vitae showing qualifications, previous experience, the names and complete contact information (including email addresses and phone numbers) of two academic referees, and confirmation to legally work in Canada; and evidence of excellence in teaching such as sample syllabuses, a teaching philosophy statement, peer evaluations of teaching, and evidence of professional development. Applicants should also provide a statement of their experience/s promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion in learning environments.

Questions about the position should be directed to Suzanne Bailey at sjbailey@trentu.ca

Deadline for Applications: June 15, 2021

Trent University is actively committed to creating a diverse and inclusive campus community and encourages applications from all qualified candidates. Trent University offers accommodation for applicants with disabilities in its recruitment processes. If you require accommodation during the recruitment process or require an accessible version of a document/publication, please contact sjbailey@trentu.ca

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be given priority.

ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature is circulating a CFP on Postcolonial Affect to our members. ARIEL is a major sponsor of our conference every year, and a journal in which many CACLALS members have appeared. Consider submitting a proposal. Details below:

Call for Papers—Special Issue of ARIEL: Postcolonial Affect

The intersection of postcolonial literary studies and affect studies challenges assumptions in each field. On the one hand, postcolonial literature belies the supposed universalisms of Eurocentric affect studies, as they are articulated within the North American and European academy (cf. Sneja Gunew, “Translating Postcolonial Affect” [2020], in Affect and Literature). Reckoning with postcolonial affect means asking what is translatable and untranslatable about affective experiences across languages and cultures. It requires assessing the ethics of representing subaltern feeling and articulating frameworks for theorizing affects outside of U.S. and European philosophic and psychoanalytic traditions. Insofar as postcolonial affect means the racialization of affect, its examination operates alongside recent work in Black Studies that challenges racist epistemic assumptions about who is imagined to be the feeling subject in western thought (cf. Tyrone S. Palmer, “‘What Feels More than Feeling?’: Theorizing the Unthinkability of Black Affect” [2017], Critical Ethnic Studies). Bringing postcolonial literature to bear on affect studies creates opportunities to both critique the parochialism of the field and to multiply methodologies for understanding what affect is and does.

On the other hand, the breadth of affect studies as it has developed in the thirty years after the “affective turn” raises questions about the affects, feelings, and emotions that have been prominently attached to the category of the postcolonial. Postcolonial literary studies have often adhered to “negative” affects, such as trauma, shame, and disillusionment. Where they have taken up emotions such as happiness and sympathy, they have often been critical of how these feelings maintain an imperial status quo (cf. Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness [2010]). The recent exuberant diffusion of affect theory, however, into the fields of posthumanism, sensory studies, and environmental studies, among others, invites charting postcolonial affect anew, such that it is located not only in the relation of colonizer/colonized, but across human and nonhuman subjects, shifting diasporas, neocolonial markets, and postcolonial environments. Following Neetu Khanna’s recent provocations in The Visceral Logics of Decolonization (2020), postcolonial literary studies might then consider the contours of “revolutionary feeling.” It might ask: how does literature render the preconscious intensities of liberatory postcolonial worlds in the present and for the future? How are these narrativized as complex constellations of emotions and feelings?

This special issue of ARIEL explores postcolonial affect as a generative framework not only for analyzing the intimate workings of empire and the relational inequalities of global capitalism, but also for understanding how subjects survive and defy subjugation to imagine collective thriving. We invite essays on postcolonial literature that center the affective experiences and environments of peoples who are frequently marginalized within Euro-American affect studies, and/or that expand the scope of affect studies by showing how analyses of affect must account for histories of (neo)colonialism. Questions we ask include: What are the methodological possibilities and challenges of bridging postcolonial and affect studies? How might postcolonial affect disrupt nationalist and neoliberal discourses of progress and development that perpetuate exploitation? How does postcolonial affect enable critique of the lived immiserations of empire? What are the affects of postcolonial futurity?

Please submit abstracts of 300-500 words by August 1, 2021 to the guest editors, Katherine Hallemeier (katherine.hallemeier@okstate.edu) and Jeremy De Chavez (jeremydechavez@um.edu.mo). The guest editors will review abstracts and invite full essays (6,000-9,000 words) for submission by January 15, 2022.

Are you presenting a paper, chairing a session, or attending an event at this year’s CACLALS conference on June 7-11, 2021? If so, feel free to take a look at our updated best practices document for chairs, panelists, and audience members. It includes information on how to run a session on Zoom, and common issues that might come up during a panel.

Remember, panels this year are capped at 60 minutes, so it’s very important that chairs, panelists, and audience members respect the time limits of 10 minutes (15 minutes max) per presentation and 60 minutes per panel.

Dear CACLALS Members,

Please find a draft program for our upcoming virtual, independent conference here. You should have, by now, received information about our upcoming conference by email. Our CACLALS events will be held from June 7 to 11, 2021. Also, the fees and registration information for the conference is available below.

Please note that, in support of the recommendations by the Congress EDID committee and the BCSA, we are making our conference FREE for Black and Indigenous student members, as well as Black and Indigenous sessional faculty. If this applies to you and you would like to register, please email the CACLALS Treasurer, Jesse Arseneault, at treasurer@caclals.ca.

There are four registration tiers:

• Students and sessional faculty who are Black and/or Indigenous   FREE
• Student members                                                                            $10
• Faculty members                                                                             $30
• Non-members                                                                                  $50

Those who register will receive a confirmation email within 24 hours upon receipt of payment, and will be sent the links to access our virtual events in the week preceding the start of the conference.

There are two methods of payment for conference registration fees:

1. E-transfer: Please send the appropriate amount for your conference registration via e-transfer to treasurer@caclals.ca. We have requested that you use a specific password for these transfers, which you can find in the email you received containing registration information.
2. Posted Cheque: Please mail a cheque to the treasurer at the following address, ensuring that your check arrives no later than June 4, 2021:

CACLALS
c/o Jesse Arseneault
9 ½ Elizabeth St.
St. Catharines, ON
L2R 2K8
CANADA

Please note that, if you are presenting a paper at the conference, to appear on the final program, you must also have an active, paid CACLALS membership. To update your membership, please visit our membership page on the website.

We look forward to seeing you at the conference!

Sincerely,
The CACLALS Executive