CACLALS 2011 Program

CACLALS 2011 Conference Program

University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, May 28-30, 2011

CACLALS gratefully acknowledges that this year’s conference takes place on traditional Maliseet territory.

Saturday, May 28

9-10:15am Apology, Reconciliation, Redress in Canada and Post-National Space (Tilley 104)

Chair: Philip Mingay

Jill Scott (Queen’s), “Indigeneity and Apology: Where is the Aboriginal in Canada’s Apologies?”

Sophie McCall (Simon Fraser), “‘Unsettling the Settler Within’: Truth, Reconciliation, and Aboriginal Rights in Canada”

Brenda Carr Vellino and Sarah G. Waisvisz (Carlton), “Post-National Theatre of Redress: The Collaborative Ethics of the Steveston Noh Project”

9-10:15am Slavery Located and Reprised (Tilley 125)

Chair: Hugh Hodges (Trent)

Angelika Maeser Lemieux (Vanier), “The Intersections of Identity: Nation, Race and Class in Roger Buckley’s Congo Jack

Peter Walmsley (McMaster), “The Spectral Slave in Hans Sloane’s Jamaica

Rachael Wyatt (U of New Brunswick), “A New Take on the Postmodern Slave Narrative: Reflections and Inversions in Bernardine Evaristo’s Blonde Roots

10:30-11:40am Witnessing and Identity across Generations and Nations (Tilley 104)

Chair: Laura Moss

Jennifer Bowering Delisle (McMaster), “Witnessing across Continents: Second-Generation Nostalgia in the Age of Global Media”

Gillian Roberts (Nottingham), “Lawrence Hill’s Crossings: Continents, Coastlines, and Borders in Some Great ThingAny Known Blood, and The Book of Negroes

Heidi Butler (New Brunswick), “The Unhomely Maritimes: Immigration and Assimilation in Rabindranath Maharaj’s ‘Bitches on All Sides’”

10:30-11:40am Regions and Continents: Acadia, the Postcolonial North, and North America (Tilley 125)

Chair: Jennifer Andrews

Michele Lacombe (Trent), “‘The squatter’ and « la citoyenne à part entière » – La Sagouine among ‘the savages’”

Camille van der Marel (Alberta), “Unsettled: The Poetics and Politics of Ownership in the Canadian North”

Brenna Clarke Gray (Douglas), “North American Literature: The Case for Douglas Coupland”

12:00-1:00pm Congress Big Thinking Session (Kinsella Theatre, McCain Hall) Kwame Anthony Appiah (Princeton), “Society Matters: Why Should We Value the Humanities?”

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a world renowned philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist. A humanist with a vast oeuvre, Dr. Appiah has tackled everything from race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, religion, and nationhood, to multiculturalism. Along the way, he has critically examined and questioned the individual, our identities, and the way we interact and connect with each other. Dr. Appiah has taught philosophy and African-American studies at the Universities of Ghana, Colombia, Drexel, Cornell, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton and is currently the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He is the President of the PEN American Center and the Chair of the board of the American Council for Learned Societies.

1:15-2:35pm Keynote Address by Ian Baucom (Tilley 102)

Chair: John Ball Ian Baucom (Duke) “The Human Shore: Alterity, Enmity, Bare Life”

Ian Baucom is Professor of English and Director of the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University. He works on twentieth-century British literature and culture, postcolonial and cultural studies, and African and Black Atlantic literatures. He has authored Out of Place: Englishness, Empire and the Locations of Identity(1999) and Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History (2005), and co-edited Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain (2005). His current book project is a study tentatively entitled “The Disasters of War: On Inimical Life.”

3:15-4:30pm Outcastings: Bare Life and African Literatures (Tilley 104)

Chair: Peter Walmsley

Hugh Hodges (Trent), “Bare Life and the Beast of No Nation in Chris Abani’s Nigeria”

Alessandra Capperdoni (Simon Fraser), “Ecologies of Life: Nuruddin Farah’s Somalia and the ‘Failed State’ Economy”

3:15-4:30pm On Edge(s): Ecological Degradation and Xenophobia (Tilley 125)

Chair: Romita Choudhury

John Ball (Fredericton) “‘The Shimmering Edge’: Surfing, Risk, and Adolescent Ecology in Tim Winton’s Breath

Susie O’Brien (McMaster), “The Black Swan and the Ugly Duckling: Liberal Xenophobia in The Reluctant Fundamentalist

4:45-5:45pm Spoken Word Performance and Talk-back: El Jones (Carleton 139)

Introduction: Susan Gingell

El Jones is a spoken word activist, a poet, and a teacher currently completing her PhD in English literature at Dalhousie University. El uses spoken word poetry to speak openly and fearlessly about the social and political issues that affect the daily lives of people of African ancestry. Beginning in more traditional poetry forms, El discovered spoken word as a way to make her voice heard in public venues. In 2008 she won the CBC Poetry Faceoff in Halifax.

7:00pm CACLALS No-Host Dinner: Chez-Riz, 366 Queen Street, phone 454-9996.

Sunday, May 29

9:00-10:15am Graduate Student Prize Presentation Panel (Tilley 104)

Chair: Margery Fee

Jesse Arseneault (McMaster) “Animal Movements and Postcolonial Geographies”

Jessie Forsyth (McMaster) “Just a Speculation: Epistemological Economies in Equiano’s Interesting Narrative

Amanda Perry (British Columbia) “Sounding Out Cross-Cultural Relations in Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s Rights of Passage

10:30 am-12:00 pm Aboriginal Roundtable: The Role of Aboriginal Religion and Spirituality in the Study of Indigenous Literatures and Oratures (Tilley 5)

Convenor: Kristina Fagan (Saskatchewan)

Invited Participants: Andrea Bear Nicholas (St. Thomas), Margery Fee (British Columbia), and Armand Ruffo (Carleton)

12:00-1:00pm CACLALS Executive Meeting (Tilley 104)

1:30-2:45pm Troubling Borders and Boundaries (Tilley 104)

Chair: John Ball

Josh Prescott (New Brunswick), “Troubling the Borderland: Mapping and Remapping in Dionne Brand’s Land to Light On

Sharlee Reimer (McMaster), “Gender and Geopolitical Space: Imagined Possibilities in Contemporary ‘Canadian’ Literatures”

Sarah Brophy (McMaster), ““Queer Intimacies and Post-imperial Histories in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty

1:30-2:45pm Place, Belonging, and History in Newfoundland and Labrador (Tilley 125)

Chair: Jennifer Bowering Delisle

Linda MacKinley-Hay (Independent Scholar), “Phalometers and Bridges: Exploring Place and Out of Place in Kathleen Winter’s Annabel

Michael Collins (Toronto),”Oddly’s Island: Newfoundlandish Heterotopia in Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise

Kristina Fagan (Saskatchewan), “‘The Tyranny of the Fact’: The Escape from Newfoundland History in Michael Crummey’s Galore

3:00-4:30pm Michael Crummey, A Reading and Interview with Cynthia Sugars A Joint Session with ACQL/ALCQ (Tilley 102)

Michael Crummey is a poet, short fiction writer, and novelist from Newfoundland. His works include Hard Light, Flesh and Blood, River Thieves, and The Wreckage. His third novel, Galore, won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Canada and the Caribbean and is a finalist for the 2011 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

5:00-7:00 pm President’s Reception

7:30 Bard in the Barracks production of Macbeth with CACLALS stalwart John Ball in the roles of Duncan and the Doctor; runs May 28-June 2, 7:30 pm nightly at Odell Park. Tickets are available on site or online at www.regonline.com/macbeth, at a price of $14.50 regular and $10.50 for students (plus a $3.50 processing fee). Attendance is capped at 150 per performance, so online booking is recommended.

Monday, May 30

9:00-10:15am Feasts, Exhibitions, and Prizes in Canadian and Transnational Spaces (Tilley 104)

Chair: Alessandra Capperdoni

Antonia Smith (Vancouver Island), “Local Feast: Food, Culture, and Identity in Timothy Taylor’s Stanley Park and Bill Gaston’s The Order of Good Cheer

Guy Beauregard (National Taiwan), “Remnants of Empire: Roy Kiyooka, Osaka, 1970”

Sophie McCall (Simon Fraser) and Laura Moss (British Columbia), “Teaching Literary Prizes: A Critical Dialogue on Theory, Practice, and Pedagogy”

9:00-10:15am On the Grounds of Gender and Race: Transformations, Reconciliation, and Creativity (Tilley 125)

Chair: Angelika Maeser Lemieux

Alison Toron (UNB), “Magical Transformations: Humour, Gender, and Racialization in Suzette Mayr’s Moon Honey

Alicia Robinet (Western Ontario), “‘They were orphans’: Transnational Reconciliation and White Civility in the Home Children Case”

Max Haiven (Mount Saint Vincent) “The Creative Work of Race”

10:30-11:50am Plenary Address by Victor Li (Tilley 404)

Chair: Diana Brydon

Victor Li (Toronto) “Making the World Disappear: Globalization as Allegory”

Victor Li is Associate Professor of English and Faculty Member of the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. Dr Li received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of British Columbia and his Ph.D. from the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. He taught at the National University of Singapore, UBC, and Dalhousie University in Halifax before joining the University of Toronto in 2004. His research interests include contemporary critical and literary theory, postcolonial literatures, globalization studies, theories of modernity, primitivism, and the intersection of anthropology and literature. Co-editor of The University of Toronto Quarterly, he is the author of The Neo-Primitivist Turn: Critical Reflections on Alterity, Culture, and Modernity (2006) and of many journal articles on modern literature, postcolonial theory, the uses of primitivism, and the problems of globalization.

12:15-1:20 Congress Big Thinking Session (Kinsella Auditorium in McCain Hall) Chief Shawn Atleo, “First Nations Education: Can We Afford to Miss Out”

Chief Shawn Atleo is National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations and a Hereditary Chief from the Ahousaht First Nation. He graduated in 2003 from the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, with a Master’s of Education in Adult Learning and Global Change. Chief Atleo’s commitment to education was recognized when he was named Chancellor of Vancouver Island University, becoming British Columbia’s first indigenous Chancellor.

1:45-3:00pm Belonging in India: Places, Spaces, and Subject Locations (Tilley 104)

Chair: Susan Gingell

Anindo Hazra (York), “The Queer Seawall in Vikram Chandra’s ‘Artha’”

Paulomi Chakraborty (Indian Institute of Technology), “‘Rivers ran in our heads, the tides were in our blood’: Landscape, Place, and the Politics of Belonging in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide

Romita Choudhury (Athabaska), “Maternal Theorists: Ethical Feminism and Gandhian Imperatives”

3:15-3:55 pm Celebration Session (Tilley 104) with funding assistance from UBC Press, U of Toronto Press, SCL/ÉLC, and the Department of English, UNB

Marking of 35th Anniversary: Studies in Canadian Literature/Études en littérature canadienne (SCL/ÉLC)

Book Launches:

Jennifer Andrews, In the Belly of a Laughing God: Humour and Irony in Native Women’s Poetry (U of Toronto P)

John Ball, ed., Twentieth-Century World Fiction, vol. 3 of Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction (Wiley)

Sophie McCall, First Person Plural: Aboriginal Storytelling and the Ethics of Collaborative Authorship (UBC P)

Notices:

Ashok Mathur, Jonathan Dewar, and Mike DeGagné, eds., Cultivating Canada: Reconciliation through the Lens of Cultural Diversity (Aboriginal Healing Foundation)

Daniel Coleman and Smaro Kamboureli, eds., Retooling the Humanities: The Culture of Research in Canadian Universities (U of Alberta P)

4:00-5:30 Awarding of Graduate Student Presentation Prize and CACLALS AGM (Tilley 104)

7:30-10:00 Armand Garnet Ruffo, A Windigo Tale: An Introduction, Showing, and Q&A A Joint Session with ACQL/ALCQ (Tilley 102)

Chair: Kristina Fagan