Faculty position – University of Saskatchewan

The College of Arts and Science invites applications from outstanding emerging or established Indigenous scholars for a fulltime, tenure-track position at any rank in any scholarly discipline represented in the College of Arts and Science. Discipline and research areas are open.

Located on the banks of the kisiskāciwani-sīpiy (also known as the South Saskatchewan River), the University of Saskatchewan is part of a millennia-long tradition of people gathering on these banks to teach, to learn, and to build community.  The College of Arts and Science has committed to increase the proportion of Indigenous faculty members to at least 15% by 2027, thus reflecting the current demographics of Saskatchewan.  We also commit to supporting these Indigenous scholars in building community, collaboration, and career success within our College.  This is part of our College’s transformative journey of Indigenization and reconciliation.  We invite interested Indigenous scholars to be part of that journey.  This year, we will fill at least two positions with Indigenous scholars.

Interviews of qualified candidates and recommendations for appointment will be the responsibility of individual departments within the College.  Applicants, therefore, should indicate the department in which they seek appointment. Prospective applicants should choose their disciplinary area of expertise; this position is not presently designated for the Department of Indigenous Studies.  Hiring decisions will be based on the applicants’ academic qualifications, record and strengths, along with their potential and willingness to support the strategic priorities of the relevant department and the department’s ability to support the candidate.

The University of Saskatchewan is committed to employment equity and diversity, and Indigenous engagement is a strategic priority. The University of Saskatchewan relies on section 48 of The Saskatchewan Human Rights Code to give preference in employment to a person of Indigenous ancestry for this position. This position is exclusively aimed at individuals self-identifying as an Indigenous person. Candidates are asked to self-identify in their application and are also encouraged to complete an Employment Equity Survey as part of their application process.  Self-identifying Indigenous scholars are expected to share how their Indigenous heritage and community connections will inform their teaching and research activities.

The University of Saskatchewan’s main campus is situated on Treaty 6 Territory and the Homeland of the Métis, and has committed to becoming an “outstanding institution of research, learning, knowledge-keeping, reconciliation, and inclusion with and by Indigenous peoples and communities.”  The University of Saskatchewan is located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a city with a diverse and thriving economic base, a vibrant arts community and a full range of leisure opportunities. The University has a reputation for excellence in teaching, research and scholarly activities and offers a full range of undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs to a student population of over 24,000. With over 30,000 Indigenous residents, the city is also a centre of Indigenous cultural, social, artistic, and intellectual activity.  Saskatchewan is the province with second-highest proportion of Indigenous people in Canada and offers many opportunities for scholars to engage with a diversity of Indigenous communities.

The College of Arts and Science is the University’s largest college and home to more than 60 academic programs. We have had a department of Indigenous Studies since 1982 and have strong Indigenous programs and high-achieving Indigenous scholars in many of our departments.  We are also home to more than 10,000 students, with over 1500 Indigenous students.

Qualifications

Applications will be accepted from those who self-identify as Indigenous and have a terminal degree in their discipline (or are in the last year of a program leading to such a degree).  We are seeking Indigenous candidates who have demonstrated an ability or potential to engage in research, scholarly or artistic work, to be effective classroom teachers and graduate student mentors, and can contribute to our mission of Indigenization and reconciliation directly (for example, through your research, teaching, role modelling, community engagement and/or leadership).

Salary and Benefits

Salary bands for this position for the 2019-2020 academic year are as follows:

Assistant Professor: $94,459 to $113,509; Associate Professor: $113,509 to $132,559; and Professor: $132,559 to $154,784.

This position includes a comprehensive benefits package which includes a dental, health and extended vision care plan, pension plan, life insurance (compulsory and voluntary), academic long term disability, sick leave, travel insurance, death benefits, an employee assistance program, a professional expense allowance, and a flexible health and wellness spending program.

Applications

Applications must include:

• a cover letter indicating the preferred department of appointment and summarizing the salient aspects of the application;
• a statement of self-identification, as described above;
• a detailed curriculum vitae;
• a statement outlining a proposed program of research, scholarly and/or artistic work;
• a statement of teaching interests and philosophy and evidence of teaching success (this may include evaluations of courses taught and observations regarding those evaluations);
• three confidential letters of reference (sent directly from referees)

Interested candidates must submit their applications via email to:

Dr. Valerie J. Korinek, Vice-Dean Faculty Relations, College of Arts & Science

9 Campus Drive

University of Saskatchewan

Saskatoon, SK  S7N 5A5

Telephone: (306) 966-5990

Email: indigenousfaculty.recruitment@usask.ca

Due to federal immigration requirements, we also ask candidates to indicate whether they are Canadian citizens, permanent residents, or are otherwise already authorized to work at this position for the duration of the appointment, with an explanation if this last category is indicated.

Review of applications will begin November 1, 2019; however, applications will be accepted and evaluated until the position is filled. The anticipated start date is July 1, 2020.

The University of Saskatchewan is strongly committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace that empowers all employees to reach their full potential. All members of the university community share a responsibility for developing and maintaining an environment in which differences are valued and inclusiveness is practiced. The university welcomes applications from those who will contribute to the diversity of our community. The university must, however, comply with federal immigration requirements.  All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be given priority.

We are excited to release our CFP for CACLALS 2020, “Ecologies of Alliance in a divided Age.” We look forward as well to welcoming confirmed keynote speakers Anthony Stewart and George Elliott Clarke, and will have more events to announce in the coming weeks and months. Please circulate widely to your networks, and note that we especially welcome contributions from graduate students in addition to researchers at all levels. We are looking forward to seeing our members in London, Ontario this coming spring!

CALL FOR PROPOSALS:

20/20 Vision: Speculating in Literature and Film in Canada

August 20-22, 2020

University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

Speculative fiction, film, and television series are fast-growing genres, in part because they comment on the present. These genres ask readers to consider environmental, technological, and political events and developments in the world today, and the immense impacts these may have on the world of the future. They are often used by their creators to represent, report, and speculate on key societal issues, such as relations of class, gender, and race, as well as issues of environmental destruction and political conflict. In Canada, speculative writing has become a tool to interrogate colonial enterprises and open up spaces for marginalized groups, including women, Indigenous peoples, members of LGBTQ2S+ communities, and others whose lives are inflected by cultural difference, to assert their identities and create avenues for resistance. A variety of speculative worlds have achieved popularity through films and television/internet series, some of which are literary adaptations. 20/20 Vision: Speculating in Literature and Film in Canada invites researchers and creators in the year 2020 to present their own speculations about the futures and/or societies that are presented in various texts produced in or relating to Canada. What do speculative texts tell us? Which visions of “Canada” do we find in speculative texts? How do these visions reflect our own perceptions of the world? Does this kind of literary imagination help us achieve social change?

Proposals for both papers and panels are invited. These can take a range of approaches related to speculative writing in Canada, including:

• Dystopian worlds
• Utopian and anti-utopian worlds
• Apocalyptic scenarios
• Post-apocalyptic futures
• Feminist speculations
• Indigenous speculations
• Decolonizing speculations
• Speculative writing for children
• Speculative poetry
• Climate change and/or technological developments in speculative writing
• Animals in speculative writing
• Speculations on language and power
• Disability in speculative writing
• Gender and sexuality in speculative writing
• Speculation and interdisciplinarity
• Speculations on the screen: movies, documentaries, television and internet series, video games
• Speculative adaptations
• Speculative creation, including the writing of speculative fiction*

*The conference will also host sessions in which creators of speculative genres will be invited to present their works. Authors and artists are invited to propose 20-minute creative pieces; these may involve readings from written works, visual instalments, performance pieces, or film presentations.

Paper proposals should include the following:

1. Your name, contact information (including email address and telephone number), and institutional affiliation.

2. The title of your proposed 20-minute paper or presentation, AND a proposal of 250-300 words, identifying the works that will be your focus of your paper and outlining the argument to be presented OR describing your creative piece and the method of presentation or performance.

3. A 50-word biographical statement.

Panel proposals should include the above information for all participants.

Please e-mail your proposal in a Word document to conference organizers Wendy Roy and Mabiana Camargo of the University of Saskatchewan at 2020Vision@usask.ca by February 10, 2020.

Conference acceptances will be emailed in April, 2020. For further information, please visit the website at https://artsandscience.usask.ca/english/2020vision/#ConferenceDetailsor send an email to 2020Vision@usask.ca.

After the conference, there will be an open call for expanded papers to be published in a collection of essays on speculations in literature and on screen in Canada.

The University of British Columbia’s Department of English Language and Literatures is currently inviting applications for a tenure-track position in African / Black Diaspora Studies with an anticipated start date of July 1, 2020. Applications are due October 31. More information about the position and the application process can be found at this link. Please circulate widely to our membership and beyond!

Please take note of the following CFP:

EXTENDED DEADLINE — WHAT WE(A)RE ANTHOLOGIES IN CANADIAN POETRY

Jim Johnstone’s introduction to The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21^st Century Canadian Poetry (2018) begins by envisioning the Canadian poetry scene as a gala at which the Atwoods, Ondaatjes, and Carsons of the form “monopoliz[e] the spotlight,” in sharp contrast with “a younger, more anonymous crowd pushing at the margins, trying to bypass the guest list.” The image of a social event acknowledges the organic nature of a poetry “scene,” but the project of the anthologist seems to involve more layers of artifice than Johnstone’s trope acknowledges. His introduction ends by shifting the image to a dancefloor, the spotlight having “turned into a strobe light, touching on a generation currently unsettling the formula for writing ‘Canadian’ poetry.” The comparison is striking; nevertheless, questions remain about who’s been told about the party, who cares, who would consider it a party in the first place, and what dancing even consists of.

Frog Hollow Press seeks contributors for an essay collection that probes some of the issues surrounding contemporary practices of anthologizing Canadian poetry. Intended for publication as part of the Literary Criticism Series, the anthology revolves around the larger question of what contemporary or future Canadian Poetry Anthologies may be building, and for whom. To what extent are anthologies ultimately inseparable from the academy? If poetry isn’t being consumed according to market-based relations, i.e. by anyone other than enthusiasts or students or instructors, what work is an anthology doing? Can we imagine a poetry culture that’s open to new readers and yet is still receptive to the anthologist’s guidance? Relatedly, to what extent is the act of anthologizing influenced by the ascendance of the curator and the curatorial impulse? Conversely, in our neoliberal era, what will happen to poetry if the current university ecosystem is de-funded beyond recognition? In sum: what work is being done at present, and in what possible direction could future anthologists move?

While we wish to focus on Canadian poetry, contributors are also welcome to address larger contradictions in the genre or a range of related topics. Possibilities include:

-the anthology as objective vs. the anthology as personal statement

-university presses vs. small presses

-canonicity and its contradictions

-demographic vs. formal or stylistic representation

-the (ir)relevance of notions of national or regional literatures

-cosmopolitanism past, present, and future

-the influence of curation/the curator

-temporalities of anthologization, i.e. as retrospective, present-oriented, or prospective

Potential contributors are invited to send a proposal of 200-300 words, along with a biographical statement of 50-100 words, to carlalanwatts@yahoo.com by November 1st, 2019. Invitations to submit complete essays of 4000-7000 words will be sent out shortly thereafter, along with a deadline and revision/publication timeline. Submissions from BIPOC, LGBTQ2S+, and other underrepresented writers are especially welcome.

The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (FHSS) released a statement to the public on August 28 detailing their investigation into the incident of anti-black racial profiling that occurred on June 2, 2019 on the UBC campus. The independent investigation confirmed that a Congress attendee was discriminated against on the basis of race and has banned the scholar who committed the discrimination for a minimum of three years, with five conditions for his return. This comes on the heels of Congress recently changing the theme of the 2020 Congress, which is now Bridging Divides: Confronting Colonialism and Anti-Black Racism. The full statement and conditions can be read here.

The Black Canadian Studies Association (BCSA) released a statement on August 14 that can be found on their Twitter page (@BlkCdnSA), detailing, “We have now reached a beginning: an opportunity to expand and deepen efforts toward the ‘decolonization’ of higher education through becoming accountable to Black students, academics, and local communities.” CACLALS continues to stand in solidarity with Shelby McPhee and the BCSA against anti-black racism. We hope that our upcoming conference in 2020 will be an opportunity for thinking through ways of going forward with the BCSA’s direction in mind. CACLALS is currently drafting its CFP and expects to share more news in early September.

We are thrilled to announce the new (and some re-newed!) members of our Executive: Asma Sayed (President), Jesse Arseneault (Secretary-Treasurer), Terri Tomsky (Prairies Representative), J. Coplen Rose (Atlantic Representative), and Sara Rozenberg (Graduate Representative). We also want to take a moment and thank our outgoing members for all their dedication and hard work: Mariam Pirbhai (President), Henghameh Saroukhani (Secretary-Treasurer), John Ball (Atlantic Representative) and Shamika Shabnam (Graduate Representative).

ACLALS Chairs, Representatives and Organizers (left to right): John Ball, Russell McDougall, Claudia Marquis, Michael Bucknor, Irikidzayi Manase, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Henghameh Saroukhani, Chris Prentice, Carol Leon, Walter Perera and Isabel Carrera Suárez.

Many thanks to the brilliant organizers of this year’s triennial ACLALS conference “The Uncommon Commonwealth” held at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. The conference committee included: Assoc Professor Selina Tusitala Marsh, Dr Claudia Marquis, Assoc Professor Paula Morris, Professor Tom Bishop, and Professor Malcolm Campbell. Many thanks as well to the outgoing ACLALS chair Assoc Professor Chris Prentice for all of her hard work. Keynote speakers included: Witi Ihimaera, Elleke Boehmer, Arundhati Roy, Melissa Lucashenko and Kei Miller.

It was thrill to meet ACLALS members from around the world and across all associations. We look forward to seeing everyone again in three years!

For more information about the conference, visit the conference website at: http://aclals2019.org.nz/

Call for Contributions

Edited collection

Critical perspectives on David Chariandy’s Writings

Editor: Rodolphe Solbiac Université des Antilles
(Presses Universitaires de l’Université des Antilles)

The literary work of Canadian Caribbean writer David Chariandy is a resounding and growing success in the contemporary literary world in Canada and beyond. His work dedicated to the re-territorialisation of Caribbean people in Canada and the transmission of Caribbean cultural memory to new generations is translated into French and several other languages.

After the success of his first novel entitled Soucouyant, published in 2007 and selected for eleven literary awards, his second novel, entitled Brother, impresses by the sensitivity it conveys and the craft of its prose.

Brother has been nominated for several prestigious Canadian literary awards and won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Award in 2017 and the Toronto Book Award in 2018. His work also includes a non-fiction prose book entitled I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You: A Letter to my Daughter published in 2018. Chariandy’s books have been published internationally and have been translated (or are being translated) into French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Catalan, Albanian and simplified Chinese.

If Soucouyant is taught in several universities in Canada, England and Martinique, with the outstanding release of Brother, it is necessary to give David Chariandy’s work critical attention in line with the importance of its public reception.

This special issue of the journal Etudes Caribéennes, entitled Perspectives critiques sur l’oeuvre de David Chariandy, will be the first bilingual (English-French) critical anthology devoted to David Chariandy’s work.

1) Abstracts should be sent to Rodolphe Solbiac, Associate Professor of Anglophone Caribbean Literature at the University of the West Indies by July 15, 2019.
2) Contributions should be sent to Rodolphe Solbiac, Associate Professor of Anglophone Caribbean Literature at the University of the West Indies by October 15, 2019.

Email: rsolbiacAntillesuniversite@gmail.com

CLICK FOR CFP IN FRENCH