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December 20, 2010


CFP: “Print Modernities, 1845–1945”: Graduate Conference at UBC, 2-3 May 2011 (deadline Jan 30, 2011)

“Print Modernities, 1845–1945”
A Graduate Conference at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 2-3 May 2011

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Professor Mark Morrisson, Pennsylvania State University; author of Modern Alchemy: Occultism and the Emergence of Atomic Theory (2007) and The Public Face of Modernism: Little Magazines, Audiences, and Reception 1905-1920 (2001)

This graduate conference will be concerned with the relationships between “modernity” and print production. “Modernity” and “print” should be understood in the broadest sense, and interdisciplinary papers are especially encouraged. We are interested in the commercialization of literary modernism, in the visual representations of modernity, and in the social impact of technical innovations in the printing industry from 1845 to 1945.

Possible considerations are:

  • Little magazines and the publication of modern literature
  • Periodicals and international networks of modernism
  • Modern writings in mass-market magazines
  • Commercial publishers and the mainstreaming of modernism
  • Modernist women writers and publishing
  • Posters, advertisements and the visual culture of modernity
  • Walter Benjamin and the mechanized reproduction of modern art
  • Technical innovations and modern typography
  • Illustrations and representations of the natural world in scholarly journals
  • Scientific communication in manuscript and printed forms
  • Non-Western modernities — print and digital revolutions in Asia, the Middle East, and beyond
  • The complex relationships between printed text and printed image in modern media
  • The proliferation of artists’ biographies, changing the relationship between artists and their audiences

The committee also welcomes proposals on any aspect of Victorian and early twentieth-century print culture.
The conference will be held at University of British Columbia on May 2-3, 2011.

If you are interested in giving a paper, send a proposal (250 words) and a short biography to printmodernities2011@gmail.com. Presentations should be limited to 20 minutes delivery time.
DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: January 30, 2011.


December 15, 2010


ACQL CFPs (Member Organized Sessions) / ALCQ appels (Propositions de séances organisées par des membres)

Calls for papers (Member Organized Sessions)
Appels à communications (Propositions de séances organisées par des membres)

Association of Canadian and Québécois Literatures
Association des littératures canadienne et québécoises

Congrès des sciences humaines Université du Nouveau-Brunswick et Université St Thomas
Fredericton, Nouveau-Brunswick
du 28 au 30 mai 2011
May 28-30 2011

La modernité dans les littératures canadiennes anglophone et francophone
(English version follows)
L’étude de la littérature canadienne a atteint un point critique de réévaluation dans le contexte universitaire canadien anglais. Dans le cadre de ce colloque, nous proposons d’aborder les points de recoupement entre les manifestations francophones et anglophones de la modernité au Canada et chercherons à stimuler les collaborations entre universitaires anglophones et francophones en vue de relever les rapprochements et les points de rupture entre les «modernités» des deux langues officielles du Canada. Nous tenterons de déterminer comment un tel processus de réévaluation peut modifier notre façon de considérer non seulement les écrits modernes, mais leur documentation, leur archivage et leur étude. Voici quelques questions auxquelles les auteurs pourront tenter de répondre dans leur communication :
• Qui étaient les écrivains canadiens français dont les œuvres étaient marquées d’une esthétique moderne? Comment la culture, l’histoire et la société canadiennes-françaises ont elles influé sur cette esthétique?
• De quelles manières peut on considérer Montréal comme étant un terreau fertile de collaborations interculturelles entre artistes et universitaires francophones et anglophones?
• La modernité continentale et la modernité anglo américaine ont-elles eu des répercussions différentes sur la modernité au Canada français et au Canada anglais?
• De quelles manières les écrivains français de l’extérieur du Québec faisaient ils preuve de modernité dans leurs écrits?
• Comment la modernité s’est-elle manifestée dans la traduction des œuvres canadiennes?
• Quels sont les sites de la modernité canadienne française? Les œuvres littéraires ont elles été publiées à grande échelle ou ont elles plutôt été distribuées au sein de cercles fermés?

Veuillez envoyer une proposition d’environ 300 mots et un énoncé biographique d’une centaine de mots (en anglais ou en français) et un résumé de 50 mots aux deux vice-présidentes de l’ALCQ Sara Jamieson (sara_jamieson@carleton.ca) et Lucie Hotte (lhotte@uottawa.ca) ainsi qu’aux organisatrices de l’atelier Sophie Marcotte (sophimar@alcor.concordia.ca) et Vanessa Lent (vlent@dal.ca) au plus tard le 15 janvier 2011.

French / Canadian Modernisms
The study of Canadian modernist writing is currently at a critical point of reevaluation in English-Canadian scholarship. This panel proposes to address the interfaces between French and English manifestations of modernism and seeks to encourage collaboration between English and French scholars in tracing connections and / or disruptions between modernisms in Canada’s two official languages. How can such evaluations shift our understanding of the ways in which modernism has been written, documented, archived, and studied? Possible questions papers may address include:

• Who were the French Canadian writers who were engaging with modernist aesthetics? How did the context of French Canadian culture, history, and environment affect these aesthetics?
• In what ways can we see Montreal as a site of rich cross-cultural collaboration between French and English artists and scholars? Were there other such sites?
• Do the influences of Continental modernism and Anglo-American modernism reverberate differently in French and English Canadian modernisms?
• In what ways were French writers outside of Quebec engaging with modernism?
• How has modernism been translated in Canada?
• What are the sites of French Canadian modernism? Was it widely published or was it more privately distributed?

Please submit 300-word proposal, 100-word biographical statement (in English or in French) and a brief 50-word abstract to ACQL vice-presidents Sara Jamieson, sara_jamieson@carleton.ca and Lucie Hotte at lhotte@uottawa.ca and also to organizers Sophie Marcotte (sophimar@alcor.concordia.ca) and Vanessa Lent (vlent@dal.ca), by January 15, 2011.

Traversing Boundaries in the New Brunswick Literatures
(La version française suit)
From the early record of explorer Jacques Cartier’s first voyage and contact with aboriginal peoples in northern New Brunswick in 1534, New Brunswick has been at the crossroads of Canadian writing. In 1824, Fredericton’s Julia Catherine Beckwith Hart wrote the first novel published in Canada by a native-born Canadian. Two generations later, Charles G.D. Roberts pioneered the animal story in New Brunswick and Bliss Carman courted an early modernist readership with lyrics penned in the province. A generation after that, a young Northrop Frye spent his formative years at what is now Moncton’s Aberdeen Cultural Centre, then his old high school, a short distance from the imaginative territory that would be claimed by Antonine Maillet, who would become the first non-European winner of France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt. Today, The Fiddlehead is Canada’s longest-living literary magazine, and New Brunswick writers David Adams Richards, Serge Patrice Thibodeau, Herménégilde Chiasson and France Daigle enjoy international audiences. The New Brunswick literary heritage has been rich indeed.

This Call for Papers is directed at engaging that rich literary heritage in order to showcase the New Brunswick literatures. Paper proposals in French or English are invited that treat any aspect of the New Brunswick literatures, whether authors, themes, criticism, movements, or language. Papers are especially invited that provide an overview of the province’s bi-cultural heritage while also dispelling some of the persistent myths of insularity and pastoral démodé that continue to be affixed to the province’s literatures. That Congress is in New Brunswick this year provides the perfect opportunity to carry out this examination of the imaginative and linguistic diversity of New Brunswick literature.

Please send 300-word proposals, a brief 50-word abstract, and a biographical note to panel organizer Tony Tremblay (tremblay@stu.ca), and to ACQL vice-presidents Sara Jamieson (sara_jamieson@carleton.ca) and Lucie Hotte (lhotte@uottawa.ca) by 15 January 2011.

La traversée des frontières dans les littératures néo-brunswickoises
Depuis la relation du premier voyage de Jacques Cartier et de sa description des contacts avec les peuples autochtones du nord du Nouveau-Brunswick en 1534, le Nouveau-Brunswick s’est trouvé au carrefour des écrits canadiens. En 1824, l’écrivaine de Fredericton, Julia Catherine Beckwith Hart, écrivait le premier roman publié au Canada par un écrivain natif d’ici. Deux générations plus tard, Charles G.D. Roberts a inauguré la tradition des récits animaliers au Nouveau-Brunswick alors que Bliss Carman courtisait les lecteurs friands de la nouvelle écriture moderniste avec ses poèmes écrits dans la province. Dans la génération suivante, se démarque le jeune Northrop Frye qui a passé sa jeunesse à étudier à ce qui est à présent le Centre culturel Aberdeen à Moncton et qui était alors son école secondaire, à quelques kilomètres à peine du territoire qui servira de cadre à de nombreux romans et pièces de théâtre de la renommée Antonine Maillet, la première écrivaine non-européenne à gagner le prestigieux Prix Goncourt. Aujourd’hui, The Fiddlehead est le plus ancien magazine littéraire canadien toujours publié et les écrivains néo-brunswickois David Adams Richards, Serge Patrice Thibodeau, Herménégilde Chiasson et France Daigle sont appréciés d’un lectorat grandissant tant au Canada qu’à l’étranger. L’héritage littéraire néo-brunswickois est effectivement des plus riches.

Cet atelier vise à étudier cet héritage littéraire afin de mettre en valeur les littératures néo-brunswickoises. Nous sollicitions donc des propositions de communications, en français et anglais, qui traitent de toute question liée à ces littératures : les auteurs, les thèmes, la réception critique, les mouvements littéraires ou la langue. Nous encourageons particulièrement les chercheurs qui s’intéressent aux mythes de l’insularité et du pastoral démodé qui continuent à être rattachés à l’imaginaire néo-brunswickois à proposer des communications sur ces questions. La tenue du Congrès au Nouveau-Brunswick offre l’occasion rêvée de mener à bien cette investigation de l’imaginaire et de la diversité linguistique des littératures anglo-néo-brunswickoise et acadienne.

Veuillez faire parvenir votre proposition de communication (maximum 300 mots) ainsi qu’une courte notice biographique et un résumé de 50 mots en un document Word ou RTF, aux deux vice-présidentes de l’ALCQ Sara Jamieson (sara_jamieson@carleton.ca) et Lucie Hotte (lhotte@uottawa.ca) ainsi qu’à l’organisateur de l’atelier Tony Tremblay (tremblay@stu.ca) au plus tard le 15 janvier 2011.

Canadian Literature and Collective Memory
(La version française suit)
This panel will focus on the ways notions of collective memory are invoked in Canadian writing and other cultural contexts, particularly the ways the history of mobility and migration emerges in formulations of communal memory in Canada. Papers are invited on all historical periods and genres, and might engage with conceptions of public memory or public history; pedagogical practices, including shifting disciplinary boundaries; the legacy and remembrance of imperial trauma; the connection between memory and communal subjectivities (local, national, or global); or aspects of cultural transmission and inheritance. Papers might consider notions of collective memory in Canadian writing from divergent perspectives, including diasporic contexts, settler perspectives, and Aboriginal contexts, or the ways that shared memories are disrupted by competing genealogies. Topics might include, but are not limited to, some aspect of the following:

– ruptures of public memory
– the impact of changing social, political, and technological frameworks
– collective and/or cultural amnesia
– collective mnemonics
– critiques of collective memorialization and/or public histories
– historical commemoration
– national consolidation or fragmentation
– collective memory and nostalgia
– memory and inheritance and/or genealogy
– foundational trauma or amnesia
– unconscious memory
– settler transplantation and memory
– cultural transmission and/or cultural memory
– memory and monstrosity
– memory and science
– collective memory and postcoloniality
– collective memory and globalization
– memory and forgetting
– memory, secrecy, and falsehood
– relics of memory and/or memory traces
– memory and psychoanalysis
– memorial rescriptings
– objects of memory

Please send 300-word proposals, a brief 50-word abstract, and a biographical note to panel organizer Cynthia Sugars (csugars@uottawa.ca), and to ACQL vice-presidents Sara Jamieson (sara_jamieson@carleton.ca) and Lucie Hotte (lhotte@uottawa.ca) by 15 January 2011.

Littératures canadiennes et mémoire collective
Cet atelier porte sur les diverses façons dont la notion de mémoire collective est sollicitée dans les écrits canadiens ou dans d’autres produits ou contextes culturels. Nous nous intéresserons plus particulièrement à l’émergence de discours sur la migration et à la mobilité des populations qui donnent forme à une mémoire commune au Canada. Les communications peuvent porter sur toutes les périodes historiques et tous les genres littéraires. Elles pourraient se pencher sur les concepts de « mémoire publique » ou « d’histoire publique »; les pratiques pédagogiques incluant la transgression des frontières disciplinaires; l’héritage et le souvenir de traumatismes découlant de l’impérialisme; la connexion entre la mémoire et les identités collectives (locale, nationale ou mondiale) ou tout aspect de la transmission culturelle et du patrimoine. D’autres questions, telles que l’inscription de la mémoire collective dans les écrits canadiens (tant québécois, canadiens-français, canadiens-anglais, amérindiens que « migrants ») abordée de points de vue divergents ou différents, en lien avec des situations de diaspora ou de colonisation ou encore la façon dont des souvenirs partagés peuvent être contestés par la coprésence de généalogies contradictoires, peuvent être des sujets abordés dans le cadre de cet atelier. Les sujets abordés peuvent être les suivants, ou toute autre question connexe :

– ruptures dans la mémoire publique
– l’impact des transformations sociétales, politiques et technologiques sur les cadres conceptuels
– amnésie collective ou culturelle
– souvenirs collectifs
– critique de la mémorialisation collective ou/et des histoires publiques
– la commémoration historique
– la consolidation ou la fragmentation nationale
– mémoire collective et nostalgie collective
– mémoire et patrimoine ou/et généalogie
– trauma et amnésie
– souvenirs inconscients
– la colonisation et la mémoire
– la transmission de la culture ou/et la mémoire culturelle
– mémoire et monstruosité
– mémoire et sciences
– mémoire collective et postcolonialisme
– mémoire collective et mondialisation
– mémoire et oubli
– mémoire, secrets et mensonges
– traces ou/et résidus mémoriels
– mémoire et psychanalyse
– réécritures mémorielles
– objets de souvenir

Veuillez faire parvenir votre proposition de communication (maximum 300 mots) ainsi qu’une courte notice biographique et un résumé de 50 mots en un document Word ou RTF, aux deux vice-présidentes de l’ALCQ Sara Jamieson (sara_jamieson@carleton.ca) et Lucie Hotte (lhotte@uottawa.ca) ainsi qu’à l’organisatrice de l’atelier Cynthia Sugars (csugars@uottawa.ca) au plus tard le15 janvier 2011.


December 9, 2010


Electronic Textual Cultures Lab at UVic seeks Digital Humanists

The Electronic Textual Cultures Lab at the University of Victoria is about to grow again! In the coming months, we will be actively seeking talented and energetic digital humanists as postdoctoral fellows and research associates/assistants, and to fill alternative academic roles. These opportunities are associated with professional reading and online library research, electronic scholarly editing, textual corpus management and analysis, prototype development, project administration and coordination. We are looking for engaged researchers interested in working on the lab’s ongoing and new work, including the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (http://dhsi.org/) and the Implementing New Knowledge Environments project (http://bit.ly/idaqrJ).

Please let people know, and do check our website at http://etcl.uvic.ca/ for details and position descriptions as they arise.

If you’d like to talk before then, please send [1] a copy of your CV and [2] a cover letter indicating your interest in working with the other digital humanists in the ETCL in the areas we’ve outlined, to Ray Siemens (siemens@uvic.ca). Members of ETCL will be at a number of gatherings over the next 6 weeks, including the MLA in Los Angeles, and we’d be really happy to talk with you. Feel free also to check in with us on Twitter, at #etcl.

All best,

Ray Siemens, Melanie Chernyk, Cara Leitch, Julie Meloni, Jenn Ross, Meagan Timney, and others at the ETCL.


December 8, 2010


Diary of a Digital Edition: Part Three

A quick update on the progress of the Wilkinson archive/edition:

  • I’m still waffling on whether this project is an archive or an edition. I’ll let you know when I’ve come to a firm decision, if I ever do.
  • I finished the sorting of the unprocessed material in the Wilkinson collection at the Fisher archives today, and I’ll get to work scanning it in earnest imminently. I’ve been scanning  as I sorted, but sporadically. I’m really grateful that the staff at Fisher let me do the sorting, as I now have a good mental picture of everything that’s in the archive, and I’ve gotten to see and read material that I’m not sure anyone outside of Anne Wilkinson’s family has ever seen. The sorting took longer than I would have liked, but that’s just a condition of being a grad student with other teaching and work commitments.
  • Matt Huculak (and others, I’m sure) has done a great job of negotiating with the different institutions involved so that we have a file-naming system in place that hopefully satisfies everyone. My original spreadsheet kept me organized until the official system was in place, and it’s been easy enough to rename the files of material I’ve already scanned to conform to the new system. To give an example of how the naming works, I scanned an early essay of Wilkinson’s called “The Removal of Some Economic Causes of War.” The image file of the scan of the first page of this essay is named emic_ut_wilkinson_removal_00001.tiff, which in long form means “this is an EMiC-hosted digital project based on documents held at the University of Toronto in the Anne Wilkinson archive; the document that has been scanned is titled “Removal” etc. and this is the first page.” Did I get it right, Matt? The great thing about a text-based system like this is that I can look at the file names and know what the image file is without opening it. Things get a bit complicated when there are factors like documents that don’t have titles, or things that have multiple versions, but Matt and I will be working through those problems and coming up with good solutions as they crop up.
  • I was already very attached to my external hard drive before I started work on the Wilkinson project, but we’re pretty inseparable now. I can only imagine how devastated I would be if my computer died and the scans weren’t backed up, so I’m being extra vigilant. I’m scanning to 300 dpi TIFF files, which aren’t super small (and there are a lot of them) so I’ve got a 1TB hard drive that I’m saving everything to.
  • Although I still think that I’m probably only going to be able to deal with Wilkinson’s poetry if I want to get the project online as a “complete” entity before I graduate, I’m going to scan the entire contents of the physical archive. It only makes sense to do it now while I’ve got the time and access to the scanner, and I may end up being able to deal with more material than I currently think I can. Having everything scanned will also make it easier when I’m writing explanatory notes and want to refer to other aspects of Wilkinson’s writing than just the poetry. It’s a lot to scan—a daunting amount, actually, for one person—but a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.
  • I’m currently working on an article about the challenges of creating the Wilkinson digital edition/archive for the special issue of Essays on Canadian Writing that Dean, Meg, and Bart are editing. I’ll continue to use these “Diary” blog posts as a place to think through those problems and challenges, and hopefully, if the article turns out, you’ll get to read about the project in a more formalized form in ECW. As is my wont, I’ll be sure to talk about the practical challenges of doing this kind of project as a grad student, as the sole person working on the project, and as someone who is just becoming immersed in the field of digital humanities.

I’ll be back with an update once I’ve completed the majority of the scanning and I’m ready to move on to the next stage of the project. Stay tuned!