Call for Papers: Culture and the Canada-US Border
University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
26-28 June, 2009
Border studies in North America has hitherto focused primarily on the
United States' border with Mexico, the point at which, Gloria Anzaldúa
has noted, 'the Third World grates against the first and bleeds'. This
conference seeks to shift border discussions North to the 49th
parallel and its representation in both Canadian and American cultural
products and, in so doing, to offer an intervention into familiar
border discourses. If the US-Mexico border effects a brutal
juxtaposition of national economic prosperity and deprivation,
operating alongside a generally perceived linguistic and ethnic
divide, what functions do we attribute to the Canada-US border,
traditionally celebrated as the longest undefended border in the
world? How far North can we take the insights produced by US-Mexico
border studies-or do we need different theories altogether for a
different border? If the Canada-US border figures prominently in
Canadians' sense of their national identity, how does it figure south
of the border? And to what extent do subnational groups' relationships
to this border diverge from dominant national positions?
We invite papers that examine issues raised by the cultural
implications of Canada-US border in Canadian and/or American
literature, television, cinema, visual art, music, and other cultural
forms. Papers may address, but are not limited to, the following
issues:
- Indigeneity and cross-border identifications and dislocations
- Challenges to nation-state borders posed by indigenous self-determination
- Challenges to nation-state borders and the idea of the nation posed
by Québec nationalism
- Diasporic communities across the border (e.g. relationships between
African-Canadian and African-American culture; between Asian-Canadian
and Asian-American culture)
- The border in dominant national(ist) fictions
- Constructions of Canada-US sameness and difference
- Comparisons of Canadian and American impressions of the Canada-US border
- Comparisons of the 49th parallel and the Alaska/Yukon border
- Comparisons of Anglo-Canada's and Québec's relationship to the
Canada-US border
- Assessments of the usefulness of US-Mexico border studies, and
border theory based on the US-Mexico border, to the Canada-US border
- Hemispheric contextualisation of the Canada-US border.
Papers will be 20 minutes long. Please send a 300-word abstract and
short bio-biographical note to both David Stirrup
([log in to unmask]) and Gillian Roberts
([log in to unmask]) by 31 October 2008.
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