Category Archives: Call for Papers

CFP: L.M. Montgomery and War (26–29 June 2014)

Posted on by
Reply

University of Prince Edward Island, 26–29 June 2014

Please note that the deadline for submissions is now 15 June 2013

“And you will tell your children of the Idea we fought and died for—teach them it must be lived for as well as died for, else the price paid for it will have been given for nought.” — Rilla of Ingleside (1921)

“I am thankful now, Jem, that Walter did not come back … and if he had seen the futility of the sacrifice they made then mirrored in this ghastly holocaust …” — The Blythes Are Quoted (2009)

The year 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War, a global conflict that would prove life-changing for L.M. Montgomery and millions of her contemporaries. For the eleventh biennial conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island, we invite proposals for papers that consider war in relation to L.M. Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, life writing, photographs, and scrapbooks, and the range of adaptations and spinoffs in the areas of film, television, theatre, tourism, and online communities.

Montgomery’s 1921 novel Rilla of Ingleside is one of the only contemporary accounts of Canadian women’s experience on the homefront during the First World War, but the War is evoked and implied in direct and indirect ways in many of the novels, short stories, and poems that precede and follow it. The Blythes Are Quoted, Montgomery’s final published work, bridges the years between the First World War and the Second World War, complicating Montgomery’s perspectives and thoughts about war and conflict. Montgomery’s work has met with a variety of responses world-wide during times of war and rebellion, from post-WWII Japan to today’s Middle Eastern countries. Different kinds of wars and rebellions also permeate her fiction and life writing—class conflicts, family disputes, gender and language wars—sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic. This conference seeks to take stock of the complex ways in which war in all its forms has influenced Montgomery’s works and their reception, both in Canada and around the world.

Possible topics include: the Great War anticipated, revisited, remembered, and re-imagined; the politics of gendered witnessing; Montgomery’s reception in times of war and conflict; chivalry, patriarchy, conflict, and romance in poetry and fiction; war as an agent of change; internal and external rebellion in relation to war; the psychology of war in battle and on the homefront.

Proposals should clearly articulate the proposed paper’s argument and demonstrate familiarity with current scholarship in the field (please see http://lmmresearch.org/bibliography for an updated bibliography). For more information, please contact the conference co-chairs, Dr. Benjamin Lefebvre (ben@roomofbensown.net) and Dr. Andrea McKenzie (acmcken@gmail.com). Submit a proposal of 200–250 words, a biographical statement of 70 words, and a list of A/V requirements by 15 June 2013 by using our online form at the L.M. Montgomery Institute website at http://www.lmmontgomery.ca/. Proposals for workshops, exhibits, films, and performances are also welcomed. Since all proposals are vetted blind, they should include no identifying information.

Call for Papers: L.M. Montgomery and Cultural Memory

Posted on by
Reply

Although the ninth biennial international conference at the University of Prince Edward Island is still a few weeks away, we are pleased to circulate the call for papers for a collection of essays on the conference theme, to be edited by Benjamin Lefebvre and Andrea McKenzie.

“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”
—The Golden Road (1913)

“And even if you are not Abegweit-born you will say, ‘Why … I have come home!’”
—“Prince Edward Island” (1939)

The University of Toronto Press has expressed interest in publishing a collection of essays entitled L.M. Montgomery and Cultural Memory, using papers presented at the ninth biennial conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute as a starting point. We invite the submission of full-length papers that consider these issues in relation to Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, life writing, photographs, and scrapbooks, as well as the range of adaptations in the areas of film, television, theatre, tourism, and online communities.

A term that originated in the field of archaeology and that now resonates in a wide range of disciplines, cultural memory refers to the politics of remembering and forgetting, sometimes in opposition to official versions of the past and the present. Within textual studies, the term invites us to consider the ways in which the past, the present, and the future are remembered, recorded, and anticipated by members of a collective and encoded into text. As a result, cultural memory touches on a number of key concerns, including identity, belonging, citizenship, home, community, place, custom, religion, language, landscape, and the recovery and preservation of cultural ancestries.

But what versions of Prince Edward Island, of Canada, of the world do Montgomery’s work and its derivatives encourage readers to remember? How do gender and genre (not to mention religion and power) affect and shape Montgomery’s selective and strategic ways of remembering in her fiction and life writing? What acts of memory can be found in the depiction of writers, diarists, letter writers, oral storytellers, poets, and domestic artists in her fiction? What roles do domesticity, nature, conflict, and war play in the shaping and reshaping of cultural memory? To what extent do nostalgia and antimodernism drive Montgomery texts in print and on screen? How have these selective images of time and place been adapted to fit a range of reading publics all over the world?

All submissions should rely on relevant theory and scholarship that will help anchor discussions of Montgomery’s work within the field of cultural memory. They should refer to the Seal editions of Montgomery’s fiction (except for Rilla of Ingleside and The Blythes Are Quoted, for which papers should refer to the recent Penguin Canada editions). All citations (including references to Montgomery texts) should be given in endnotes and be accompanied by a bibliography of references; for more information, consult chapters 16–17 of the Chicago Manual of Style. Submissions should include two files: in the first, a paper of 5000–6000 words (including endnotes), and in the second, a bibliography of all sources consulted as well as a bionote of a maximum of 100 words.

Please submit your files as Word files to the volume editors: Dr. Benjamin Lefebvre (ben@roomofbensown.net) and Dr. Andrea McKenzie (acmcken@gmail.com) by 15 September 2012. Queries are welcomed at any time.

CFP: L.M. Montgomery: The Ontario Years (1911–1942)

Posted on by
Reply

For thirty years, L.M. Montgomery lived in Ontario, writing fiction that confirmed her place, established by the early Anne novels, in the Canadian canon. While much has been written on the familial, cultural, historical, and geographical associations of and influences on her writings of her early years in Prince Edward Island, there is much left to be explored of similar associations and influences from the years Montgomery lived in Leaskdale, Norval, and Toronto and vacationed in Bala. The 2011 centennial celebration, hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Society of Ontario last October, began this conversation in a more formal capacity than had previously occurred. This call-for-papers is for a collection of essays that would not only continue the conversations sparked during this celebration but also open up new dialogues. The editors are particularly interested in discussions of literary influences, specific intellectual interests, events, people, and locales pertaining to Ontario and/or the years 1911–42 that contributed to Montgomery’s fictional and life writing and her photography. If you would like to contribute to this publication, please submit an abstract (c500 words) of your proposed paper and a curriculum vitae (no more than two pages) by Friday, 31 August 2012 to Rita Bode (rbode[at]trentu[dot]ca) and Lesley Clement (lclement[at]lakeheadu[dot]ca). We will contact you about the status of your proposal by the end of October, 2012, at which stage we will be approaching university presses that have a special interest in Canadian literature and culture. If the editors invite you to submit a paper, it should be 18-22 double-spaced pages (including endnotes and bibliography) and would be due the end of February, 2013. Please address any queries to above editors.

Call for Papers: L.M. Montgomery and Cultural Memory

Posted on by
2

A reminder that 15 August 2011 is the deadline for submissions for this conference, which will be held at the University of Prince Edward Island on 21–24 June 2012.

“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.” — The Golden Road (1913)

“and even if you are not Abegweit-born you will say, ‘Why … I have come home!’” — “Prince Edward Island” (1939)

For the tenth biennial conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island, we invite scholars, writers, readers, and cultural producers of all kinds to consider the topic of L.M. Montgomery and cultural memory. A term that originated in the field of archaeology and that now resonates in a wide range of disciplines, cultural memory refers to the politics of remembering and forgetting, sometimes in opposition to official versions of the past and the present. Within textual studies, the term invites us to consider the ways in which the past, the present, and the future are remembered, recorded, and anticipated by members of a collective and encoded into text. As a result, cultural memory touches on a number of key concerns, including identity, belonging, citizenship, home, community, place, custom, religion, language, landscape, and the recovery and preservation of cultural ancestries.

But what versions of Prince Edward Island, of Canada, of the world do Montgomery’s work and its derivatives encourage readers to remember? How do gender and genre (not to mention religion and power) affect and shape Montgomery’s selective and strategic ways of remembering in her fiction and life writing? What acts of memory can be found in the depiction of writers, diarists, letter writers, oral storytellers, poets, and domestic artists in her fiction? What roles do domesticity, nature, conflict, and war play in the shaping and reshaping of cultural memory? To what extent do nostalgia and antimodernism drive Montgomery texts in print and on screen? How have these selective images of time and place been adapted to fit a range of reading publics all over the world?

The LMMI invites proposals for papers that will consider these issues in relation to Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, life writing, photographs, and scrapbooks, and the range of adaptations and spinoffs in the areas of film, television, theatre, tourism, and online communities. Proposals for workshops, exhibits, films, and performances are also welcomed. Proposals should clearly articulate the proposed paper’s argument and demonstrate familiarity with current scholarship in the field (please see http://lmmresearch.org/bibliography for an updated bibliography). For more information, please contact the program chair, Dr. Benjamin Lefebvre (ben@roomofbensown.net). Submit a proposal of 200-250 words, a biographical statement of 70 words, and a list of A/V requirements by 15 August 2011 by using our online form at the L.M. Montgomery Institute website at http://www.lmmontgomery.ca/. Since all proposals are vetted blind, they should include no identifying information.

CFP: Lucy Maud Montgomery at Home in Leaskdale: A Centennial Celebration, 13–15 October 2011

Posted on by
Reply

The Lucy Maud Montgomery Society of Ontario (LMMSO), headquartered in Uxbridge Township, is hosting a three-day celebration to mark the centenary of Montgomery’s arrival in Leaskdale, Ontario from Prince Edward Island. Key-note speakers include

  • Ted Barris
  • Kate Macdonald Butler
  • Donna Campbell
  • Mary Beth Cavert
  • Elizabeth Epperly
  • Irene Gammel
  • Mary Rubio
  • Kevin Sullivan
  • Kate Sutherland
  • Elizabeth Waterston

LMMSO invites proposals of 200–250 words for 20-minute presentations with a historical, cultural, and/or literary interest that focus on Montgomery and the Leaskdale years (1911–1926).

Due: 5 January 2011. Send to: lclement[at]lakeheadu[dot]ca.

Five-Day Extension for LMMI Conference

Posted on by
Reply

Due to an unexpected technological difficulty, Jean Mitchell and I would like to offer a five-day extension to everyone interested in submitting a proposal to the L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature conference, to be hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute and held at the University of Prince Edward Island. Please send your abstracts and full contact information in the body of an e-mail to lmmi@upei.ca by Monday, 21 September at the very latest.

The call for papers can be found here.

CFP: L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature (updated)

Posted on by
2

L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature
9th International Conference
University of Prince Edward Island
23-27 June 2010

At the ninth biennial conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute (University of Prince Edward Island), we invite you to consider L.M. Montgomery and the matter of nature. In recent years, the matter of nature has been the subject of much contested debate and theoretical innovation across disciplines. While multiple romanticisms have informed L.M. Montgomery’s passionate views of the natural world, her complex descriptions show her writing both of and for nature. This complexity extends as well to the depiction of cultural and gendered mores (domesticity, friendship, faith, community, biological determinism) as both natural and cultural. In all its forms, nature situates binary relationships that are often represented as hierarchical and oppositional: nature and culture; child and adult; animal and human; female and male; emotion and reason; body and mind; traditional and modern; raw and cooked; wild and domestic; rural and urban.

We invite the submission of abstracts that consider these issues in relation to Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, life writing, photographs, and scrapbooks, as well as the range of adapted texts in the areas of film, television, theatre, tourism, and online communities. Possible questions include:

  • What are the effects of the representations and images of nature that are crafted and circulated in Montgomery’s work?
  • How do Montgomery’s narrations of nature shape children and adults within and across cultures?
  • How do particular constructions of nature work in fiction, across such differences as gender, race, culture, and class?
  • What are the cultural and historical contingencies surrounding nature in Montgomery’s work?
  • What does it mean to consider Montgomery as a “green” writer (Doody) or as a proto-ecofeminist (Holmes)?
  • What do Montgomery’s provocative readings of nature offer us at a time of environmental crises and ecological preoccupations?
  • How does the notion of “nature” impact some of the most central preoccupations in Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, and life writing (the nature of war, of mental illness, of cultural inheritance, of conflict, of same-sex friendships and of heterosexual marriage, of cultural memory, of national ideologies)?

Abstracts should clearly articulate the paper’s argument and demonstrate familiarity with current scholarship in the field (please see http://lmmresearch.org/bibliography for an updated bibliography). For more information, please contact the conference co-chairs directly: Dr. Benjamin Lefebvre (ben@roomofbensown.net) and Dr. Jean Mitchell (mjmitchell@upei.ca). All proposals will be vetted blind and should therefore contain no identifying information.

Please submit one-page abstracts and short biographical sketches by 15 September 2009 to the L.M. Montgomery Institute’s OCS page (http://ocs.vre.upei.ca/index.php/lmmi/2010).

If you’ve already submitted an abstract for the 2010 Conference, please verify that it has been received by e-mailing the director at lmmi@upei.ca. All those who were registered through the 2008 OCS page have been made authors and should go to http://ocs.vre.upei.ca/index.php/lmmi/2010/presenter/submit/1 to submit their abstract. If you were registered but have forgotten your password, please use the Reset Password link located here: http://ocs.vre.upei.ca/index.php/lmmi/2010/login/lostPassword. If this is your first time using OCS for the L.M. Montgomery Conference, then please register yourself as an author here: http://ocs.vre.upei.ca/index.php/lmmi/2010/user/account?source=&requiresPresenter (make sure to select the “Create account as Author: Able to submit items to the conference” option at the bottom of the registration form).

The 2010 Conference planning is well underway so please be on the lookout for future emails with details concerning accommodations and other events. And as always, if you have any problems, do not hesitate to contact us at lmmi@upei.ca.

CFP: Rediscovering Early Canadian Literature (7-9 May 2010)

Posted on by
Reply

2010 Canadian Literature Symposium, University of Ottawa

Keynote speakers: D.M.R. Bentley, Professor of English, University of Western Ontario; Carole Gerson, Professor of English, Simon Fraser University

http://www.canlit-symposium.ca/

Students and teachers of Canadian literature in English are invited to a symposium at the University of Ottawa to share their scholarship on early Canadian writers, especially to explore new approaches, uncover neglected texts and genres, and assess writers’ and critics’ diverse achievements.

2010 marks the twentieth anniversary of Lorraine McMullen’s Re(dis)covering Our Foremothers, a volume of essays that emerged from an earlier University of Ottawa symposium. McMullen’s anthology implicitly assumed that male authors of fiction and poetry were already receiving the attention they deserved, and that female writers would soon join them in the spotlight—two assumptions that, despite some remarkable scholarly achievements, remain open to question. This symposium seeks to address why and how we study early Canadian literature, and to energize scholars of this rich and challenging area of research.

Proposals are welcomed on any aspect of early Canadian literature to 1918, including but not limited to the following:

  • How adequate has been our research into the authors, texts, literary and publishing practices, cultural trends, and social texts of early Canada?
  • What work remains to be done?
  • Which texts and authors have been effectively recovered over the past few decades, and which have fallen into obscurity—and what criteria have governed recovery efforts?
  • Have male writers lagged behind female authors in recent criticism?
  • What new and traditional approaches, critical and editorial, best help us to read early Canadian texts in their historical and cultural contexts?
  • How is early Canadian literature discussed internationally, if it is discussed at all?

Please send, by e-mail attachment, your 300-400 word proposal, with a 100-word abstract and a 50-word bio-blurb, to Janice Fiamengo, Symposium Chair, Department of English, at fiamengo@uottawa.ca. The deadline for proposals is September 25, 2009.

L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature (2010)

Posted on by
Reply

Call for Papers

Please note the extended deadline is now September 15, 2009.

L. M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature
9th International Conference
University of Prince Edward Island
June 23-27, 2010

In 2010 we invite you to consider L.M. Montgomery and the matter of nature. While multiple romanticisms have informed L.M. Montgomery’s passionate views of nature her descriptions were complex as she wrote both of and for nature. What are the effects of the representations and images of nature that are crafted and circulated in the fiction of Montgomery, and in that of other writers of literature (especially for children and youth)? How do her narrations of nature shape children and adults within and across cultures? How do particular constructions of nature work in fiction, across such differences as gender, race, culture and class? What are the cultural and historical contingencies surrounding nature in Montgomery’s work? In recent years, the matter of “nature” itself has been the subject of much-contested debate and theoretical innovation across disciplines. Nature situates binary relationships that are often represented as hierarchical and oppositional. These include nature and culture; child and adult; animal and human; male and female; reason and emotion; mind and body; modern and traditional; raw and cooked; domestic and wild; urban and rural─among others. How might any of these formulations be examined and challenged (or not) in the context of Montgomery’s work? What does it mean to consider Montgomery as a “green” writer (Doody) or as a proto-ecofeminist (Holmes)? What do Montgomery’s provocative readings of nature offer us at a time of environmental crises and ecological preoccupations?

Please send one-page abstracts and short biographical sketches by September 15, 2009 to:
L.M. Montgomery Institute
University of Prince Edward Island
550 University Avenue, Charlottetown, PE C1A 4P3 Canada
E-mail: lmminst@upei.ca