Re:Reading the Postmodern (a Canadian Literature Symposium)

The Department of English at the University of Ottawa is holding a symposium
to discuss the past, present, and future of 'the postmodern' in Canadian
writing and criticism. In using the term 'postmodern' today, twenty years
after the publication of Linda Hutcheon's The Canadian Postmodern, are we
referring to a phase of Canadian literary production that is now past, and
whose history can begin to be written? To what extent-if at all-does the
term 'postmodern' remain useful for an understanding of contemporary
Canadian cultural production? Historically, how has the term (and its
various cognates and permutations) been used to theorize the field of
Canadian literature and/or particular texts? To what degree has 'the
postmodern' and its associated forms and tropes ('ex-centricity',
'historiographic metafiction', parody, irony, self-reflexivity, pastiche,
'textualism', etc.) co-opted and/or suppressed alternative ways of
understanding the works that have fallen under its rubric? What is at stake
in the recuperation of some of these alternatives? If, following Fredric
Jameson, the postmodern may be understood to designate, not a set of
discursive tropes or literary styles, but the dominant cultural logic of
multinational capitalism in a borderless global market, to what extent have
'Canadian' and 'postmodern' always been fundamentally at odds? In other
words, does the postmodern entail the erosion of 'the national' as a
category for thinking about 'our' literature 'here', and do 'we' care?

Papers, presentations, and performances are sought on any topic relating to
Canadian literature and 'the postmodern'. Some possibilities are listed
below:

--historicizing the postmodern in Canadian literature
--re-reading the postmodern text
--contradictory postmodernisms
--postmodernism and poetic experimentation
--postmodernism and the nation
--postmodernism and globalization
--postmodernism and postcolonialism
--postmodern histories
--postmodern feminisms
--postmodern technologies
--the space(s) of postmodernism
--postmodernism and the visual in the literary text
--postmodern literary theory and Canadian writing

The symposium will take place May 9-11, 2008 at the University of Ottawa,
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Please send a 300-500 word proposal and a short biographical statement by
email or post (hard copies in triplicate) by AUGUST 31, 2007 to:

Robert Stacey, Symposium Chair
Department of English
University of Ottawa
70 Laurier Ave. East
Ottawa, ON
K1N 6N5
 
Email: rstacey_at_uottawa.ca

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Received on Tue Mar 13 2007 - 20:33:57 EST