CFP: [Cultural-Historical] The International Literary Prize Market and Canadian Literature

full name / name of organization: 
Andrea Cabajsky

The International Literary Prize Market and Canadian Literature

40th Anniversary Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
Feb. 26-March 1, 2009
Hyatt Regency - Boston, Massachusetts

The accomplishments of Canadian poets and fiction-writers have been
recognized within Canada through such prizes as the Governor General’s
Awards and the Giller Prize. Nevertheless, the past two decades have seen a
noticeable rise in the number of Canadian works considered for major
international literary awards, particularly the Man Booker Prize, the
Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (most
recently Rawi Hage for DeNiro’s Game). This kind of attention has increased
popular awareness abroad of Canadian writers, and has resulted in
increasing scholarly interest in Canadian writers’ innovations to literary
themes and forms.

This panel aims to uncover patterns that might have governed the
international reception of recent Canadian writers and texts. It thus aims
to gather together papers interested in uncovering the characters and
features of Canadian literary texts that have enjoyed popular success
outside of Canada.

More broadly, it aims to explore the following questions: why have Canadian
literary texts received an increasing number of international literary
awards recently? Do these texts share particular features in common (plots,
themes, conventions) that might tell us why they have enjoyed such popular
success outside of Canada? What does their success tell us about the
expectations or preconceptions of Canada that international readers bring
to bear on Canadian texts? Is Canada’s international reputation as a
“multicultural” nation of immigrants a factor in determining the attraction
of Canadian literature abroad? Or, does the increasing
‘internationalization’ of Canadian literary themes (i.e. an erasure of
‘Canada’ as a literary setting) play more of a determining role here? Does
a comparative examination of the internal literary prize market (GGs,
Giller, etc.) tell us anything different about domestic readers’
expectations and preconceptions of the nation and its literature?

Please send abstracts (no longer than 300 words) to the following email
address: andrea.cabajsky_at_umoncton.ca

Please include with your abstract:

Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee)

Deadline: September 15, 2008

The complete Call for Papers for the NeMLA 2009 Convention is posted at:
www.nemla.org.
Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA panel;
however panelists can only present one paper. Convention participants may
present a paper at a panel or seminar and also present at a creative
session or participate in a roundtable.

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Received on Tue Jun 17 2008 - 09:12:47 EDT