CALL FOR PAPERS: Canadian Applied Literature Association (CALA)
University of Ottawa, Tuesday June 2nd and Wednesday June 3rd, 2015
CALA is an academic association committed to exploring the critical, activist, pedagogical, and therapeutic applications of literature and is open to scholars and practitioners from any discipline, including but not limited to literature, Indigenous studies, social work, psychology, and education. CALA will be hosting its annual conference at the University of Ottawa, on unceded Algonquin land, in conjunction with Congress 2015.
The Congress theme—"Capital Ideas"—invites us, as the website indicates, "to reflect on the power of ideas: ideas captivate our hearts and minds; ideas connect people and ignite discussions and debates; ideas create knowledge and spark discoveries. Ideas represent an invaluable currency capable of changing our lives and our world."
CALA, with its own attention to the affective, connective, inventive, and transformative possibilities of ideas in literature and story, is fruitfully positioned to engage with and expand this year's Congress conversation. Nor, given our critical, activist, pedagogical mandate, would we wish to miss the opportunity to unsettle and challenge the "Capital" of the Congress theme. As such, we invite papers, panels, performances, and roundtables that focus on, but are not limited to:
Cultural texts, theories, and/or practices that open us up to new worlds of being, that critique or move beyond the prescribed tempos of capitalist life
• Post carbon futures
• Un- or de-territorialised geographies (releasing responsibility from the Capital—the local and territorial—as well as from capital)
• Nature as capital
• The rearrangement or recreation of socio-economic-ecological relationships
• Reconceptualisations of time
• Genre disruptions (eg. cli-fi, cli-pop-sci)
• Non-traditional forms and formations of research and practice
• Pedagogical strategies with transformative potential
• Explorations of the new capital: network capital
• Life and world-changing applications of narrative strategies in the health sciences, social sciences, and humanities

CALA invites 300-word proposals submitted electronically to khewson@mtroyal.ca by FRIDAY DECEMBER 12, 2014. Please include with your submission a cover page containing a brief bio; your name; title of your paper/panel/performance/roundtable; your email address; phone number; and any audio-visual requirements. All presenters must be members of CALA. Please visit the website for access to the membership form and any additional information: http://www.stmu.ab.ca/CALA