a conference at the University of British Columbia,
June 5-6, 2009
Call for papers”Queerly Canadian: Changing Narratives” highlights scholarship that explores
fictional and non-fictional narratives that make and measure change (individual, political, community and cultural). Specifically, the conference will ask how queer narratives have changed, not only the changes from l/g to l/g/b to l/g/b/t to queer, but our changing sense
of ourselves in relation to society and to history.
The impetus for the conference is to recognize the importance of the narratives that Jane Rule created in her fiction and her essays. Born in the U.S., Rule chose to be Canadian and created narratives of queer possibilities before there was a major political movement. Once the g/l/b/t movement became an important presence her fictional narratives and her essays provided a critical voice within the g/l/b/t and feminist movements. Her analysis of the relation of individuals to the state, her critique of regulation within minority communities and her resistance to narrowly defined identity politics provide a much-needed perspective for queer politics and cultures today.
The conference marks the expansion of the Rule archives at the UniversityBritish Columbia this year. We want to encourage scholars and graduate students to consider Rule’s papers and other archives that are becoming available that give us a fuller and often rather different
picture of the twentieth century in North America, especially the lives and work of lesbians whose histories tend to be under-researched. While Jane Rule’s work is the impetus for the conference, we want to include attention to other North American writers, artists, activists and
scholars who have enriched and complicated narratives of l/g/b/t or queer lives and communities. Program Friday, June 5: Keynote speakersNicole Brossard, poet and novelist, most recently Cahier de roses & de civilisation (Notebook of Roses and Civilization)Evelyn White, writer and biographer, most recently Alice Walker: A Life Saturday, June 6Plenary – Queerly Canadian Richard Cavell, scholar and writer, Sexing the Maple: Texts, Documents, Criticism, edited with Peter Dickinson Marilyn R. Schuster, scholar, Passionate Communities: Reading Lesbian Resistance in Jane Rule’s Fiction
Round table discussions and panel presentations by scholars, artists and
activists:L/g/b/t and queer narratives from the 1960s to the presentMining the queer
archiveSmall presses and queer journalism: making our narratives knownVisual
narratives: film, video, & graphic novels
Please
submit 500 word proposals for fifteen minute presentations related to
any one of the four roundtable/panel discussion topics by January 30 to: University
of British ColumbiaJanice Stewart Department of English397-1873 East MallVancouver
BCCanada V6T 1Z1janice.stewart@ubc.ca