Two Days of Canada

[Marlene Moser]

CALL FOR PAPERS

Two Days of Canada 2001
 November 7-8, Brock University

Crossing Borders / Border Crossings

"At borders, as at death and in dreams, no amount of prior planning will
necessarily avail.  The law of boundaries applies.  In the nature of
things, control is not in the hands of the traveller."   -- Janette Turner
Hospital --

Within the Canadian political and cultural imagination, the idea and
realities of borders (national and international) have become layered with
meaning to include (at the very least) a political and cultural reality, an
ideological pressure, and an imaginative trope.  "Bordering" is a
particularly resonant concept in a nation like Canada, a geocultural site
that often imagines itself as vulnerable to the anxieties and anticipations
attached to the particularities of crossing, liminality, and transgression.

With this call we invite the re/thinking, re/marking, and re/making of
borders of all kinds through topics that might include but are in no way
limited to explorations of:

- the anxieties and presumptions of the liminal and/or of the verge
- borders as/distinct from boundaries and bound-ness
- borders and destination myths (imagining the underground railroad, for
instance)
- border as verb (border, bordered, bordering)
- border-lands and culture (from practices to policy imperatives)
- borders as ornamental and/or as iconographic (bordures, Border collies)
- the borders of the future and/or of the past (technocracy, utopianism,
arcadianism)
- borders and military conflict (the War of 1812)
- cross-bordering gender or cross-bordering genre
- the complex intersections of border economies
- borders and the cartographic imperative

Offers of papers are invited by 1 July 2001.

Please send three (3) copies of 250-300 word proposals, accompanied by a
50-word biblio-biographical sketch as well as a 100-word (maximum) abstract
to:

Klay Dyer
Department of English Language and Literature
Brock University
500 Glenridge Avenue
St. Catharines, Ontario
L2S 3A1

Electronic (kdyer at spartan.ac.brocku.ca; in the body of the email, please)
or fax (905-934-3301) submissions are welcome.

For the TDC Organizing committee of Jane Koustas (French, Italian,
Spanish), Michael Ripmeester (Geography), and Donald Wright (History).  Two
Days of Canada 2001 is pleased to announce that the Golden Horseshoe
Alliance's Crossing Borders Conference will be held at Brock University on
9 November 2001.  Conference updates will be posted regularly on the
Canadian Studies webpage at http://www.brocku.ca/canstudies/tdc.htm.

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Marlene Moser
Assistant Professor
Theatre, Drama, Drama in Education Program
Dept of Fine Arts
Brock University
St. Catharines, Ontario
L2S 3A1
(905)688-5550, ext 3213
mmoser at spartan.ac.brocku.ca