CSSC Conference: One Coin, Two Sides: Hybridization of Cultures in Canada

Canadian Studies Centre and Canadian Studies Student Circle invite  everybody to participate in a student conference organized this year as part of our annual festival, Days of Canadian Culture.

Conference

May 13th 2013

Organized by Canadian Studies Student Circle,

at Canadian Studies Centre, Institute of English Cultures and Literatures,

University of Silesia,

Sosnowiec, Poland

One Coin, Two Sides:

Hybridization of Cultures in Canada

Call for Papers

Cultural hybridization as a term refers to the production of new cultural identities through the merging of previously separate antecedents. Yet, despite academia’s cross-examination of it, cultural hybridization may also be a slippery concept as it can be associated with dislocation, loss of tradition, and social unrest.

As Canada, which is apparently faithful to the principles of multidisciplinary and multiculturalism, still has to face and deal with intense conflicts that go beyond the limits of academic discourse - an alternative to multiculturalism is “hybridity” or “cultural hybridization.” Cultural hybridization allows a process, fluctuation, and negotiation of identity rather than giving birth to a new “hybrid” form of identity that is a sum of distinct parts.

Cultural hybridization, multiplicity, and intersectionality are not difficult to notice in Canada: race, ethnicity, gender, class, and other factors continue to form visceral parts of the experience of Canadian minorities. Many Canadian minority writers attempt to build bridges across multiple boundaries existing in such complex multicultural and multilingual societies.

The organizers of the conference invite you to consider the specificity of the cultural hybridization occurring in contemporary Canadian society and literatures, from the point of view of the politics, history, sociology, culture, literature, linguistics and translation studies. The aim of the conference is to examine the significance of cultural hybridization in Canada and to generate a transdisciplinary perception of Canadian hybridity that paves the way for a wider application of this crucial concept in Canadian studies.

We particularly encourage contributions (10-15 minutes) that deal specifically with the main topic of the conference. Papers developed from such presentations will be reviewed and considered for post-conference publication. Presentations may also concern the following categories (themes):

• minority of Indigenous cultures and literatures;
• majority and minority Canadian literatures (ethnic, racial, class, gender);
• identitarian Canadian spaces: diasporic communities, enclaves, integration/disintegration, inclusion/exclusion;
• transnational, transcultural, and hybrid identities;
• narratives of encounter; travel narratives;
• representation of ethnicity and cultural hybridization as a problem;
• Canadian cultural criticism;
• crossing cultural/national boundaries;
• gender and sexuality within the Canadian multicultural framework;
• otherness in Canadian literatures and cultures;
• anglophone and francophone literatures in Canada; 
• Canadian transcultural dialogues, as well as conflicts; 
•  cultural and linguistic diversity in Canada, minority languages in Canada;
• memory and personal life-experiences;
• policies and practices of cultural and national identity and diversity;

Paper submission details:

(1) Please send a 250-word proposal for a 20-minute presentation (in English or French), explaining the overall focus. Include your name and institute.

(2)Proposals should be submitted electronically to:

hybridity.conference2013@gmail.com

(3) Conference fee: 30 PLN

(4) Deadline for abstracts: 10 April, 2013

(5) About Canadian Studies Centre and Canadian Studies Student Circle:

http://www.csc.us.edu.pl

Conference organizers:

Mgr Alina Deja-Grygierczyk (CSSC Supervisor, Head of the Organizing Committee)

Mgr Agnieszka Podruczna (Secretary)

Kinga Kowalska (Head of CSSC)