Registration is now OPEN for “Straddling Boundaries: Hemispherism, Cultural Identity and Indigeneity”, the inaugural international conference of the Culture and the Canada-US Border research network.
May 24-26 2013
Algoma University, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
KEYNOTES: Margaret Noodin, Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Guillermo Verdecchia
For more details and to register, go to: http://www.kent.ac.uk/ccusb/events/algoma.html
“Straddling Boundaries”
Where border studies in North America has hitherto focused primarily on US engagement with Mexico to the south, the CCUSB network seeks to shift border discussion North to the 49th parallel, and to investigate the representation of the border in both American and Canadian culture and cultural production.
As part of a series of CCUSB events, this conference will intervene in familiar border discourses, which have expanded out of the social and political contexts of the US-Mexico border, while the Canadian border with the USA has tended to be overlooked—prior to 9.11 at least—as ‘passive’. The conference will be an opportunity to develop further border-specific conversations within Hemispheric and Transnational Studies, drawing attention to the ways in which cultural production at/on the Canada-US border both corroborates and unsettles that narrative of ‘passivity’, and highlights the nuances and exigencies of US-Canadian relations, as well as Canada’s unique place in the cultural history of the Americas.
Algoma University is a small progressive university in Northern Ontario overlooking the Canada-US border, providing an ideal location for the staging of this conference. The strategic location of the Twin Cities of Sault Canada and Sault Michigan on the St. Mary’s River is the site of a rich international history linked to border issues, including those surrounding indigeneity and the border, the cross-fertilization of cultural identity, and the culture and ‘architecture’ of post-9/11 security and surveillance. The Algoma campus is located on the site of a former Indian residential school, and now includes Anishinaabe programs through Shingwauk Education Trust. For the 2013 CCUSB conference we will have the option of accommodation on site so that participants can enjoy the campus. For further details, visit: http://www.algomau.ca
Borderlands History 