Call For Papers

  • Call for Papers for a Special Issue on “The Concept of Vancouver”

    Vancouver, located on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Watuth, and Stó:l? First Nations, is an important urban nexus of art, literature, activism, and other forms of social and political organizing and expression within Canada. While its diversity has led to the emergence of well-developed cultural and political communities, writers and artists in Vancouver have also originated new and innovative collaborations across disciplinary boundaries. Sometimes this transdisciplinary work has been inspired by political causes, such as the environmentalist resistance to pipelines and old-growth logging or the Indigenous-led challenges to the effects of settler-colonialism (including land rights, discussions of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Idle No More, ReMatriate, Red Power, and more) or the ongoing fights against neoliberalism and gentrification (especially of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside). Sometimes this transdisciplinary work has been inspired by aesthetic initiatives, such as the McLuhan-inspired intermedia work (of the Western Front) in the 1960s and 1970s, or the experiments with interdisciplinary Surrealism in the 1970s and 1980s, or the fusion of various visual arts and literary communities across the past century. Authors and artists in the 1960s wrote about Vancouver as a marginal community, outside of the glare of international attention. Today, though, Vancouver’s situation on the west coast as a vibrant hub in a trans-Pacific network of overlapping business and cultural industries demands a reconceptualization of the city that reflects its overwhelming connectedness. For better and for worse, the city has become a cultural capital. Papers are encouraged to address any combination of the arts, literatures, and politics of Vancouver, and the interconnections these have with other scales of engagement, including the national and planetary issues in which Vancouver participates.

    Gregg Simpson, "Jou Jouka" (1973). Used with permission.

    Gregg Simpson, “Jou Jouka” (1973). Used with permission.

    This special issue invites essays that examine the representation of Vancouver in art and literature, that consider individual authors and artists, that explore the state of aesthetic communities (visual, literary, architectural, filmic, etc.) in the city, or that address the confluence of politics and aesthetics. We are particularly interested in papers that explore links between art and resistance, art and the archive and collective/institutional memory, art in the neoliberal gentrification of the city and housing crises, and art and settler-colonial histories and decolonization efforts. We are also interested in papers that consider avant-garde groups and affiliations (such as TISH, the hippy and Beat poets of the 60s and 70s, Press Gang, the Vancouver School of photo-conceptualists, and the Kootenay School of Writing, amongst others), contemporary urban space, the politics of architecture, micro-literary histories, and transnational or transborder considerations. Canadian Literature publishes essays on fiction, poetry, non-fiction, drama, and inter-genre collaborations.

    All submissions to Canadian Literature must be original, unpublished work. Essays should follow the bibliographic format of the MLA Handbook, 8th ed. Articles should be between 6,000 and 7,000 words, including endnotes and works cited. Submissions should be uploaded to Canadian Literature’s online submissions system (OJS) by the deadline of August 31, 2017. See our submission guidelines for details.  Expected publication date of the issue is fall 2018.

    Guest editors of this issue will be Gregory Betts, Julia Polyck-O’Neill, and Andrew McEwan.

  • Call for Papers for a Special Issue on “Ecocriticism after Ecocriticism”

    In the last two decades, ecocriticism has become thoroughly established in Canadian literary studies. Environmental approaches to Canadian literature have transformed conventional ideas of nature and natural aesthetics; reshaped understandings of places, regions, animals, and labour; and imbued scholarship and teaching with political urgency. What in the 1990s was a new and insurrectionary critical development has become a profusion of conferences, articles, and books about Canadian environmental writing. Some twenty-five years after the term “ecocriticism” first appeared in this journal, and one hundred issues after Laurie Ricou’s “So Big About Green” editorial, the field is institutionally robust, eclectic in subject and method, and theoretically sophisticated—but also due for critical re-examination. Ongoing public controversies over tankers and hydroelectric dams, the continuing infringement of Indigenous sovereignty, the economic and political sway of the Alberta oil sands, and the increasing effects of anthropogenic climate change make a reconsideration of ecocriticism all the more pressing. Studies as different from each other as Timothy Morton’s Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics (2007) and Jedediah Purdy’s After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene (2015) have attempted to dispense with inherited environmental ideologies in favour of critical, political, and aesthetic categories more appropriate to a radically changing biosphere. Where, then, is Canadian environmental literature after nature? And where are Canadian literary studies after ecocriticism?

    Nicholas Bradley - logging truck 2016This special issue invites essays that examine the state of ecocriticism in the Canadian context, that take original environmental approaches to Canadian writing, that explore creative responses to environmental destruction and growth, and that consider the functions of literature and criticism in the neoliberal Anthropocene. How do we imagine environmental aesthetics today and for the future? What do nature writers of the past, as well as the present, have to tell us in the time of pipelines, protests, and protection of the land? We are especially interested in essays that suggest new paradigms for understanding the shape and politics of “nature” in the literatures of Canada. Comparative, multilingual, and transnational approaches, or other modes that emphasize the plurality of ecologies and natures in Canada, are particularly welcome. Articles that do more than examine a single text in light of environmental theories are encouraged. We publish essays on fiction, poetry, non-fiction, drama, and inter-genre collaborations. Contributors are invited to imagine new modes of ecocritical inquiry and to examine Indigenous ecologies and the decolonizing possibilities of environmental criticism. Studies of environmental literature from all historical periods are welcome.

    All submissions to Canadian Literature must be original, unpublished work. Essays should follow the bibliographic format of the MLA Handbook, 7th ed. Articles should be between 6,000 and 7,000 words, including endnotes and works cited. Submissions should be uploaded to Canadian Literature’s online submissions system (OJS) by the deadline of April 15, 2017. See our submission guidelines for details.

    This issue will be edited by Nicholas Bradley and Laura Moss.

    Questions about the special issue may be directed to can.lit(at)ubc.ca.

  • Indigenous Literature and the Arts of Community

    Deadline extended to June 30, 2016 from March 15, 2016

    This special issue of Canadian Literature was inspired by the inaugural gathering of the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA), entitled “The Arts of Community,” which was held at Six Nations of the Grand River in October 2015. Seeking to catalyze and continue the conversations developed at that event, Canadian Literature invites submissions that explore new ways of thinking about Indigenous literary arts and community engagement.

    We invite submissions by scholars, knowledge-keepers, artists, and community members that consider questions pertaining to community and Indigenous literature. We welcome academic papers, as well as creative critical pieces in alternative formats, for potential inclusion in a print issue of the journal and/or an affiliated online resource hub at canlit.ca. We are particularly interested in work that pursues strategies for moving beyond academic lip-service regarding “community consultation,” which too often replicates colonial power structures, and instead discusses methods of building relationships among scholars, artists, educational institutions, and Indigenous communities and nations based on reciprocity and respect. We therefore solicit submissions that engage with Indigenous literary arts to consider how research can become more accountable to the interests, concerns, and intellectual pursuits of Indigenous communities. Imagining literary creativity expansively, we welcome work that engages with literature, film, theatre, storytelling, song, hip hop, and other forms of narrative expression.

    While open to all submissions dealing with Indigenous literary arts, we encourage work that engages with the following topics:

    • the reciprocal influences of the arts on the meaning of “community” and of communities on the meaning of “art”
    • the role of narrative arts in depicting, defining, addressing, and creating Indigenous communities
    • the role of Indigenous communities in refining, expanding, and challenging understandings of art
    • the responsibilities of artists and/or scholars to the communities of which they are part and to the communities addressed by and in their work
    • the ethics of mobilizing and/or demobilizing community-specific Indigenous knowledge in scholarship or art
    • the capacity of methodologies and practices prioritized in Indigenous literary studies to serve the needs of Indigenous communities

    Given the significance of place to Indigenous understandings of community, and in acknowledgement of the territories in which the inaugural gathering of ILSA was held, we also invite work dealing with Haudenosaunee narrative arts, the literary history (and future) of Six Nations, and the legacy of E. Pauline Johnson Tekahionwake.

    The deadline for submissions is March 15, 2016. All papers submitted will undergo a formal peer review process through Canadian Literature. Essays should follow current MLA bibliographic format (MLA Handbook, 7th ed.) Maximum word length for articles is 6500 words, which includes endnotes and works cited.

  • Asian Canadian Critique Beyond the Nation

    NEW DEADLINE: January 1, 2016.

    Asian Canadian critique has conventionally unfolded within nationalist frameworks. From important historical events such as the Chinese Head Tax, Japanese Canadian Internment, and the Komagata Maru Incident, to ongoing struggles over multiculturalism and global migrations, Asian Canadian critique has tended to emphasize the role of the nation-state in the marginalization of racialized populations. This approach has been central to the anti-racist pedagogy of the field, and has been deeply nurtured by its close ties with cultural communities, activists, and social movements. Yet the nationalist framing of Asian Canadian critique has also reinscribed citizenship and national belonging as the basis of political desire, thereby drawing the field back into the assimilatory impulses of multiculturalism.

    This special issue invites contributors to reimagine Asian Canadian critique beyond the national(ist) imaginary. With its long-standing focus on racialization and marginalization within the nation-state, Asian Canadian critique is in a unique position to dismantle rather than reinforce national epistemologies. Historically, Asian Canadian communities were produced through global migrations that took place in the shadow of British and American empires, and its nationalist aspirations have unfolded both with and against these loyalties. More recently, Asian Canadians have appeared within the national imaginary in various ways as refugees and undocumented migrants, and as international students and bearers of global capital. By framing Asian Canadian critique as a transnational problematic, we counter-balance the field’s tendency to focus on Canada with the question, What is the Asian in Asian Canadian? In posing this query, we engage with the Asian as category, identity, representation, and a site of affective identification and disidentification.

    This special issue invites essays that reflect critically on existing frameworks in Asian Canadian critique and repositions the field in relation to trans-Pacific studies, world systems critique, comparative empires, inter-Asia cultural studies, global indigeneity, the global South, and other paradigms. We are especially interested in essays that question the coherence of Asian Canadian critique, not to mention Asian Canadian objects and topics, through comparative, multilingual, and transnational approaches that destabilize rather than reinforce national epistemologies.

    All submissions to Canadian Literature must be original, unpublished work. Essays should follow current MLA bibliographic format (MLA Handbook, 7th ed.). Maximum word length for articles is 6,500 words, which includes endnotes and works cited.

    Submissions should be uploaded to Canadian Literature’s online submissions system (OJS) by the deadline of January 1, 2016.

    Questions about the special issue may be directed to can.lit(at)ubc.ca.

    La critique canado-asiatique au-delà du prisme national

    Éditeurs invités: Chris Lee, Christine Kim

    Le paradigme nationaliste a longtemps dominé le champ de la critique canado-asiatique. Devant des faits historiques tels que la taxe d’entrée imposée aux immigrants chinois, les camps d’internements de Canadiens d’origine japonaise, l’incident du Komagata Maru, et face aux débats actuels suscités par le multiculturalisme et les mouvements migratoires internationaux, la critique canado-asiatique a souvent eu tendance à mettre l’accent sur le rôle de l’État-nation dans la marginalisation des populations d’origines étrangères. Cette approche a sans contredit été déterminante pour la constitution d’un discours pédagogique anti-raciste, et a été nourrie par ses liens étroits avec les communautés culturelles, le militantisme et les mouvements sociaux. Pourtant, le point de vue nationaliste de la critique canado-asiatique a également eu pour effet de réinscrire la citoyenneté et l’appartenance nationale parmi les principes fondamentaux de l’aspiration politique, renouant du même coup avec les anciens réflexes d’assimilation du multiculturalisme.

    Ce numéro spécial se veut une invitation à repenser la critique canado-asiatique au-delà de l’imaginaire national(iste). En raison de l’attention qu’elle a longtemps accordée aux phénomènes de racialisation et de marginalisation à l’intérieur de l’État-nation, la critique canado-asiatique se trouve dans une position privilégiée pour questionner — plutôt que conforter — les épistémologies nationales. Historiquement, les communautés formées par les Canadiens d’origine asiatique sont issues des migrations produites dans la foulée des empires américains et britanniques; leurs aspirations nationalistes se sont ainsi manifestées à la fois avec et contre ces allégeances. Plus récemment, les Canadiens d’origine asiatique ont été diversement représentés dans l’imaginaire national, tantôt comme réfugiés ou migrants sans papiers, tantôt comme étudiant internationaux ou grands investisseurs. En inscrivant la critique canado-asiatique à l’intérieur d’une problématique transnationale, nous souhaitons faire contrepoids à la tendance consistant à se focaliser uniquement sur le Canada et à chercher à définir asiatique dans l’expression « canado-asiatique ». Ce numéro spécial est une invitation à interroger le terme asiatique à la fois en tant que catégorie, identité, représentation, objet d’une identification affective ou de son rejet.

    Nous sollicitons des articles susceptibles de jeter un regard critique sur les traditions ayant contribué à l’essor de la critique canado-asiatique et plaidant pour un repositionnement de cette dernière à la lumière des travaux actuels dans le champ des études sur le Pacifique, de la critique des systèmes mondiaux, des études comparatives des impérialismes, des études culturelles inter-asiatiques, de l’indigénéité mondiale, du global south ou de tout autre paradigme. Nous sommes particulièrement intéressés par les articles remettant en question l’apparente uniformité de la critique canado-asiatique, ainsi que des objets qui lui ont traditionnellement été associés, à travers des approches comparatistes, plurilingues et transnationales susceptibles d’ébranler plutôt que renforcer les épistémologies nationales.

    Canadian Literature ne publie que des articles originaux et inédits. Les articles — d’environ 6500 mots (notes et références bibliographiques comprises) — doivent respecter le style de citation MLA.

    Prière de soumettre votre texte via le site de Canadian Literature (OJS) avant le 1er janvier 2016.

    Pour toute question concernant ce numéro spécial, veuillez contacter can.lit(at)ubc.ca.

  • Emerging Scholars

    Deadline: December 7, 2015

    What is new in the study of Canadian literature? We turn to people who are (relatively) new to the field to ask this important question. This issue will highlight the work of Emerging Scholars and showcase the directions the field is taking. We welcome submissions on any topic from senior graduate students, postdocs, and those who might consider themselves to be Emerging Scholars (we place no time limit on this category). What better way to usher in a new editor than with a new scholars issue?

    We are actively seeking submissions for this NOW, so please help spread the word!

    All submissions to Canadian Literature must be original, unpublished work. Essays should follow current MLA bibliographic format (MLA Handbook, 7th ed.). Maximum word length for articles is 6,500 words, which includes endnotes and works cited.

    Submissions should be uploaded to OJS by the deadline of December 7, 2015.

    Questions about the special issue may be directed to can.lit(at)ubc.ca.

    Numéro spécial consacré aux chercheurs émergents

    Quels sont les nouveaux débats et les nouvelles perspectives qui animent les études sur la littérature canadienne? Nous invitons particulièrement les jeunes (et les moins jeunes) chercheurs à proposer leurs réponses à cette question importante et à indiquer des pistes pour éclairer les tendances actuelles de la recherche. Doctorants, post-doctorants et chercheurs émergents (nous n’attribuons aucune limite temporelle précise à cette catégorie) sont invités à soumettre des textes sur tout sujet touchant la littérature canadienne. Quoi de mieux qu’un numéro spécial rassemblant les travaux de nouveaux chercheurs pour marquer les débuts d’une nouvelle éditrice?

    Date limite : 7 décembre 2015. Les soumissions sont les bienvenues dès MAINTENANT. Passez le mot!

    Pour toute question concernant ce numéro spécial, veuillez contacter can.lit(at)ubc.ca.

  • Queer Frontiers in Canadian and Québécois Literature

    The concept of frontier is most productive in thinking about queer experience. The spatial frontier separates the invisibility of private intimacy from the visibility of public life; the freedom and security of queer districts (for instance, the Village in Montreal, Church Street in Toronto, and Davie Street in Vancouver) from the heteronormative erasure of queer life in towns and cities throughout Canada. The border is also temporal and generational, separating childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age of those who live their queer experiences in extremely different ways. It marks queer legal status before and after same-sex marriage; queer history before and after the appearance of HIV, AIDS and tritherapies; and larger social histories before and after the sexual liberation struggles of the sixties and seventies.

    Many questions may guide an analysis of the concept of the frontier in the representation of queer experience; for instance, what are the borders which separate gays and lesbians in their twenties from those in their sixties? What are the borders which mark class differences in the LBGT community? Which are the frontiers between gender normativity in the public sphere and the challenges of gender performativities of femininity, masculinity, male femininity, female masculinity, the femininity or masculinity of transsexuals, etc.? Sexuality is also problematic and must be understood within a logic of agency and of the multitude of choices which are offered, from total sexual abstinence to the most unrestrained sexuality. Many other factors define, separate and cohere in the multiple experiences of queers in Canada and Quebec: including the plurality of desires, racial, ethnic and cultural identities, nationality and transnationality, postcolonialism and globalization, Indigeneity and autochthony, heteronormativity and homonormativity, the defense of marginality, and so on.

    It is in this context that we invite scholars of Québécois, Canadian, and Indigenous literatures to explore the concept of the frontier in works which represent the experiences of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, trans*, intersexual, genderqueer, Two-Spirit, and/or drag and transvestite subjects—in other words, of queer realities. Papers may include analysis of novels, poetry, short stories, and theatre, and may focus on a single work or a set of texts, relate either to Francophone, Anglophone, or Indigenous literatures exclusively, or be a comparative analysis of the literary traditions of Quebec and English Canada.

    All submissions to Canadian Literature must be original, unpublished work. Essays should follow current MLA bibliographic format (MLA Handbook, 7th ed). Maximum word length for articles is 6,500 words, which includes endnotes and works cited.

    Submissions should be uploaded to Canadian Literature’s online submission system CanLit Submit by the deadline of September 1, 2014.

    Frontières queers dans la littérature québécoise et canadienne

    Editeurs invités: Jorge Calderon et Domenico Beneventi

    La notion de « frontière » est des plus productives afin de penser l’expérience queer. La frontière spatiale sépare l’invisibilité de l’intimité et la visibilité socio-culturelle ; la liberté et la sécurité des quartiers queers (par exemple le Village à Montréal, Church Street à Toronto et Davie Village à Vancouver) et l’oppression, le danger et l’effacement de la vie queer dans de nombreux villages et villes à travers le Canada. La frontière est aussi temporelle. Elle sépare l’enfance, l’adolescence, l’âge adulte et la vieillesse des personnes qui vivent leur expérience queer de manières fort différentes. Elle marque aussi l’histoire queer avant le droit au mariage de personnes de même sexe, et après ; avant la trithérapie contre le VIH, et après ; avant l’apparition du sida, et après ; avant les luttes de libération sexuelle des années 60 et 70, et après.

    De nombreuses problématiques peuvent guider l’analyse de la frontière dans la représentation de l’expérience queer. Par exemple, quelles sont les frontières qui séparent les gays et les lesbiennes dans la vingtaine de ceux dans la soixantaine ? Quelles sont les frontières qui marquent la différence entre les personnes riches et les personnes pauvres ? Quelles sont les enjeux du genre sexuel : la féminité, la masculinité, la féminité masculine, la masculinité féminine, la féminité et la masculinité transsexuelles, etc. ? La sexualité est aussi fort problématique. Il faut ici penser à la multitude de choix qui sont offerts de l’abstinence sexuelle totale jusqu’à la sexualité la plus effrénée et démesurée. De nombreux autres facteurs définissent, séparent et relient entre elles les multiples expériences queers au Canada et au Québec : entre autres la pluralité le désirs, l’identité raciale, ethnique et culturelle, les questions nationales et transnationales, le postcolonialisme et la globalisation, les réalités des Premières Nations et des autochtones, l’hétéronormativité et l’homonormativité, la défense de la marginalité, etc.

    C’est dans ce contexte que nous invitons les spécialistes de littérature québécoise, canadienne, et autochtone à explorer la fonction de la notion de frontière dans des œuvres qui traitent principalement de l’expérience de gays, de lesbiennes, de bisexuel(le)s, de personnes bispirituelles des Premières Nations, de drag queens et kings, de travesti(e)s, de transsexuel(le)s, d’intersexuel(le)s, en d’autres mots de la réalité queer. Les études peuvent porter sur le roman, la poésie, l’essai et le théâtre. Elles peuvent être centrées sur une œuvre en particulier ou sur un ensemble de textes. Elles peuvent porter soit sur la littérature francophone, soit sur la littérature anglophone, soit sur la littérature autochtone. Ou encore elles peuvent comparer les traditions littéraires francophone, anglophone, et autochtone au Québec et au Canada.

    Tous les articles soumis à Canadian Literature doivent être des travaux orginaux et ne doivent pas avoir été publiés auparavant. Les articles doivent être présentés en suivant les règles bibliographiques du MLA. (MLA Handbook, 7e éd). Le nombre maximal de mots pour un article est limité à 6 500 mots, ce qui inclut les notes en fin de texte et la liste des références.

    Les articles doivent être téléchargés à partir du système en ligne du site Web de Canadian Literature à CanLit Submit au plus part le 1er septembre, 2014.

  • Science & Canadian Literature

    Science & Canadian Literature is a special issue dedicated to the subject of science in/and Canadian poetry and prose.

    In the three decades since the last science-themed issue of Canadian Literature appeared, much has changed in both literary and scientific circles. New literary theories have come to shape our critical conversations, new Canadian authors have emerged, publishing has been fundamentally changed with the advent of the Internet; at the same time, sheep have been cloned, food has been genetically modified, computers have shrunk to pocket size. And neither of these circles exists in isolation: each has affected the other, with differences that have made a difference (to borrow the language of ecologist Gregory Bateson) across the disciplinary boundaries.

    Canadian writers frequently engage science as a topic in both poetry and prose, and have achieved international recognition for this work. High-profile writers who have special literary interests in science, such as Atwood, Gibson, and Bök, are only part of the story: many other writers engage science as part of their oeuvre, including writers of poetry (Dewdney, McKay, Sarah, Outram, Ormsby), fiction (Wright, Bowling, Lam, Brand, Wong), and non-fiction (Grady, Major, Suzuki, Savage, de Villiers).

    Science is commonly perceived as a universal, trans-national entity, but it is interesting to combine it with a national perspective: is there a way in which Canadian literature reframes science as a literary subject? Does a Canadian context influence writing about science (both literary and scientific)? Are there special concerns or issues about science that occur in Canadian writing? While not all articles in the issue need address the nationalism question, we encourage submissions with an eye to the Canadian context.

    While the issue is focused on science as theme or form in literature (or on science as literature), not on science fiction or speculative fiction, studies that focus on specific scientific issues or hard science in science fiction (as opposed to social or political topics, ethics, etc.) are welcome (for example: genetic engineering in Oryx and Crake).

    Suggested areas for investigation

    • Scientific theories and Canadian literature
    • Scientific language and metaphors in Canadian literature
    • Scientific aspects of medicine and Canadian literature
    • Science, material culture and literature
    • Computers/computer science in literature
    • Science, the environment/ ecology/ natural history and Canadian literature
    • Scientist-biography as a literary subject in Canada or by Canadian writers
    • The representation of scientists in Canadian literature
    • Poetics and science in Canadian writing
    • Science and/as literary form in Canadian writing
    • Science and society in Canadian literature
    • Canadian writers of science in an international context (the Canadian expat scientist)
    • Canada as a scientific subject
    • The culture/science wars from a Canadian perspective
    • Science writing in Canada
    • ’Pataphysics’ (the science of imaginary solutions, cf. Bök) as scientific/literary work
    • Science-technology in Canadian literature

    All submissions to Canadian Literature must be original, unpublished work. Essays should follow current MLA bibliographic format (MLA Handbook, 7th ed). Maximum word length for articles is 6500 words, which includes notes and works cited.

    Submissions should be uploaded to Canadian Literature’s online submission system at canlitsubmit.ca by the deadline of September 1st, 2013.

    Questions in advance of the deadline may be addressed to

    Amanda Jernigan (ahjernigan@gmail.com), Travis Mason (tvmason@dal.ca), and Janine Rogers (jrogers@mta.ca).

  • Letters for Robert Kroetsch: A Special Issue on His Work and Influence

    I wanted to become a postman

    to deliver real words

    to real people.

    There was no one to receive

    My application.

    —Seed Catalogue, section 5

    Robert Kroetsch (1927-2011) had a resounding impact—wild and crazy and thoroughly Canadian prairie—as Armin Wiebe describes it. As co-founder of boundary 2 in the early 1970s he was influential in disseminating postmodern theory in North America and internationally. A prolific and funny theorist and critic, he became a major influence in Canada as he taught Creative Writing at the University of Manitoba at the same time as his own work was taught across the country. He combines a clear connection to his roots in Heisler, Alberta, with a life-affirming and intellectually challenging take on writing. Author of 9 novels, 14 volumes of poetry, and 7 books of non-fiction, Mr Canadian Postmodern has given us many lovely and treacherous words. We invite you to continue the play with word and place that he introduced to Canadian literature by submitting an essay on his work to Canadian Literature.

    All submissions to Canadian Literature must be original, unpublished work. Essays should follow current MLA bibliographic format (MLA Handbook, 7th ed). Maximum word length for articles is 6500 words, which includes notes and works cited.

    Submissions should be uploaded to Canadian Literature’s online submission system at http://canlitsubmit.ca by the deadline of February 1st, 2013.

    Questions in advance of the deadline may be addressed to: can.lit@ubc.ca.

  • Beyond Borders to Bioregions: Teaching and Reading Ecocritically

    Announcing a special issue of Canadian Literature.

    Guest edited by Anne L. Kaufman and Robert Thacker.

    We seek essays, reviews, and other responses for a special issue of Canadian Literature honouring the teaching, scholarship, and example of Laurie Ricou.

    Since the publication of his path-breaking study of Canadian prairie fiction, Vertical Man/Horizontal World (1973), Laurie Ricou has been a unique and important presence in Canadian literature. Following the trajectory of place he has lived himself, his most recent books, Salal: Listening for the Northwest Understory (2007), The Arbutus/Madrone Files (2002), and A Field Guide to A Guide to Dungeness Spit (1997) are border-crossing works of literary eco-criticism as well as models for knowing a place, living responsibly in it, and attending to its demands—physical, psychic, and aesthetic. There, Ricou champions the Pacific Northwest bioregion, its people, its literature, its flora and fauna. He has been no less conscientious about these details in the classroom, as his students can attest. This understated scholar and his subversive approaches to facilitating intellectual growth have not yet received their critical due. This collection of essays, sparked by a panel at the Western Literature Association meeting in Missoula in October 2011—a place of deep personal and professional commitment for Ricou himself—seeks to remedy this deficit.

    All submissions to Canadian Literature must be original, unpublished work. Essays should follow current MLA bibliographic format (MLA Handbook, 7th ed). Maximum word length for articles is 6500 words, which includes notes and works cited.

    Submissions should be uploaded to Canadian Literature’s online submission system at http://canlitsubmit.ca by the deadline of June 1st, 2012.

    Questions in advance of the deadline may be addressed to:

    Anne L. Kaufman (anne.l.kaufman@gmail.com) and Robert Thacker (rthacker@stlawu.edu)

  • New Directions in Early Canadian Literature

    In her Foreword to Recalling Early Canada (2004), Carole Gerson laments that “we do not have many wide-ranging volumes of critical studies dedicated to early Canadian literary culture” (ix). Indeed, much of the important scholarly work on early Canadian literature that began in the 1970s and 1980s has been supplanted by succeeding waves of post-modern, post-colonial, and now contemporary Canadian literary scholarship. But research in the areas of Colonial and Confederation literature has recently expanded in a number of exciting ways. The History of the Book in Canada project, for instance, firmly established book history as a vibrant new area of research, while studies by D.M.R. Bentley (2004), Nick Mount (2005), and Gerson (forthcoming 2009) have stressed the need for early Canadian literary history to be set in an international context. Similarly, Kym Bird (2004) has shown that theatre research plays a central role in our understanding of early Canadian literary culture.

    We invite articles on authors, texts, genres, and contextual issues that will not only help bring attention to the study of early Canadian literature, but will also help address the gap in scholarship. Essays may focus on new readings of established early Canadian texts or consider little known texts by well-known authors. We are also interested in articles that address neglected and emerging areas of critical investigation, such as early First Nations writers, digital archives, and early Canadian cultural production.

    Essays should follow the submission guidelines of the journal: canlit.ca/submit. Cover letters should indicate that the article is to be considered for this special issue.