Proposals are sought for a joint panel to be co-sponsored by the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies and ACCUTE for the 2018 meeting of Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Regina. The panel will be scheduled May 26-28, 2018. Proposals are due Nov. 15, 2017.
Thomas King’s A Coyote Columbus Story (2007) offers readers of all ages a witty, entertaining revisioning of the stories told about early colonial encounters between First Nations peoples and Europeans. King’s narrative and Kent Monkman’s illustrations satirize the inaccuracies of Eurocentric historical perspectives on the “Gathering [of] diversities” (to invoke the Congress 2018 theme) that occurred during what Western scholars have variously termed the “Renaissance” and the “early modern period.” We invite proposals that speak to the question of how storytelling can enable rethinking of these relations during these first centuries of interaction (roughly 1400-1700). How can Indigenous approaches to knowledge further our understanding of First Nations’ experiences during these first centuries of interaction?
Possible topics to address include the following:
• Although the complexity of traditional indigenous knowledge systems precludes any simple opposition between oral and written histories, what do First Nations’ oral traditions reveal about their experiences of the early modern period, and how do these compare to the written colonialist versions documented in Western scholarship?
• In what ways do Eurocentric approaches to periodization for the early colonial era--most commonly described as the “Renaissance” or “early modern”-- limit understanding of relations between First Nations peoples and early European visitors to Turtle Island?
• Literary scholars and historians have traced at length how European explorers, missionaries, and settlers depicted--and misrepresented--First Nations at points of first contact, but how do First Nations’ stories depict early modern Europeans? How are early encounters between Indigenous peoples and Europeans represented in First Nations’ stories, both traditional and contemporary?
Proposals are due Nov. 15, 2017. Please send the following to both Madeline Bassnett m.bassnett@uwo.ca and Margaret Reeves margaret.reeves@ubc.ca> by the deadline:
A file containing a 500-word proposal without personal identifying marks;
A completed 2018 Proposal Info Sheet available on the ACCUTE website: https://accute.ca/2017/07/24/2018-accute-conference-proposal-information-sheet/
Panelists are required to be members of one of the two co-sponsoring associations.