CALL FOR PAPERS: ASSOCIATION OF CANADIAN STUDIES CONFERENCE
Octobre 2007
Ontario

Is Canadian Culture “Popular”?
Examining the Paradoxes of Canadian Popular Culture

Raymond Williams, cultural studies critic, once argued that all culture is ordinary. How might we map out various aspects of our taken-for-granted Canadian culture that compose our vernacular landscape today? What does it mean to produce, perform and challenge Canadian culture? How do we define “Canadian” culture in the past, present and future? This conference will explore the multiple configurations, formations and acts that make up Canadian popular culture through papers which examine the often paradoxical relationship that emerges between theoretical and empirical threads in cultural studies, communication studies, and Canadian studies, among other disciplines. We aim to disentangle the complexities of Canadian Popular Culture by welcoming papers on, but not limited to, the following areas:

Popular Culture and Consumption Practices: How do Canadians consume different cultural products and why? How do we define the Canadian consumer? Is there a relationship between ethical consuming practices and national identity? What is the impact of new technologies on Canadian cultural consumption and production?

Defining Canadian Culture on the Global Stage: From Bryan Adams to Nelly Furtado, “Popular” Canadian artists are effectively challenging prevailing dominant paradigms of national identity within the context of music and art industry that has increasingly “gone global.” What is the place of Canadian Culture within our transnational global marketplace? How do Canadian musicians create places where globalizing forces and local cultures intersect? Is it possible to conceptualize Canadian Popular Culture without a critical and close examination of American Popular Culture? How has our proximity to our national neighbor influenced and altered the contours of the development of Canadian Popular Culture?

The History of Canadian Popular Culture: From la Famille Plouffe and Degrassi to Corner Gas and Good Cop, Bon Cop how do we construct the history of Canadian Popular Culture? What events and individuals have marked this history?

Popular Culture and Acts of Cultural Resistance: How do we map the artistic forms of creative resistance that emerge among various cultural groups? How do traditionally marginalized communities (LGBT/racialized/people with disabilities etc) create artistic venues that challenge notions of what it means to be Canadian? How does one “perform” a national politics of identity through various cultural forms of expression?
Despite the “popular” rise in interest in Cultural Studies in the US, Canadian Cultural Studies still has an uneasy place in the Canadian academy. What is the future of Canadian Cultural Studies and how might we reconceptualize promising pedagogical possibilities of teaching popular culture within a Canadian context?

The “Institutionalization” of Canadian Culture: How are definitions of Canadian Culture negotiated and understood among various institutions that govern notions of Canadian identity? How do government institutions (like the CBC, CRTC among other groups) and their accompanying interventions intended to promote and maintain “Canadian culture” influence the development of Canadian cultural expression?

Please send abstracts of no more than 150 words to the following address:

Association for Canadian Studies
Att: James Ondrick
1822-A Sherbrooke W
Montréal, Québec H3H 1E4
james.ondrick@acs-aec.ca
Tel.: 514-925-3099
FAX: 514-925-3095