The conference organizers, in collaboration with the Association for Canadian Studies (ACS) wish to invite scholars, writers and students, from all disciplines, to a two-day conference on the American experience of Canadians -see description below. This conference will be held in Montreal, on the 12 and 13 of May 2010. Proposals for single papers and full panels should arrive by 10 February 2010, either by email or regular mail. A proposal should include the title of the presentation or panel, the coordinates and affiliation of the presenter or panelists, and a summary of the paper or panel (250 words maximum). Questions may be submitted to the conference's secretariat, at the Urbanization, Culture, and Society Center of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS-UCS), in Montreal.

Relations with the United States have been one of the foremost themes of Canadian economics, history, and culture, if only because twentieth-century Canada is often better understood in its continental context – better than in any other perspective. But also because the Canadian intelligentsia has long explained its own existence in terms of Canadian-American differences, in terms of a ponderous American economic and cultural influence. This influence has fostered migration between the two countries, a fact that allows scholars to put intellectual pronouncements in some perspective. What was, migrants seem to ask, the American reality for migrating Canadians? Historians have finely documented and analyzed the exodus of 900 000 French Canadians to New England between 1840 and 1930. But less is known about the migrant experience since 1945, when, paradoxically, Canadian intellectuals have been most vocally alarmed at the character of American influence.
As Canada-U.S. relations are as intense, yet evolving, as ever, it appears necessary to gather together scholars, writers and students, to explore this theme, to map its contours and nodes, to analyze the practices and discourse attached to it, and especially to make sense of "ordinary" Canadians' agency in it. How can the American journey of Canadians inform us on Canada-U.S. relations, on Canada's culture, economics, society and politics? Who are those Canadians who chose the United States? How did they define their own versions of the American Dream, and the reality they encountered? What can they teach us about the different versions of Canadian values, culture, and sense of community? What methods of inquiry, what new research can we see as emerging around this theme?

Send proposals and questions to:
Godefroy Desrosiers-Lauzon
INRS-UCS
385 Sherbrooke Street East
Montréal (Québec)
H2X 1E3
Canada
cliogod@yahoo.com