Here you will find links to the CFPs for and details about future CAAS meetings, and to previous conferences sponsored by CAAS.
CALLS FOR PAPERS: DEADLINE—APRIL 5, 2019
The Canadian Association for American Studies will hold a symposium-style event at Concordia University in Montreal, from 25-27 October, 2019. The event will be an opportunity for both new and established scholars of American Studies to share new work, discuss the status of American Studies, and contribute to the future development of CAAS. All scholars are welcome.
The symposium will consist of a series of member-organized panels. CAAS therefore invites proposals for the following panels. Please submit your proposal to the email provided by the panel organizer.
Unsettling States
In the national imaginary, the US has always capitalized on movement—it has depended on immigrants; on migrant agricultural workers; on families and wagon trains seeking the frontier; on people moving for jobs—even though, at specific points in history, such movement is represented as problematic. Bums, tramps, migrant workers, “illegal” aliens, displaced persons, and veterans, among others, have been alternately welcomed and vilified. The Mexican braceros were, for example, first lauded as saviours during WWII, then characterized as a horde of invader “wetbacks” once the war was over. In film noir, returning veterans were figured as drifters; then Hollywood repatriated the same actors as suburban family men, comfortable with conformity. In a 2017 article in the New Yorker, Larissa MacFarquhar worries: “What does it mean that Americans are now moving less often than people in old European countries like France? Has America’s restless dynamism run its course?” This panel seeks to explore different moments in US history in which movement is celebrated or deplored, welcome or lamented.
Send 200 word abstracts and brief (100 words) bios by April 5, 2019 to nicola.nixon@concordia.ca
American Popular Culture in the 1970s and 1980s
This panel seeks papers that explore American popular culture (film, television, music, and so on) in two pivotal decades of the twentieth century. Topics might include the following: alternative and oppositional forms of popular culture; lost or ignored texts, genres, movements; popular texts that embody recent history; popular cultural responses to the end of the 60s, defeat in Vietnam, stagflation, the election of Ronald Reagan; intersections of popular culture and such trends as New Age, the Human Potential Movement, the “culture of narcissism,” and others. Varying theoretical approaches are welcome, but papers should be historically grounded.
Send 200 word abstracts and brief (100 words) bios by April 5, 2019 to Peter Brown, pbrown@mta.ca
Conspiracist-in-Chief: Conspiracy Theory in the Age of Trump
Conspiracy theories have a long history in American culture. One notable paradigm shift occurs with the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Another arises following 9/11, and still another appears with the return of Donald Trump to political life. From his propagation of birtherism in 2011 to his declaration that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by China in 2012 to his fanning the flames of the deep state, the migrant caravan, and QAnon in recent months, Donald Trump has headed another paradigm shift in conspiracy theory in American culture. This panel aims to discern the current direction of conspiracy theory.
Sociology, psychology, history, political science, and literary and cultural studies take very different approaches to conspiracy theory. This panel seeks papers from diverse disciplinary perspectives on the nature, function, and effects of contemporary conspiracy theories. It will take the rise of Donald Trump as a rough starting point for the period under consideration (though the 9/11 Truth movement certainly provides an informative framework), but should not be limited solely to theories disseminated or endorsed by the President. Possible topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
- conspiracy theory and literature (The Circle (2012), The Ghost Network(2015))
- conspiracy theory and politics (xenophobic nationalism, the deep state)
- conspiracy theory and ecology (chemtrails, flat earth, climate denialism)
- the dangers of conspiracy theories (vaccination, Pizzagate)
- conspiracy theory and film (The Conspiracy (2012), Room 237 (2012))
- conspiracy theories and celebrity (Alex Jones, Gwyneth Paltrow)
- conspiracy theory and technology (facial recognition, digital assistants)
- conspiracy theory and journalism (fake news, alternative media)
- conspiracy theory on/and social media
- conspiracism in/as entertainment
- conspiracism as pathology and/or conspiracism as pleasure
- paranoia in the age of Trump
- secrets and lies
- false flags and hoaxes
- secret societies
Send a 300-word proposal and 1-page CV by April 5, 2019 to Lindsey Banco, lindsey.banco@usask.ca
Ambivalent Outcomes
We tend to think of the act of publishing or engaging in literary culture as a positive one, empowering cultural producers. But what about people for whom the act of publishing or participating in literary culture does not produce a positive outcome? Those who might lose control of the story as it circulates in other cultural contexts or is taken up in unanticipated ways? This panel invites proposals from those working on publications gone awry, with special consideration given to proposals on texts and authors from before 1940.
Please send a 250-word abstract and brief bio to by April 5, 2019 to Jennifer Harris, jennifer.harris@uwaterloo.ca
Nineteenth-Century Usages
This panel concerns the politics of politeness in nineteenth-century America. Presenters will examine the mediation of political speech, strategy, and action by conventions of civility, gentility, and etiquette. As a foreseeable key word, Mannersmay be defined broadly or narrowly, according to contextual focus and theoretical or (inter-) disciplinary approach. Panelists may also reflect on the political significance of rudeness and transgression. For example, relevant topics might include:
Transatlantic Travel
Post-Colonial Anxieties
Anglophile/Anglophobe
Mobs and Populism
Reformisms (Rude Radicals, Polite Moderates)
Civil War Civilities
Professional Courtesies
Childhood and Education
Masculine and Feminine Protocols
Etiquettes of Reconstruction/Reconciliation
Political Conventions
Queering Customs
Rhetorical Modes
Escalation, Mobilization, and Violence
Snubbing, Shunning, Shaming
Polite Dialogue
Proprieties of Slavery
(Un-) Conventional Domesticity
Genteel Consumerism
Genteel Fiction
Comedy of Manners
Literary decorum
Clerical decorum
Speakable/ Unspeakable
Passive/Aggressive
Survivance and Decolonization
Class and “Tone”
Social Cues and Triggers
Diplomacy
Hospitality
Resistance
Courtship
Friendship
Please send 300-word abstract and 1-page CV by April 5, 2019 to Luke Bresky, luke.bresky@stmu.ca.
Future Conferences
2018: Alternative/Mainstream
October 12-14, 2018 / St. Mary’s University, Calgary, Alberta
View the CFP here
Past Conferences
2017: Uncertain Futures
October 27-29, 2017 / OCAD University, Toronto, Ontario
2016: Homeland Insecurities
October 21-23, 2016 / Fredericton, New Brunswick
2015: CAAS sponsored four panels at the 2015 American Studies Association annual meeting
October 8-11, 2015 / Toronto
2014: American Circuits, American Secrets
Banff, Alberta
September 18-21 2014
2013: Total Money Makeover: Culture and the Economization of Everything
University of Waterloo
October 24-27 2013
2012: Geographies of Promise and Betrayal: Land and Place in US Studies
York University and the University of Toronto
Centre for the Study of the United States, Munk School of Global Affairs, Toronto, Ontario
October 25-28, 2012
2011: The Aesthetics of Renewal
Carleton University
Chateau Laurier
November 3-6, 2011
2010: Health/Care/Nation
University of Windsor
Windsor, Ontario
October 14-17, 2010
2009: States of Emergency: Crisis, Panic and the Nation
Centre for American Studies, University of Western Ontario
Hilton Hotel
London, Ontario
November 13-16, 2009
2008: American Legacies
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. John’s, Newfoundland
August 13-16, 2008
2007: The Americas— Drawing the Lines
Gouverneur Hotel Montreal Place Dupuis
Montreal, Québec
November 8–11, 2007
2006: American Exceptionalism
Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario
October 19–22, 2006
2005: America and Violence
Delta Barrington
Dalhousie University and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
Halifax, Nova Scotia
October 6 – 9, 2005
2003: Authenticity and Contention
Conference Program (in Adobe® PDF)
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba
October 17-19, 2003