News and Events

The Canadian Applied Literature Association (CALA)
In conjunction with the 2012 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences presents
Literature, Social Justice, and Change
May 29th-30th, 2012
Wilfrid Laurier University

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012
Building and Room: Career Development Centre, CC201A and B
8:30-9:00 am—Morning Coffee

9:00-9:15 am
Opening Remarks: Michelle Coupal, Western University
9:15-10:45 am
1. Towards Ethical Encounters: Indigenous-Settler Collaborations in Art & Literature
Chair: Allison Hargreaves, University of British Columbia, Okanagan
Rick Monture, McMaster University. “‘Re’discovering the American Indian in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Jacques Poulin’s Volkswagen Blues.”
Shaun Stevenson, McMaster University. “Significant Visions: The Possibility of Ethical Collaboration in Yvonne Johnson and Rudy Wiebe’s Stolen Life.”
Amber Dean, McMaster University. “Beyond Bearing Witness: The Ethical Imperative of Inheritance.”
10:45-11:00 am—Morning Break
11:00 am-12:30 pm
2. Troubling Ethics: Challenging the Imposition of Humanitarian, Juridical, and Eurocentric Stories
Chair: Deanna Reder, Simon Fraser University
David Jefferess, University of British Columbia, Okanagan. “Reading, Cosmopolitan Ethics and the Figure of the Humanitarian.”
Collett Tracey, Carleton University. “Sex, Silence and the Story: A Consideration of the Importance and Difficulties of ‘The Story’ in Understanding and Healing Victims of Sexual Abuse.”
Sam McKegney, Queen’s University. “The Residential School Manufacture of Gender Hatred and Testimonial Reaffirmations of Indigenous Kinship.”
12:30-1:30 pm—Lunch

1:30-3:30 pm
3. Teaching Literature, Social Justice, and Change
Chair: Jo-Ann Episkenew, Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre, University of Regina
Deanna Reder, Simon Fraser University. “Reading What isn’t on the Page: Codes of Silence in Deadly Loyalties.”
Elan Paulson, Western University. “Teaching Fiction of Social Change with Community Service Learning.”
Julie Cairnie, University of Guelph. “Changing Course (Again): Teaching Literature and Social Change.”
Susan Spearey, Brock University. “Complicating Causalities and Troubling Trajectories: Rethinking Relations between Interpretative Practice and the Enactment of Social Transformation.”
3:30-4:00 pm—Afternoon Break
4:00-5:30 pm
4. The Political Act of Healing: A Workshop that Examines Power Relationships Using Embodied Theatre Processes
Chair: Michelle Coupal, Western University
Jo-Ann Episkenew, Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre, University of Regina
Linda Goulet, First Nations University of Canada
Warren Linds, Concordia University
6:00 pm—CALA Dinner
Restaurant: Bhima’s Warung, 262 King Street North, Waterloo, http://bhimaswarung.com/
Wednesday, May 30th, 2012
Building and Room: Career Development Centre, CC201A and B
9:30-10:00 am—Morning Coffee
10:00-11:30 am
5. Bibliotherapy in Theory and Practice
Chair: Hoi Cheu, Laurentian University
Brenda Gold, Laurentian University. “Learning How Readers Read: Teaching the Reading of Literature.”
Katy Roy, Independent Researcher. “La Bibliothèque Apothicaire: A Project for an Ecological Humanist Reading.”
Natalia Tukhareli, Read to Connect. “Bibliotherapy: Theory and Practice.”
11:30 am-12:30 pm—Lunch
12:30-2:30 pm
6. Storied Selves: Bibliotherapy in the Classroom
Chair: Michelle Coupal, Western University
Hoi Cheu, Laurentian University. “Transgressive Consciousness: Engaging Readers’ Response in the Classroom.”
Joseph Gold, University of Waterloo. “Is There a Body in this Class?”
2:30-3:00 pm
Closing Remarks: Allison Hargreaves, University of British Columbia, Okanagan
3:00-4:30 pm—CALA AGM
All are welcome

Biographies

Julie Cairnie teaches postcolonial literature in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. She has published articles and books on Southern African literature, and has particular interests in whiteness, class, and childhood.

Hoi F. Cheu, recipient of Laurentian University’s Teaching Excellency Award in 2011, teaches Modernist Literature, Literary Theory, and Media Rhetoric.  After his first book Cinematic Howling (UBC Press 2007), he has been writing a second book on the concept of healing in ancient sacred writings.  Currently, he is also organizing to publish an essay collection on pedagogy and applied literature in conjunction with CALA.

Michelle Coupal is finishing her Ph.D. dissertation in the English Department at the Western University where she specializes in Canadian and Indigenous literatures. Her dissertation explores the ways in which child sexual abuse narratives disrupt conventions of genre, often controversially, and trouble the distinction between fiction and testimony.

Amber Dean is an Assistant Professor in English and Cultural Studies and in Gender Studies and Feminist Research at McMaster University. Her research and teaching interests include public mourning and memorialization; representations of disappeared or murdered women; gentrification, “Creative Class” rhetoric, and their effects on marginalized residents in inner-city neighbourhoods; and social justice activism.

Jo-Ann Episkenew is Professor of English at the First Nations University of Canada and Director of the Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre. She is also Associate Faculty in Kinesiology and Health Studies at the University of Regina and the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Health Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research interests include applied literatures, narrative medicine, narrative policy studies, and trauma studies.

Brenda Gold is the mother of two daughters, a retired physiotherapist, and currently a student in the M.A. program of Humanities Interdisciplinary studies at Laurentian University.  She holds an English and Philosophy Degree from the University of Toronto, and a B.H.Sc. from McMaster University.

Joseph Gold is the founder of ABC, the forerunner organization of CALA. He is the author of papers and many books on literature, including two works about the role of story, writing, and reading as defining human behaviours.  He is former Chair of English and University of Waterloo, and is currently at work on a study with the working title, “Holistic Criticism.”

Linda Goulet is Associate Professor of Indigenous Education at the First Nations University of Canada where her research interests include community based research, socio-cultural issues in Indigenous health, and Indigenous pedagogy. She recently co-edited a book on the role of adults who work with marginalized youth entitled Emancipatory practices: Adult/Youth engagement for social and ecological justice.

Allison Hargreaves is an Assistant Professor of English in the department of Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan, where she specializes in Indigenous literatures. Her current research investigates literary, activist, and policy interventions into gendered colonial violence in Canada.

David Jefferess is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and English, and the Chair of the Cultural Studies program at UBC’s Okanagan campus. His current research project focuses on the way in which benevolence provides a structure of attitude and reference for discourses of humanitarianism and global citizenship in the north Atlantic.

Warren Linds is Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Human Sciences at Concordia University. He uses Applied Theatre to address issues of social justice and has published about group facilitation, anti-oppression and anti-racism pedagogy, the fostering of youth leadership, and arts-based approaches to qualitative research and documentation.

Sam McKegney is a settler scholar of Indigenous literatures. He grew up in Anishnaabe territory on the Saugeen Peninsula along the shores of Lake Huron and currently resides with his partner and their two daughters in lands of shared stewardship between the Haudenosaunee and Algonquin nations where he teaches Indigenous and Canadian literatures at Queen’s University. He’s written a book entitled Magic Weapons: Aboriginal Writers Remaking Community after Residential School and articles on such topics as environmental kinship, masculinity theory, prison writing, Indigenous governance, and Canadian hockey mythologies.

Rick Monture is a member of the Mohawk Nation, Turtle clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. He is also an Assistant Professor in English and Cultural Studies and Indigenous Studies at McMaster, where he teaches courses on Native Literature, Indigenous Intellectual Traditions, and Bob Dylan.

Elan N. Paulson is a recent PhD graduate from the Department of English at the Western University. Her interest in community service learning in the literature classroom stems from her research in feminist literary theory and gender studies, studies in the scholarship of teaching and learning in the humanities, and service learning leadership with “Western Serves” and “Alternative Spring Break.”

Deanna Reder has co-edited an anthology on Canadian Indigenous literary history with Dr. Linda Morra (Bishops University) entitled Troubling Tricksters: Revisioning Critical Conversations (2010). She holds a joint appointment as Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University, where she teaches 75% in the First Nations Studies Program (www.sfu.ca/fns/) and 25% in the Department of English. She is currently the Series Editor of the Indigenous Studies Series at Wilfrid Laurier University Press: http://wlupress.wlu.ca/press/Series/IS.shtml

Katy Roy is an independent researcher focused on the creative relation between a story and the reader’s imaginary. In her Literature, scene and screen art MA studies, she explored what she called the inner movie. La Bibliothèque Apothicaire is her main project in Quebec.Inspired by bibliotherapy and imagery, and as apothecary reader, she facilitates humanistic readings to better understand the inner movements and scenarios of being and to encourage ecological relationships.

Sue Spearey teaches in the English Department and in an interdisciplinary MA program in Social Justice and Equity Studies at Brock University. Her research focuses on literary/cultural responses to contemporary histories of mass violence, on the one hand, and to projects of transitional justice and social reconstruction, on the other. She also works on pedagogy and witnessing.

Shaun Stevenson is currently completing his Masters degree in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory at McMaster University. His research interests include theories of witnessing, colonial histories, alternative epistemologies, critical race theories, and ideas around social justice practices. He is a volunteer ‘Adult Educator’ at the Hamilton Wentworth Detention Centre.

Collett Tracey received her B.A. from the University of Ottawa, her M.A. from Carleton and her Ph.D. from the University of Montreal. She currently teaches Canadian literature at Carleton University. She is committed to making Canadian literature “real” – she believes it is a reflection of life and experience and needs to be approached as such. Her research includes reconsidering the importance of Modernist writing as it applies to the 21st century. Collett is also interested in women’s writing and feminist issues that inform Canada’s literary tradition, particularly as they relate to ideas of silence and the importance of telling the story.

Natalia Tukhareli, MLIS, PhD, is a founder of the Read to Connect organization that provides book therapy sessions to diverse community groups in Toronto. Her professional experience includes service in libraries and non-profit organizations, teaching in post-secondary institutions and scholarly research in various fields of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Call for Chapters in Book on Applied Literature

General Editor and Coordinator: Dr. Hoi F. Cheu, Laurentian University
Editorial and Peer Review Board: Members of Canadian Association for Applied Literature

This book will be divided into four parts to explore the model of bibliotherapy and applied literature as a framework for literary study.

I. Theory: The Politics and Poetics of Applied Literature
This part focuses on general theories of reading and writing. It covers such topic as

• Historic and/or Theoretical Foundations of Bibliotherapy and Applied Literature
• Storytelling and Human Development
• Literature and Social Change
• Specific interdisciplinary investigations into the story species’ mental world – imagination, empathy, and/or other mental activities.

II. Textual Practice: Applied Literature as a Reading Strategy
Each chapter in this part is a reading of a specific literary work or on a specific author – as the volume aims to demonstrate how the “applied literature” model connects to existing critical practice in literary studies.

III. Mental Health Practice: Bibliotherapy and Applied Literature
The chapters in this part focus on mental health related topics: they are not about interpreting literary texts; instead, they are topic oriented sections which explore how literature helps. Both empirical and clinical methodologies are appreciated.

IV. Pedagogy: Applied Literature in the Classroom
Classroom practice, both at school and in university, is at center of this part. The part shares intellectual ideas as well as teaching resources. As well as essays on teaching philosophies and tactics, the part may include class plans, course designs, book lists, etc.