Canadian studies study tours, internships, conferences and events

"Thinking Canada" - EU-Canada Study Tour and Internship Programme 2011

"Thinking Canada" is an initiative of the European Network for Canadian Studies - a four-week study tour to Canada for European students that will take place from 4 September to 2 October 2011, followed for selected participants by two-month internships. The tour to Canada commences with three days of briefings in Brussels on the EU and EU-Canada relations.The aim of the study tour is to offer its participants a unique in-depth experience of Canada through an intensive programme of visits to major private and public institutions, government bodies, think tanks and NGOs. At each place, the students will receive briefings and have the opportunity to exchange views with representatives of these bodies, many of them leading experts in their fields. The tour will begin in Brussels, and travel to Ottawa, Québec, Montréal, Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria.

This immersion in Canada will offer a unique opportunity for an academic experience in a non-academic setting. The tour is focused on a number of themes, in particular cultural diversity (including the English/French relationship, the First Nations and multiculturalism), political issues (federalism, regionalism, the role of government), the environment (including Arctic issues), urban issues and economic topics (business, finance, trade). EU-Canada relations will also be covered and provide a recurring backdrop to the discussions. Two European academic advisors will be accompanying the tour to serve as resource persons and provide feedback.

In addition to the tour, eight two-month internships will be offered to participants immediately following the end of the tour.

For further information on the tour, its programme, internships, cost and how to apply, see the tour's website.

Deadline for applications: Wednesday 18 May 2011

 
Where is Here Now?  Canadian Literary Study in the 21st Century

The British Association for Canadian Studies Literature Group is pleased to announce that we will be hosting a symposium on 12th September 2011 at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British library. This one-day symposium will provide an opportunity for emerging and established scholars to situate developments and innovations in current Canadian literary studies in the UK and beyond.

We see this symposium as a chance to re-evaluate dominant modes of Canadian literary canon making and map out new ways of understanding Canadian literature's place and influence in and beyond Canada at the beginning of the new millennium. To this end, we invite papers aiming to look forward, focusing on emerging writers, as well as those offering fresh approaches to established writers and forgotten or marginalised writers who are due renewed critical attention. To help us with these productive re-evaluations we have invited two eminent, influential and innovative scholars and BACS members to give a joint plenary and lead the first discussion: Dr. Danielle Fuller (University of Birmingham) and Dr. Faye Hammill (Strathclyde University).


We suggest the following topics of interest, although contributors should not feel limited to these areas:

•Canada on the global stage
•Canada since 9/11
•Canadian literature and culture in the cyberage
•Canadian engagement with new literary genres
•Cosmopolitanism
•Re-assessing ideas of the postnational and/or transnational
•Multiculturalism and diversity
•Indigeneity and/or the absence of decolonization
•Canadian literary prize culture
•Rethinking the 'lit' in CanLit
•Changing materialities
•Interdisciplinary approaches to Canadian literature
•Comparative frameworks: postcolonial and/or hemispheric paradigms
•The institutional positioning of Canadian literature in the UK: Is it an 'Area Studies' subject? Should it be taught under World literatures or general contemporary literature?

We invite paper proposals for 5-10-minute position papers. All panellists will be required to submit a 2000 to 3000-word version of their paper, which will be posted for all delegates to read in advance on the BACS literature group webpage. Proposals of 300 words and brief biographical notes should be emailed to Catherine Bates, Fiona Tolan and Gillian Roberts.





CONFERENCE ON WAR OF 1812 - SENATE HOUSE, LONDON, 13-14 JULY 2012

A major conference marking the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 is being arranged in London on Friday 13 and Saturday 14 July 2012. This will be the annual conference of the History and Politics Group of the British Association for Canadian Studies. Over 20 papers on the War of 1812 have already been received and one of the plenary speakers will be Professor Donald Hickey, who has written one of the main books on the subject. Further papers are invited, especially on the significance of the War of 1812 in Anglo-Canadian-American relations since then. If you are interested in attending or submitting a paper or would like more details about the conference please contact Tony McCulloch. Paper proposals (one or two paragraphs) plus a short bio should be submitted by 1 July 2011.

Canada's Special Relationships - SENATE HOUSE, LONDON, 15 JULY 2011

The 2011 Canadian Studies conference will be held on Friday 15 July and will be on the theme of "Canada's Special Relationships". If you would like to attend or submit a paper please contact Tony McCulloch. It is hoped that some funding for travel from Dundee and accommodation in London will be available for presenters and chairs.

It is intended that a selection of the papers will be published in a special issue of the International Journal. Possible topics include Canada's relationships - now or in the past - with Britain, the USA, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, NATO, the UN, the EU, the G8/G20, the Arctic, etc.***Extended Deadline: 5th May, 2011***

Bank Holiday Opening Hours

A reminder of our Bank Holiday opening hours:

Wednesday 27th and Thursday 28th April 2011: Normal term-time opening hours 09.00-21.00

Friday 29 April 2011 The Library will operate Saturday opening hours 09.45 - 17.30



Saturday 30 April 2011 The Library will operate Saturday opening hours 09.45 - 17.30

Sunday 1 May 2011: CLOSED


Monday 2 May 2011 The Library will operate Saturday opening hours 09.45 - 17.30
 
Normal hours resume on Tuesday 3 May. Please note that last entrance to the Library is 15 minutes before the advertised closing time, and closing down (of copiers, etc) starts from this time.

United Nations report on Sri Lanka

The recent Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka has been made public and released on the UN website.

The panel was set up to advise Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on accountability issues relating to the final stages of the conflict, which ended in May 2009 when Government forces declared victory over the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The panel found credible allegations of serious violations committed by the Government, including killing of civilians through widespread shelling and the denial of humanitarian assistance and credible allegations regarding the LTTE concerning numerous serious violations, including using civilians as a human buffer and killing civilians attempting to flee LTTE control.

The Sri Lanka conflict was fought over three decades and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies contains a wide range of material on the conflict and peacebuilding in Sri Lanka. Collections include primary material published by both the Sri Lanka Government and LTTE, as well as publications on topics including the conflict, peacebuilding, resettlement, development, displacement, ethnicity and human rights.

Recently acquired books also include works on recovery from the tsunami of 2004.

African Economic Research Consortium website

A useful resource for those looking at the economics of, or policy within Africa is the website of the African Economic Research Consortium http://www.aercafrica.org/home/index.aspThe African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) was established in 1988 and is a public non-profit organization devoted to the advancement of economic policy research and training. AERC's principal objective is to strengthen local capacity for conducting independent, rigorous inquiry into problems pertinent to the management of economies in sub-Saharan Africa. It seeks to enhance and network African research.





Key topics covered on the website are:

• Poverty, Income Distribution and Labour Market Issues
• Trade, Regional Integration and Sectoral Policies
• Macroeconomic Policies, Stabilization and Growth
• Finance, Resource Mobilization and Investment

The website provides links to key researchers and research groups based in Sub-Saharan African institutions. It is also possible to search and download examples of working papers from the website.

South Africa's Drum magazine turns 60 this month!

Drum was first published in Cape Town in March 1951 under the title African Drum moving in September 1951 to Johannesburg under a new publisher, Jim Bailey. Drum flourished, eventually achieving a circulation of 400,000 copies distributed not only in South Africa but also in Ghana, Nigeria and East Africa.


Anthony Sampson who was editor of Drum in Johannesburg in the 1950s, later writing a memoir of this time entitled Drum: an African adventure and afterwards says of the importance of Jahannesburg, , “Of all South Africa's cities, Johannesburg was the chief magnet. The gold mines below and around the city absorbed thousands of contract workers. They arrived from the rural areas to be kept in batchelor compounds. Then, months later they were sent back to their homes when their contracts expired. This world existed alongside a much more sophisticated black Johannesburg of shebeens, dancehalls, snappy dressers - where life was lived fast, and on the streets. And it was this world which provided much of the creative talent in the magazine Drum.”


Drum walked a fine line in dealing with the subject of apartheid. As confronting apartheid head-on would have led to the publication being - as other publications were to be over the following years, Drum attempted to expose the evils of the racist system without actually condemning official policy.”


While Drum opposed racism and apartheid, some of the key events of the Liberation Struggle were not published. Jim Bailey did not approve the publication of any reports or photographs of the Sharpeville massacre, nor the terrible work and living conditions of migrant workers on the mines.

More information on the history of Drum, is available on the South African History Online website.




The Baileys African History Archive  houses the Drum collection and has digitised many of the images from the South African Drum and its sister magazines across Africa. Images can be searched, viewed and purchased from this site.

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies holds Dorothy Woodson's Drum : an index to "Africa's leading magazine," 1951-1965 , and copies of Drum are held at both SOAS and the British Library.

(with thanks to the Archival Platform)

RESEARCHING THE COLONIAL ARCHIVE: A TRAINING DAY

RESEARCHING THE COLONIAL ARCHIVE: A TRAINING DAY

Commodities and Culture Leverhulme Network


Victoria and Albert Museum - 27 June 2011, 9.30-5.00pm


With Isabel Hofmeyr (Witwatersrand), Satish Padiyar (Courtauld), Josephine McDonagh (King's), Chris Breward (V&A), Anna Jackson (V&A), Sue Stronge (V&A) and Rosemary Crill (V&A)


This intensive event offers post-graduate and early-career researchers working in eighteenth and nineteenth century subjects training in archival analysis and research methods. Designed around the excellent collections of the V&A this event focuses on textual history, visual culture and the methodological issues collection based research might raise: it also includes collection visits and experience with archival materials. We will consider, amongst other things, 'The Material Histories of Postcolonial Texts', 'Reading the Visual', and 'The Colonial Archive'.


Refreshments and lunch will be provided; there will also be a small amount of preparatory reading required.


Applications to participate in the programme should include:


- a 300 word outline of your research (highlighting its relevance to the Commodities and Culture network research strands)
- a CV

and be sent to Alison Wood at commculture@kcl.ac.uk by 5 May 2011.


A small number of bursaries for travel within the UK are available: if you would like to be considered, please say so in your application.


(N.B. Early Career Researchers should be within 3 years of receiving the PhD.)


http://www.commoditiesandculture.org/events.html

Sir Keith Hancock

Recently added to our collection is a biography of Sir Keith Hancock, A Three-Cornered Life: The Historian W. K. Hancock, written by Jim Davidson and publsihed by the University of New South Wales Press (ISBN: 9781742231266). The title was recently reviewed in Reviews in History and described as a "magnificent biography".

Keith Hancock is described in this review as a man who "played out his career on a world stage but the world only knows him in bits and pieces." For the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Hancock is especially remembered as our first Director, who did much from 1949 to 1957 to found the Institute which still flourishes today.
The Institute also holds an archive collection of the papers of Sir (William) Keith Hancock, which include material relating to his chairmanship of the Buganda Constitutional Committee, 1954 (including correspondence, in particular with Sir Andrew Cohen, Governor of Uganda, papers from a seminar on constitutional issues in Uganda, background notes, papers of the Buganda Constitutional Committee and Steering Committee, minutes of the Namirembe Conference, papers about the Uganda Development Corporation and the Uganda National Congress, notes of visits to Ankole, Toro, Bunyoro-Kitara and Busoga and press cuttings) as well as correspondence and press cuttings relating to Hancock's books , "British War Economy" and "Problems of Social Policy" (History of the Second World War UK Civil Series Vol 1 & 2), 1949-1950; press cuttings of the Liberal Summer School, Oxford, July 1955; correspondence and other papers collated for his biography of Jan Smuts; and notebooks with details for his autobiography.