Call for papers

Working in the University of Calgary’s Canadian Literary Archives
A Round Table sponsored by the Bibliographical Society of Canada
and the Canadian Association for the Study of Book Culture (CASBC)
Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences

University of Calgary
Proposed Date of Round Table: Monday, May 30, 2016

For many decades, the library at the University of Calgary has made a significant commitment to collecting the archives of Canadian writers. Their extensive list of holdings ranges from well-known authors (such as Robert Kroetsch, Alice Munro, and Mordecai Richler) to fairly obscure figures; it also includes other participants in the country’s literary infrastructure such as ECW Press and Descant magazine. Taking advantage of the location of Congress 2016 at the University of Calgary, the BSC and CASBC are jointly sponsoring a round table on research in these archives and invite researchers to discuss their experiences.

Topics are open, and may include such matters as:

• how the contents and gaps in the archive have shaped your research;
• issues of gender, class, ethnicity and literary genre in relation to archival collections;
• canonicity (who is collected);
• serendipity in archival research;
• the role of literary archives in the classroom.

We envisage a round table of 5 or 6 speakers who will make brief presentations of no more than 10 minutes, followed by a general discussion. Graduate students and those in the midst of archival projects are encouraged to participate.

Please submit a brief proposal (maximum 250 words) and a CV to proposals@bsc-sbc.ca

Deadline: Friday, January 15, 2016