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CFP: Writers without Borders (NeMLA panel)

Benjamin Lefebvre

Rita Bode has circulated this call for papers for a conference panel called Writers without Borders: US and Canadian Women Authors, proposed for the next NeMLA conference in Baltimore, Maryland, to be held on 23–26 March 2017. Deadline for submissions is 30 September 2016.

In her study of L.M. Montgomery (1874-1942) in the “Extraordinary Canadians” series, Canadian author Jane Urquhart invokes comparisons of L.M. Montgomery’s life and work to that of her near-contemporary American peers, Edith Wharton (1862-1937), Willa Cather (1873-1947), and Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930), among others.

While the transatlantic connection among women writers is receiving increasing critical attention, the literary relationships among American and Canadian women writers offer a relatively recent area for scholarly explorations of the influences and alignments crossing North America.

This panel seeks comparative studies of American and Canadian women writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that address a range of topics such as the handling of young and/or older female protagonists, representations of nature, depictions of regions, and other relevant subjects. In addition to Montgomery and the authors mentioned above, other possible authors to consider might include Montgomery and other American regionalists, such as Sarah Orne Jewett; Cather and Margaret Laurence; Alcott and her Canadian counterparts.

Please submit 250-300 word abstracts and brief by bio September 30th through the NeMLA submission page: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16487.

Applicants are not required to be NeMLA members at the time of submission but accepted speakers will have to become members by December 1st, 2016.

For queries, please email Rita Bode at rbode@trentu.ca.

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CFP: Crossover Texts (conference panel; deadline 1 November 2015)

Benjamin Lefebvre

The Fall 2015 newsletter of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE) includes my member-organized panel on Crossover Texts, which I proposed for the 2016 conference that will take place on 28–31 May 2016, during the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences held at the University of Calgary. Proposals and inquiries are warmly welcomed—there would certainly be lots of ways to connect with L.M. Montgomery’s life, work, and legacy! The deadline for submissions is 1 November 2015.

Crossover Texts
Organizer: Benjamin Lefebvre (Ryerson University)

The term “crossover fiction” refers usually to texts that cross the boundary between children’s literature and adult literature, in terms of target readership and genre. While there are countless examples of texts that were published for one group but embraced by readers of all ages, the term can also be applied to texts that require some form of textual transformation and texts that fit imperfectly within textual categories.

For this panel, I invite proposals for papers that consider crossover texts of any kind and by authors of any cultural group, including the following:

  • Adaptations or reworkings across media (including oral storytelling, commodities, and tourism) or within one medium;
  • Adaptations across genres and readerships, such as YA novels made into films for a general audience;
  • Transmedia storytelling and questions of authorship, ownership, and branding;
  • New and/or transnational editions, including attempts to revise problematic older texts and to redesign books from one genre to fit within another;
  • Versions across authors’ careers, including shifts from periodical to book publication and authors’ revisitations of their own work;
  • Movements from “high” (literary) genres to “low” genres (fantasy, romance, detective) and formats (comics and graphic novels);
  • Texts by minoritized authors that cross over from niche publishing to mainstream success;
  • Rewrites across cultures, national boundaries, and age-based readership categories, including revisionist texts, mash-ups, and parodies.

Please send the following to the panel organizer at benjamin.lefebvre@ryerson.ca by 1 November 2015: a file containing a 300- to 500-word paper proposal, with no identifying marks of any kind; a file containing a 100-word abstract and a 50-word biographical statement; the 2016 Proposal Information Sheet available on the ACCUTE website. You must be an ACCUTE member in good standing to apply for a member-organized session.

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CFP: Special Issue of The Looking Glass on L.M. Montgomery

Benjamin Lefebvre

Caroline E. Jones, who recently contributed a chapter to Anne around the World: L.M. Montgomery and Her Classic, has circulated a call for papers for a special issue of The Looking Glass: New Perspectives on Children’s Literature on L.M. Montgomery, with a deadline of 28 February 2015:

Critical, reflective, inquiring, and entertaining articles are welcomed for all sections for a special issue on the life and work of L.M. Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables. Recent and ongoing scholarship speaks to myriad topics in this complex author’s body of work: war, class, national identity, child-life, girl-life, nature, animals, and much, much more. This issue will undertake a broad exploration of the contemporary cultural, scholarly, and personal relevance of Montgomery’s work. Why do we read Montgomery? Why is the study of her work still so active?

Further topics might include:

  • The proliferation of new editions of Montgomery’s books
  • Illustrated versions of the novels
  • Picture books based on Montgomery’s life or of her work (there are a few!)
  • The role of landscape in Montgomery’s work
  • Montgomery in the classroom
  • Montgomery beyond Green Gables
  • Montgomery in Japan
  • Montgomery in Scandinavia
  • Montgomery in Canada/the United States/the United Kingdom/Australia
  • Montgomery in translation

L.M. Montgomery has made lasting impressions on literature and culture worldwide. This issue of The Looking Glass will explore those impressions and speculate as to the future of Montgomery studies and Montgomery’s work.

Submit online from our website, through the Submissions section under the “About” link in the top menu, or email to editor@the-looking-glass.net.

For further information on columns, submissions, and editorial policies please visit our website: The Looking Glass: New Perspectives on Children’s Literature.

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Four New Calls for Papers

Benjamin Lefebvre

I’m pleased to post four new calls for papers on L.M. Montgomery and her work. The first two were included in the program for the L.M. Montgomery and War conference, held this past weekend at the University of Prince Edward Island: a collection of essays entitled L.M. Montgomery and War, to be edited by Andrea McKenzie and Jane Ledwell, and a call for the 2016 conference, L.M. Montgomery and Gender, with Andrea McKenzie and Laura M. Robinson as conference co-chairs. The remaining two are for proposed panels for the NeMLA conference, to be held in Toronto in April 2015: L.M. Montgomery’s Ontario Years, 1911–42: A Changing World, to be chaired by Lesley D. Clement, and Beyond “Green Gables”: L.M. Montgomery’s Darker Side, to be chaired by Laura M. Robinson.

UPDATE: The dates of the L.M. Montgomery and Gender conference have been confirmed: 23–26 June 2016! Deadline for submissions is 15 August 2015.

L.M. Montgomery and War (Collection of Essays)

Edited by Andrea McKenzie and Jane Ledwell
Deadline for Papers: 15 August 2014

The year 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War, a global conflict that would prove life-changing for L.M. Montgomery and millions of her contemporaries. We invite submissions of papers for a collection of essays that consider war in relation to L.M. Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, life writing, photographs, and scrapbooks, and the range of adaptations and spinoffs in the areas of film, television, theatre, tourism, and online
communities. McGill-Queen’s University Press has expressed interest in this collection.

Montgomery’s 1921 novel Rilla of Ingleside is one of the only contemporary accounts of Canadian women’s experience on the homefront during the First World War, but the War is evoked and implied in direct and indirect ways in many of the novels, short stories, and poems that precede and follow it. The Blythes Are Quoted, Montgomery’s final published work, bridges the years between the First World War and the Second World War, complicating Montgomery’s perspectives and thoughts about war and conflict. Montgomery’s work has met with a variety of responses world-wide during times of war and rebellion, from post-WWII Japan to today’s Middle Eastern countries. Different kinds of wars and rebellions also permeate her fiction and life writing—class conflicts, family disputes, gender and language wars—sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic. This essay collection seeks to take stock of the complex ways in which war in all its forms has influenced Montgomery’s works and their reception, both in Canada and around the world.

Possible topics include: the Great War anticipated, revisited, remembered, and re-imagined; the politics of gendered witnessing; Montgomery’s reception in times of war and conflict; chivalry, patriarchy, conflict, and romance in poetry and fiction; war as an agent of change; internal and external rebellion in relation to war; the psychology of war in battle and on the homefront.

Papers should clearly articulate the proposed paper’s argument and demonstrate familiarity with current scholarship about both Montgomery and the discipline or field in which you work. (For information about current and past scholarship about Montgomery, please see the website for L.M. Montgomery Online at https://lmmonline.org). Submit a paper of 5,000 to 6,000 words (including references), a biographical statement of 70 words, and a CV by 15 August 2014 to both Andrea McKenzie (acmcken@gmail.com) and Jane Ledwell (jandlwedll@gmail.com). Papers must be submitted in Word-compatible format and follow Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, superscript style, for references https://www.mqup.ca/style-guide-pages-99.php.

L.M. Montgomery and Gender (23–26 June 2016)

The L.M. Montgomery Institute’s Twelfth Biennial Conference
University of Prince Edward Island, 23–26 June 2016
Revised deadline: 31 August 2015

From Anne’s initial iconic and heartrending cry in Anne of Green Gables—“You don’t want me because I’m not a boy”—to the pressure on young men to join the war effort in Rilla of Ingleside, and from the houseful of supportive co-eds in Anne of the Island to the tyrannical grandmother in Jane of Lantern Hill, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s work highlights gender roles: how formative and deterministic they seem, and yet mutable they may be. Much Montgomery criticism of the past several decades has regarded her work from a feminist and gender studies perspective. Given that Canada is fast approaching the centenary of women’s suffrage in the province of Manitoba (1916) and nationally (1918), the twelfth biennial conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island, which will take place 23–26 June 2016, invites proposals for papers that re-consider the role of gender in L.M. Montgomery’s work, broadly defined: her fiction, poetry, life writing, letters, photographs, and scrapbooks, as well as the myriad adaptations and spinoffs in film, television, theatre, tourism, and social media. To what degree do Montgomery’s works, or works inspired by her, challenge or re-entrench normative gender roles? Do her works envision new possibilities for girls and women, boys and men? Or, is our contemporary fascination with her world, in part, nostalgia for what people imagine to be the more clearly-defined gender roles of a bygone era?

Engaging the rich scholarship of the past, possible topics might examine the intersection of gender with:

  • Sexual identity, queerness, bachelor- and spinsterhood, and/or heterosexual romance;
  • Friendship of all kinds; relationships with personal and professional acquaintances;
  • Geographic, cultural, linguistic, racial, or ethnic identities, such as Scottishness;
  • Voting and politics; careers and/or education for women (or men); domesticity;
  • Levels of ability and mobility;
  • Childhood, particularly orphanhood;
  • Mental and/or physical illness, addiction, and/or failing health.

Please submit a proposal of 250–300 words, a CV that includes education, position, publications, and presentations, and a list of A/V requirements by 31 August 2015 by using our online form at the L.M. Montgomery Institute website at http://www.lmmontgomery.ca/. Abstracts should not only clearly articulate a strong argument but they should also situate that argument in the context of previous Montgomery scholarship. All proposals are blind reviewed. Any questions or requests for further information can be directed to the conference co-chairs: Dr. Andrea McKenzie (acmcken@gmail.com) and/or Dr. Laura Robinson (Laura.Robinson@rmc.ca).

L.M. Montgomery’s Ontario Years, 1911–42: A Changing World (April 2015)

L.M. Montgomery lived in Ontario from 1911 to 1942, writing fiction that confirmed her place, established by the early Anne novels, in not just Canadian letters but world literature. This session will explore familial, cultural, historical, and geographical influences on her writings during the period that Montgomery lived in Leaskdale, Norval, and Toronto and vacationed in Bala. Bookended by the First and Second World Wars, this period is characterized by changes such as redefined roles for women, increasing commercialization and commodification, and power struggles among those in the literary establishment to shape the canon. Please submit a 250–300-word abstract and short bio online at www.nemla.org. Deadline: 30 September 2014. For further information, contact Lesley Clement at lclement@lakeheadu.ca.

Beyond “Green Gables”: L.M. Montgomery’s Darker Side (April 2015)

A proposed panel for NeMLA 2015 in Toronto

L.M. Montgomery’s last work, The Blythes Are Quoted, and how it came into being, remains largely untouched. This collection of stories and vignettes emphasizes disillusionment and “despair” alongside hope; it is an experiment in form, but a continuation of earlier works in content. This panel seeks to explore the darker threads of Montgomery’s earlier writings, from dark humor and wit to tragedy, examining earlier iterations and themes that better illuminate how her final work came into being. Please submit a 250–300-word abstract and short bio online at www.nemla.org. Deadline: 30 September 2014. For further information, contact Laura M. Robinson at laura.robinson@rmc.ca.

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CFP: L.M. Montgomery and War (26–29 June 2014)

Benjamin Lefebvre

University of Prince Edward Island, 26–29 June 2014

Please note that the deadline for submissions is now 15 August 2013

“And you will tell your children of the Idea we fought and died for—teach them it must be lived for as well as died for, else the price paid for it will have been given for nought.”
—Rilla of Ingleside (1921)

“I am thankful now, Jem, that Walter did not come back . . . and if he had seen the futility of the sacrifice they made then mirrored in this ghastly holocaust. . . . ”
—The Blythes Are Quoted (2009)

The year 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War, a global conflict that would prove life-changing for L.M. Montgomery and millions of her contemporaries. For the eleventh biennial conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island, we invite proposals for papers that consider war in relation to L.M. Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, life writing, photographs, and scrapbooks, and the range of adaptations and spinoffs in the areas of film, television, theatre, tourism, and online communities.

Montgomery’s 1921 novel Rilla of Ingleside is one of the only contemporary accounts of Canadian women’s experience on the homefront during the First World War, but the War is evoked and implied in direct and indirect ways in many of the novels, short stories, and poems that precede and follow it. The Blythes Are Quoted, Montgomery’s final published work, bridges the years between the First World War and the Second World War, complicating Montgomery’s perspectives and thoughts about war and conflict. Montgomery’s work has met with a variety of responses world-wide during times of war and rebellion, from post-WWII Japan to today’s Middle Eastern countries. Different kinds of wars and rebellions also permeate her fiction and life writing—class conflicts, family disputes, gender and language wars—sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic. This conference seeks to take stock of the complex ways in which war in all its forms has influenced Montgomery’s works and their reception, both in Canada and around the world.

Possible topics include: the Great War anticipated, revisited, remembered, and re-imagined; the politics of gendered witnessing; Montgomery’s reception in times of war and conflict; chivalry, patriarchy, conflict, and romance in poetry and fiction; war as an agent of change; internal and external rebellion in relation to war; the psychology of war in battle and on the homefront.

Proposals should clearly articulate the proposed paper’s argument and demonstrate familiarity with current scholarship in the field (please see for an updated bibliography). For more information, please contact the conference co-chairs, Dr. Benjamin Lefebvre (ben@roomofbensown.net) and Dr. Andrea McKenzie (acmcken@gmail.com). Submit a proposal of 200–250 words, a biographical statement of 70 words, and a list of A/V requirements by 15 August 2013 by using our online form at the L.M. Montgomery Institute website at http://www.lmmontgomery.ca/. Proposals for workshops, exhibits, films, and performances are also welcomed. Since all proposals are vetted blind, they should include no identifying information.

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CFP: L.M. Montgomery: The Ontario Years (1911–1942)

Benjamin Lefebvre

For thirty years, L.M. Montgomery lived in Ontario, writing fiction that confirmed her place, established by the early Anne novels, in the Canadian canon. While much has been written on the familial, cultural, historical, and geographical associations of and influences on her writings of her early years in Prince Edward Island, there is much left to be explored of similar associations and influences from the years Montgomery lived in Leaskdale, Norval, and Toronto and vacationed in Bala. The 2011 centennial celebration, hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Society of Ontario last October, began this conversation in a more formal capacity than had previously occurred. This call-for-papers is for a collection of essays that would not only continue the conversations sparked during this celebration but also open up new dialogues. The editors are particularly interested in discussions of literary influences, specific intellectual interests, events, people, and locales pertaining to Ontario and/or the years 1911–42 that contributed to Montgomery’s fictional and life writing and her photography. If you would like to contribute to this publication, please submit an abstract (c500 words) of your proposed paper and a curriculum vitae (no more than two pages) by Friday, 31 August 2012 to Rita Bode (rbode[at]trentu[dot]ca) and Lesley Clement (lclement[at]lakeheadu[dot]ca). We will contact you about the status of your proposal by the end of October, 2012, at which stage we will be approaching university presses that have a special interest in Canadian literature and culture. If the editors invite you to submit a paper, it should be 18-22 double-spaced pages (including endnotes and bibliography) and would be due the end of February, 2013. Please address any queries to above editors.

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CFP: Lucy Maud Montgomery at Home in Leaskdale: A Centennial Celebration, 13–15 October 2011

Benjamin Lefebvre

The Lucy Maud Montgomery Society of Ontario (LMMSO), headquartered in Uxbridge Township, is hosting a three-day celebration to mark the centenary of Montgomery’s arrival in Leaskdale, Ontario from Prince Edward Island. Key-note speakers include

  • Ted Barris
  • Kate Macdonald Butler
  • Donna Campbell
  • Mary Beth Cavert
  • Elizabeth Epperly
  • Irene Gammel
  • Mary Rubio
  • Kevin Sullivan
  • Kate Sutherland
  • Elizabeth Waterston

LMMSO invites proposals of 200–250 words for 20-minute presentations with a historical, cultural, and/or literary interest that focus on Montgomery and the Leaskdale years (1911–1926).

Due: 5 January 2011. Send to: lclement[at]lakeheadu[dot]ca.

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Two L.M. Montgomery Calls for Papers

Benjamin Lefebvre

Two calls for papers have now been posted, for the next two conferences hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island: L.M. Montgomery and Cultural Memory (21–24 June 2012) and L.M. Montgomery and War (26–29 June 2014).

L.M. Montgomery and Cultural Memory (21–24 June 2012)

“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”
—The Golden Road (1913)

“and even if you are not Abegweit-born you will say, ‘Why . . . I have come home!’”
—“Prince Edward Island” (1939)

For the tenth biennial conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island, we invite scholars, writers, readers, and cultural producers of all kinds to consider the topic of L.M. Montgomery and cultural memory. A term that originated in the field of archaeology and that now resonates in a wide range of disciplines, cultural memory refers to the politics of remembering and forgetting, sometimes in opposition to official versions of the past and the present. Within textual studies, the term invites us to consider the ways in which the past, the present, and the future are remembered, recorded, and anticipated by members of a collective and encoded into text. As a result, cultural memory touches on a number of key concerns, including identity, belonging, citizenship, home, community, place, custom, religion, language, landscape, and the recovery and preservation of cultural ancestries.

But what versions of Prince Edward Island, of Canada, of the world do Montgomery’s work and its derivatives encourage readers to remember? How do gender and genre (not to mention religion and power) affect and shape Montgomery’s selective and strategic ways of remembering in her fiction and life writing? What acts of memory can be found in the depiction of writers, diarists, letter writers, oral storytellers, poets, and domestic artists in her fiction? What roles do domesticity, nature, conflict, and war play in the shaping and reshaping of cultural memory? To what extent do nostalgia and antimodernism drive Montgomery texts in print and on screen? How have these selective images of time and place been adapted to fit a range of reading publics all over the world?

The LMMI invites proposals for papers that will consider these issues in relation to Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, life writing, photographs, and scrapbooks, and the range of adaptations and spinoffs in the areas of film, television, theatre, tourism, and online communities. Proposals for workshops, exhibits, films, and performances are also welcomed. Proposals should clearly articulate the proposed paper’s argument and demonstrate familiarity with current scholarship in the field (please see for an updated bibliography). For more information, please contact the program chair, Dr. Benjamin Lefebvre (ben@roomofbensown.net). Submit a proposal of 200-250 words, a biographical statement of 70 words, and a list of A/V requirements by 15 August 2011 by using our online form at the L.M. Montgomery Institute website at http://www.lmmontgomery.ca/. Since all proposals are vetted blind, they should include no identifying information.

L.M. Montgomery and War (26–29 June 2014)

“And you will tell your children of the Idea we fought and died for—teach them it must be lived for as well as died for, else the price paid for it will have been given for nought.”
—Rilla of Ingleside (1921)

“I am thankful now, Jem, that Walter did not come back . . . and if he had seen the futility of the sacrifice they made then mirrored in this ghastly holocaust. . . .”
—The Blythes Are Quoted (2009)

The year 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War, a global conflict that would prove life-changing for L.M. Montgomery and millions of her contemporaries. For the eleventh biennial conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island, we invite proposals for papers that consider war in relation to L.M. Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, life writing, photographs, and scrapbooks, and the range of adaptations and spinoffs in the areas of film, television, theatre, tourism, and online communities.

Montgomery’s 1921 novel Rilla of Ingleside is one of the only contemporary accounts of Canadian women’s experience on the homefront during the First World War, but the War is evoked and implied in direct and indirect ways in many of the novels, short stories, and poems that precede and follow it. The Blythes Are Quoted, Montgomery’s final published work, bridges the years between the First World War and the Second World War, complicating Montgomery’s perspectives and thoughts about war and conflict. Montgomery’s work has met with a variety of responses world-wide during times of war and rebellion, from post-WWII Japan to today’s Middle Eastern countries. Different kinds of wars and rebellions also permeate her fiction and life writing—class conflicts, family disputes, gender and language wars—sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic. This conference seeks to take stock of the complex ways in which war in all its forms has influenced Montgomery’s works and their reception, both in Canada and around the world.

Possible topics include: the Great War anticipated, revisited, remembered, and re-imagined; the politics of gendered witnessing; Montgomery’s reception in times of war and conflict; chivalry, patriarchy, conflict, and romance in poetry and fiction; war as an agent of change; internal and external rebellion in relation to war; the psychology of war in battle and on the homefront.

Proposals should clearly articulate the proposed paper’s argument and demonstrate familiarity with current scholarship in the field (please see for an updated bibliography). For more information, please contact the conference co-chairs, Dr. Benjamin Lefebvre (ben@roomofbensown.net) and Dr. Andrea McKenzie (acmcken@gmail.com). Submit a proposal of 200–250 words, a biographical statement of 70 words, and a list of A/V requirements by 15 August 2013 by using our online form at the L.M. Montgomery Institute website at http://www.lmmontgomery.ca/. Proposals for workshops, exhibits, films, and performances are also welcomed. Since all proposals are vetted blind, they should include no identifying information.

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Five-Day Extension for LMMI Conference

Benjamin Lefebvre

Due to an unexpected technological difficulty, Jean Mitchell and I would like to offer a five-day extension to everyone interested in submitting a proposal to the L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature conference, to be hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute and held at the University of Prince Edward Island. Please send your abstracts and full contact information in the body of an e-mail to lmmi@upei.ca by Monday, 21 September at the very latest.

The call for papers can be found here.

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CFP: L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature (updated)

Benjamin Lefebvre

L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature
9th International Conference
University of Prince Edward Island
23-27 June 2010

At the ninth biennial conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute (University of Prince Edward Island), we invite you to consider L.M. Montgomery and the matter of nature. In recent years, the matter of nature has been the subject of much contested debate and theoretical innovation across disciplines. While multiple romanticisms have informed L.M. Montgomery’s passionate views of the natural world, her complex descriptions show her writing both of and for nature. This complexity extends as well to the depiction of cultural and gendered mores (domesticity, friendship, faith, community, biological determinism) as both natural and cultural. In all its forms, nature situates binary relationships that are often represented as hierarchical and oppositional: nature and culture; child and adult; animal and human; female and male; emotion and reason; body and mind; traditional and modern; raw and cooked; wild and domestic; rural and urban.

We invite the submission of abstracts that consider these issues in relation to Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, life writing, photographs, and scrapbooks, as well as the range of adapted texts in the areas of film, television, theatre, tourism, and online communities. Possible questions include:

  • What are the effects of the representations and images of nature that are crafted and circulated in Montgomery’s work?
  • How do Montgomery’s narrations of nature shape children and adults within and across cultures?
  • How do particular constructions of nature work in fiction, across such differences as gender, race, culture, and class?
  • What are the cultural and historical contingencies surrounding nature in Montgomery’s work?
  • What does it mean to consider Montgomery as a “green” writer (Doody) or as a proto-ecofeminist (Holmes)?
  • What do Montgomery’s provocative readings of nature offer us at a time of environmental crises and ecological preoccupations?
  • How does the notion of “nature” impact some of the most central preoccupations in Montgomery’s fiction, poetry, and life writing (the nature of war, of mental illness, of cultural inheritance, of conflict, of same-sex friendships and of heterosexual marriage, of cultural memory, of national ideologies)?

Abstracts should clearly articulate the paper’s argument and demonstrate familiarity with current scholarship in the field (please see for an updated bibliography). For more information, please contact the conference co-chairs directly: Dr. Benjamin Lefebvre (ben@roomofbensown.net) and Dr. Jean Mitchell (mjmitchell@upei.ca). All proposals will be vetted blind and should therefore contain no identifying information.

Please submit one-page abstracts and short biographical sketches by 15 September 2009 to the L.M. Montgomery Institute’s OCS page ).

If you’ve already submitted an abstract for the 2010 Conference, please verify that it has been received by e-mailing the director at lmmi@upei.ca. All those who were registered through the 2008 OCS page have been made authors and should go to to submit their abstract. If you were registered but have forgotten your password, please use the Reset Password link located here: . If this is your first time using OCS for the L.M. Montgomery Conference, then please register yourself as an author here: (make sure to select the “Create account as Author: Able to submit items to the conference” option at the bottom of the registration form).

The 2010 Conference planning is well underway so please be on the lookout for future emails with details concerning accommodations and other events. And as always, if you have any problems, do not hesitate to contact us at lmmi@upei.ca.

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L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature (2010)

Benjamin Lefebvre

Call for Papers

Please note the extended deadline is now September 15, 2009.

L. M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature
9th International Conference
University of Prince Edward Island
June 23-27, 2010

In 2010 we invite you to consider L.M. Montgomery and the matter of nature. While multiple romanticisms have informed L.M. Montgomery’s passionate views of nature her descriptions were complex as she wrote both of and for nature. What are the effects of the representations and images of nature that are crafted and circulated in the fiction of Montgomery, and in that of other writers of literature (especially for children and youth)? How do her narrations of nature shape children and adults within and across cultures? How do particular constructions of nature work in fiction, across such differences as gender, race, culture and class? What are the cultural and historical contingencies surrounding nature in Montgomery’s work? In recent years, the matter of “nature” itself has been the subject of much-contested debate and theoretical innovation across disciplines. Nature situates binary relationships that are often represented as hierarchical and oppositional. These include nature and culture; child and adult; animal and human; male and female; reason and emotion; mind and body; modern and traditional; raw and cooked; domestic and wild; urban and rural─among others. How might any of these formulations be examined and challenged (or not) in the context of Montgomery’s work? What does it mean to consider Montgomery as a “green” writer (Doody) or as a proto-ecofeminist (Holmes)? What do Montgomery’s provocative readings of nature offer us at a time of environmental crises and ecological preoccupations?

Please send one-page abstracts and short biographical sketches by September 15, 2009 to:
L.M. Montgomery Institute
University of Prince Edward Island
550 University Avenue, Charlottetown, PE C1A 4P3 Canada
E-mail: lmminst@upei.ca

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CFP: Special issue of The Lion and the Unicorn on Anne of Green Gables

Benjamin Lefebvre

The Lion and the Unicorn, a peer-reviewed academic journal about children’s literature published by Johns Hopkins University Press, invites essay submissions for a special issue on L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, guest-edited by Michelle Ann Abate.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• the past place, present status and future importance of Anne in children’s literature
• Anne and (de)construction of gender and girlhood
• the pastoral tradition and literary romanticism in Anne
• Anne and/as adolescent literature
• Anne and Canadian identity, literature, nationalism and culture
• cinematic, theatrical and television adaptations of the Anne story
• Anne in American, British and Canadian popular and material culture
• Anne and/in the evolution of the “girls’ book”
• L.M. Montgomery as Anne author and icon
• Anne as a reflection and/or revision of the orphan story
• female friendship in Anne; the novel as both homosocial and possibly homoerotic/queer
• re-reading Anne in light of recent news about Montgomery’s battle with depression and her death by suicide
• Centenary celebrations of the publication of Anne; Montgomery’s classic at 100

Essays should be 15–20 pages (4,500–6,000 words) in length. Please send submissions for this special issue electronically as Microsoft Word attachments to Michelle Ann Abate at mabate@hollins.edu.

To facilitate anonymous review, essays should contain no identifying information. Instead, the author’s name, email and postal address should appear in the message that accompanies the submission. Submissions should conform to the Modern Language Association bibliographic style.

See the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7th ed., for procedures regarding in-text citations and Works Cited.

Deadline: June 1st, 2009

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Call for Papers: Edited Collection of Essays on “The Idea of ‘Classic'”

Benjamin Lefebvre

The following call for papers was recently released by the L.M. Montgomery Institute. The volume’s editor and publisher have not yet been announced.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Publication to be based on the 8th International L.M. Montgomery
Conference, 25-29 June 2008.

The L.M. Montgomery Institute is seeking submissions for a proposed publication to be based on the theme of “classic” as discussed at the eighth biennial international Montgomery conference, “L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables and the Idea of ‘Classic.’”

Please send the following materials to the L.M. Montgomery Institute:

  • Two typed, double-spaced copies of the paper (no more than twenty pages, including notes). Please note: If submitting electronically, one copy of the file is sufficient.
  • Manuscript to use MLA style format with internal citations, end notes, and a works cited.
  • A disc copy of the paper, in Microsoft Word or rtf format, using your first initial and last name as the file name (for example: the paper by Cynthia Forest would be recorded in the Word file cforest)
  • A 100 word abstract of the paper
  • A short biography (less than a page) outlining your publications on and interest in Montgomery (and any other relevant scholarship)

NOTE: You are responsible for permissions, and any associated fees, for any unpublished materials or for illustrations. Illustrations are welcome.

Deadline: Submission deadline is 1 September, 2008 but early submission is encouraged. Questions concerning the publication may be directed to the L.M. Montgomery Institute.

L.M. Montgomery Institute
University of Prince Edward Island
550 University Avenue
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island C1A 4P3
Tel. 902-628-4346
FAX 902-628-4305
lmminst@upei.ca

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Calls for Papers: Two L.M. Montgomery Conferences

Benjamin Lefebvre

The following calls for papers appeared in the program for “L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, & the Idea of Classic,” the eighth international L.M. Montgomery Conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute of UPEI and held at the Delta Prince Edward Hotel in Charlottetown on 25-29 June 2008.

L.M. Montgomery—Writer of the World. International conference, Uppsala University, Sweden, August 20-23, 2009.

L.M. Montgomery’s world famous novel Anne of Green Gables has continued to attract readers from all over the world for a century. Our centenary conference is a tribute to all of those who have made 100 years of readership possible.

The main theme of the conference is “Reading Response.” We will explore reading experiences of Anne of Green Gables and other works by L.M. Montgomery. One section will be dedicated to Anne of Green Gables in Sweden. We also accept open proposals for papers on Montgomery’s works.

We invite you to send in one-page proposals for papers, together with a short biographical note.

Deadline: October 1, 2008. Send in your proposals to Conference Co-ordinator Gabriella Åhmansson at montgomery2009@ahmansson.com.

Queries? Please contact Conference Co-ordinator Åsa Warnqvist at asa.warnqvist@littvet.uu.se. More information on the conference will be published continuously at www.ahmansson.com/montgomery2009.html.

L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature. 9th International conference, University of Prince Edward Island, June 2010.

In 2010 we invite you to consider L.M. Montgomery and the matter of nature. While multiple romanticisms have informed L.M. Montgomery’s passionate views of nature, her descriptions were complex as she wrote both of and for nature. What are the effects of the representations and images of nature that are crafted and circulated in the fiction of Montgomery, and in that of other writers of literature (especially for children and youth)? How do her narrations of nature shape children and adults within and across cultures? How do seasonality and place function in her life writing? How do particular constructions of nature work in fiction, across such differences as gender, race, culture, and class? What are the cultural and historical contingencies surrounding nature in Montgomery’s work?

In recent years, the matter of “nature” itself has been the subject of much-contested debate and theoretical innovation across disciplines. Nature situates binary relationships that are often represented as hierarchical and oppositional. These include nature and culture, child and adult, animal and human, male and female, reason and emotion, mind and body, modern and traditional, raw and cooked, domestic and wild, urban and rural—among others. How might any of these formulations be examined and challenged (or not) in the context of Montgomery’s work? What does it mean to consider Montgomery as a “green” writer (Doody) or as a proto-ecofeminist (Holmes)? What do Montgomery’s provocative readings of nature offer us at a time of environmental crises and ecological preoccupations?

Please send one-page abstracts and short biographical sketches by June 30, 2009, to:

L.M. Montgomery Institute, University of Prince Edward Island, 550 University Avenue, Charlottetown, PE C1A 4P3 Canada. E-mail: lmminst@upei.ca.

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CFP / A Ryerson Showcase: The Centenary of Anne of Green Gables

Benjamin Lefebvre

The following is a call for papers for a symposium/exhibit scheduled at Ryerson University in Toronto on Monday, April 7, 2008. The deadline for submissions is February 20.

We invite proposals of 250 to 500 words for a symposium/exhibit that coincides with the centenary anniversary of Anne of Green Gables in 2008. We are looking for proposals for 15-minute papers and creative pieces related to any aspect of this classic novel. The range of topics is open and papers focusing on the novel’s interpretation, its composition, or its cultural significance, are all equally welcomed. Creative pieces can take the form of an imagined story, a performance, an installation, fashion design, or digital media: please provide low resolution samples where appropriate. Ryerson Press was the first Canadian publisher of Anne of Green Gables in 1942, and we are proud to host this event at Ryerson University on April 7, 2008.

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Call for Papers: Anne of Green Gables: New Directions at 100

Benjamin Lefebvre

This member-organized session of the 2008 ACCUTE conference at the University of British Columbia welcomes proposals for papers that will coincide with the centennial anniversary of the publication of an important Canadian literary classic, Anne of Green Gables (1908), and with a national exhibition Looking for Anne: Tracing Visual Culture and L.M. Montgomery’s Creative Imagination.

The organizers are interested in proposals related to any aspect of Montgomery’s text, its cultural production, its reception history, and its cultural inspirations. Innovative approaches including interdisciplinary perspectives that make us see Anne and the world of Avonlea in new ways are particularly encouraged.

The deadline for submissions is November 26. Submitters must be ACCUTE members in good standing. Proposals should clearly indicate the originality and significance of the argument and include a list of works cited. Links to relevant Montgomery scholarship are essential; please visit for an updated list of Montgomery materials.

Please send an electronic copy of your proposal (500-700 words), a completed Proposal Submitter’s Information Sheet, and a file containing a 100-word abstract and a 50-word bio-bibliographical note to both co-chairs:

Dr. Irene Gammel
Department of English
Ryerson University
E: gammel@ryerson.ca

Dr. Benjamin Lefebvre
Department of English and Film Studies
University of Alberta
E: ben@roomofbensown.net

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