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.
Benjamin Lefebvre