39
th
Annual Conference of the Association for
Canadian Studies in German-speaking Countries
(GKS)
Call for Papers:
„GeschichteN – HiStories – HistoireS“
February 16 – 18, 2018, Grainau, Germany
The Association for Canadian Studies in German-speaking Countries aims to increase and disseminate
a scholarly understanding of Canada. Its work is facilitated primarily through seven disciplinary
sections, but it is decidedly multidisciplinary in outlook and seeks to explore avenues and topics of,
and through transdisciplinary exchange. For its 2018 annual conference, the Association thus invites
papers from any discipline that speak to the conference theme of „GeschichteN – HiStories –
HistoireS“ with a Canadian or comparative focus. (Papers can be presented in English, French or
German.) We are particularly – but not exclusively – interested in the following aspects:
Writing History and writing stories are as closely intertwined as telling about the past and
storytelling. Histories try to reconstruct the past in a narrative form, and stories are hardly
conceivable without references to the past or to various pasts. Both construct and contain narratives
and with them social, cultural, ideological, and physical landscapes. Narratives tell us of people(s)
and their interaction, with each other as well as with the physical and social environment they live in.
And narrative constructions form a basis of any kind of scholarship.
At the annual meeting of the Canadian Studies Association, we will explore differences, similarities,
and interdependencies of narratives, stories and histories along these topics:
1) Are Canadian (Hi)Stories different?
Is Canadian history and writing about Canadian issues significantly different from that of other
nations? Do Canadian authors, scholars, journalists and historians have different voices, are they
voicing difference? How has the story of two “founding nations” and the fact that French Canada
(and then Quebec) has developed its own national historiography influenced the writing of histories?
How have Aboriginal oral and printed historical narratives influenced the perception of Canadian
history? Are Canadian authors, scholars, journalists and historians looking beyond the arbitrary
boundaries of the nation state or boundaries such as class, gender, and race? What are the
narratives and ideas of the Canadian self, what is the nature of assumptions, (self-)images,
narratives, maps, plans, documents and texts that construct Canada?
2) Authenticity, Historical “Truth” and beyond
How “authentic” can Canadian histories, stories of and about Canada be, how subjective need they
to be? How do historians, scholars and other authors deal with multiperspectivity, contested and
alternative histories, heterogeneous and plural forms of history? How do they deal with
historiographic metafiction?
