Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute

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December 17, 2008

Call for Papers on “The Reality of the Indigenous Woman: Canada and India”

The Centre for Canadian Studies

in collaboration with

The School of Women’s Studies

Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

invites papers for the

International Conference on Canadian Studies on
The Reality of the Indigenous Woman: Canada and India

5-6 February, 2009

The indigenous woman has been subjected to gross objectification, abuse and neglect in social, political and cultural spheres in faraway multicultural Canada and closer home, in an equally multilingual and multicultural India. Exploitation and appropriation of the voice of the indigenous woman have led to dehistoricization and homogenization of personal and collective histories within the context of politics, history, law, sociology, gender studies and literature. The subjugation of the indigenous woman also invites introspection into the increasing distance between pedagogy and grassroots activism in the academia. By focusing on various issues which govern the lives of the indigenous women in India and in Canada, the conference would like to highlight the realities of political graft, domestic and state-governed violence and rank police brutality within so-called liberal ‘post-colonial’ democracies. The conference would like to articulate the processes of a racist/casteist nationalism which has enabled the production of a gendered, racialized, and a dispossessed laboring class. By inviting interdisciplinary papers which envision a different subjectivity, the conference would like to map alternate discourses of history, place, nation, gender, and indigenity. The conference is an invitation and a challenge to reexamine and transform our own subjectivities, locations and practices. The conference aims to bring together interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives on the ‘Indigenous Woman’ in the arts and film as well as in the social sciences. Papers on literary, visual, theoretical, legal texts etc are all welcome.
Papers are invited in the following areas:

• Travel narratives
• Testimonial literatures
• Treaties and Acts
• Sovereignty and multiculturalism
• Cultural diversity and the state
• Racism and Casteism
• Indigenous feminisms
• Culture and Performing arts
• Land, Forests, Environment and Eco-feminism

The title and a brief abstract (200-300 words) of the proposed paper may be sent as an email attachment by 15 January 2009 to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Conference Organizing Committee

Professor Suchorita Chattopadhyay (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address))
Professor Samita Sen (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) )
Sm. Debashree Dattaray (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address))

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