The Comparative Literature Students’ Tribune – 1st Edition

16 Jan 2015 - 00:00 / 16 Jan 2015 - 00:00

University of Montréal
2900 Edouard Montpetit Blvd
Montreal

 Comparatists: Assert yourselves!

Studies in comparative literature bring together a large community of scholars, breathing life into a discipline whose applicability continues to proliferate. Graduate students’ research projects are rich and varied, reflecting the breadth of the discipline, although lacking diffusion within the larger comparatist community. Last winter, students met to think about a possible collaboration between the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Montreal and the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. Since then, the obvious lack of connections between graduate students from both universities, as well as from other Canadian universities, became a source of motivation for envisioning a space of encounter where we could discuss our projects on the ground of the discipline we share. The “Comparative Literature Students’ Tribune” aims at encouraging discussions between comparatist graduate students of Canadian universities. By asserting the specificity of each of the comparative literature programs in the country, we hope to identify what unites us in this field of study, and forge lasting friendships between young scholars and contribute to the ongoing conversations about the discipline in Canada. For its first edition, in January 2015, the Tribune will take place at the University of Montreal, and will be organized around the question of the spaces for comparative literature.

Occupy Comparative Literature’s Spaces

Thanks to its polyglot and multicultural specificity, Canada is a privileged space for comparatist studies. But our discipline, little known by the public at large and imperfectly identified within academia itself, suffers today from a lack of institutional recognition. Therefore, it seems urgent for us to affirm, display and reflect its presence and importance. This year, the Tribune proposes to explore the question of spaces (geographical, linguistic, theoretical, etc.) of comparative literature in Canada – spaces of convergence but also spaces of tension. Among the issues we hope to tackle:

  • How does Canada constitute itself as a comparatist laboratory?
  • In what way(s) can comparative literature take (back) its place within institutional spaces, but also within public spaces?
  • How can we consider the very space of comparative literature, at the junction of a plurality of fields – intercultural, interdisciplinary, intermedial, etc.?
  • Finally, how are the limits of these theoretical, institutional and geo-political spaces asserted, obliterated or displaced?

We invite graduate students to present their research projects at any stage of their completion through the prism of these questions. Since the Tribune wishes to be a convivial space of exchange, of discussion and of experimentation, we encourage modes of theoretical and critical expression that are original, transmedia or collaborative. Test your research projects, debate your methodological approach, perform your thesis!