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Third
Annual Workshop of the
Consortium
on Democratic Constitutionalism
University
of Victoria
1-3
December 2006
Demcon 2006 Conference:
Storied
Communities: Narratives
of Contact and Arrival in
Constituting
Political Community
Preliminary
Program
Soon to come: Download "Program
at a Glance"
and
Link to Papers |
Preparation:
The
organizing committee for the workshop will circulate a draft paper in
early fall to provide a set of questions and themes to frame the various
discussions at the workshop and identify points of connection. The Demcon
workshops are intended to foster an intense conversation among all participants.
The discussion paper is designed to serve this aim.
Workshop
Program:
[All
speakers are confirmed except those expressly indicated.]
Friday, December 1
There
will be a session of the Victoria Colloquium on Political, Social and
Legal Theory at 2:30 pm on the Friday afternoon. It will be delivered
by Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos , Sociology, University of Coimbra
and Law, University of Wisconsin-Madison. This will be a very fine session
on a theme germane to the conference. We hope that many participants
will be able to attend.
The
conference proper will begin with a Feast of Welcome at 6 pm on the
evening of Friday, December 1. It will be held in Mungo Martin House
in Thunderbird Park (casual dress; this is a First Nations longhouse
of great significance in the renaissance of the carving traditions of
the coastal First Nations, especially of Mungo Martin's own people,
the Kwakwaka'wakw). The Feast will also welcome us into indigenous story-telling
traditions. We expect that there will be two story-tellers, one of whom
will be Richard Van Camp, a marvellous novelist and short-story writer
of the Tlicho Nation in the North West Territories , who also teaches
creative writing at the University of British Columbia .
Saturday,December 2
Session
1:
Contact and
Arrival:
Foundational
Narratives Speakers:
- Michael
Asch, Anthropology, UVic
- Audrey
Macklin, Law, University of Toronto
Commentator:
- Brenna
Bhandar, Law, University of Reading
This panel
provides the foundation for the sessions that follow. The two speakers
will sketch out the ways that narratives of contact and narratives
of arrival operate to construct people, bodies, borders, and communities.
The speakers will address the persistent importance and operation
of these narratives over time. That is, the way that the narratives
continue to operate powerfully in the present. One goal of this
panel will be to open up the stories, providing ways for people
to think through the narratives that will be considered in the rest
of the workshop. The aim will be both to make the operation of each
narrative more visible, and to bring up to speed people who have
been working primarily in one or the other narrative.
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Session
2:
Methods and
Modes of Constructing Community: Narrative and Storytelling
Speakers:
- John Borrows,
Law, University of Victoria
- Sneja Gnew,
English and Women's Studies, University of British Columbia
Commentator:
- Ted Chamberlin,
Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
In this
panel, we attend to the mechanisms - sometimes creative and even
playful - by which narratives shape community. Themes include trickster
narratives and disruption, narratives of resistance, storytelling
and belonging; storytelling and exclusion; the proper ordering through
narrative of various bodies within communities; how stories not
only construct and position people, but also place them in relations.
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Lunch
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Session
3:
Narratives
of Contact: Bodies, Borders, Land, Belonging
Speakers:
- Kim
Anderson, Writer and Consultant on Social and Health Policy, Guelph
, Ontario
- Bain
Attwood, History, Monash University
- Jacinta
Ruru, Law, University of Otago
On
this panel, we focus on the ways that particular contact narratives
construct borders, land, nationhood and belonging. We also explore
how those stories are resisted, transformed, displaced and struggled
against by the counter-narratives of indigenous communities. |
Session
4:
Narratives
of Arrival: Bodies, Borders, Land, Belonging
Speakers:
- Catherine
Dauvergne, Law, University of British Columbia (not yet confirmed)
- Sean
Rehaag, PhD candidate, Law, University of Toronto
- Patricia
Tuitt, Law, Birkbeck College , University of London
This
panel focuses on arrival, exploring how narratives about immigration
generate a set of stories about borders, land, nationhood and belonging.
Here, also, we see stories of resistance, transformation, displacement
and struggle from immigrant and refugee communities. |
Sunday, December 3
Session
5:
Narrative
in Practice: Would we do things differently if we took stories seriously?
Speakers:
- (Satsan)
Herb George, Wet'suwet'en Hereditary Chief of the Frog Clan, Chair
of the First Nations Governance Centre (not yet confirmed)
- Ron
Stevenson, General Counsel, Department of Justice, Government
of Canada
- Peter
Golden, Immigration Lawyer, Victoria BC (not yet confirmed)
- Danielle
Juteau, Sociology, Université de Montréal
This
panel will consider how our practice - in aboriginal/non-aboriginal
negotiations, and in migration policy and processes - should take
account of narrative (if it should). Does an attention to narrative
help us make sense of the issues? Does it help us understand what
is in issue, enabling us to structure processes in different, more
constructive ways?
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Session
6:
Post
Contact and Post Arrival: Sovereignty, Citizenship and Culture
Speakers:
- Martha
Nandorfy, English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph
- Robert
A. Williams, Jr., Law, University of Arizona (not yet confirmed)
In
this last panel, the speakers will provide their reflections on
the role of narrative in constituting community, noting themes that
have emerged over the course of the workshop or that have been neglected.
They and all participants will reflect on how the discourse moves
forward from here. |
12:00 noon
Workshop Closing
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12:15 pm
Lunch |
December 1-3, 2006
University of Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia
Canada
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