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Report on BACS travel award, May 2008
I went to Ottawa for the
International Council for Canadian Studies conference (27-29 May), whose title,
Canada Exposed!/ Le Canada à découvert was
the inspired choice of Chris Rolfe. I also spent three days in the National
Archives of Canada, looking at the papers of Canadian writer John Glassco
(1909-82).
The conference is the subject of another report in this
newsletter, but for me, one of the highlights was the session on visual
culture, which included papers on representations of Canada in Seagram's
adverts (Lisa Sumner, McGill), Kryn Taconis's Photojournalism (Christl Verduyn,
Mount Allison), Canadian printmaking (Christopher Rolfe) and street children in
the work of Saint John painters (Kirk Niergarth, UNB).
Some of the painters discussed in Kirk's paper are in the National Gallery in
Ottawa, and it was exciting to go and see them the next day. It was also very
good to be able to hear Coral Ann Howells and Eva-Marie Kröller's keynote
lecture; they centred their discussion of Canadian literary history on the new Cambridge History of Canadian Literature,
which they are co-editing.
The banquet at the end of the conference was most enjoyable,
and I was glad to be able to see Leigh Oakes
and Jane Warren receive their Pierre Savard award, as well as Robbie
Schwartzwald receiving his Governor General's Award for Canadian Studies.
In my own paper, "John Glassco, Canadian erotica and
the 'lying chronicle', I read Glassco's most famous book, Memoirs of Montparnasse (1970) in the context of his pornographic
writing. I was very pleased with the useful feedback and ideas which I received
from the audience for the session. I
was able to gather a large amount of additional material on Glassco in the
archive. I was particularly interested in his diary and his correspondence with
publishers and editors, as these revealed a great deal about his practices in
relation to pseudonyms, literary hoaxes, and self-censorship of material which
might be liable to prosecution for obscenity. These were the initial concerns
of my research on Glassco, but having had access to the papers, I have
identified several further themes for my future work. I was extremely grateful
to have this opportunity to attend the ICCS conference (which I had not been to
before) and visit the archive, and would like to thank BACS for the travel
award.
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Awards 
