Digital Memory Agents in the Canadian Anthropocene: A Posthumanist Roundtable

This event is hosted by the Department of English and Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University.

This roundtable puts two recent publications—Amanda Spallacci and Matthew Cormier’s Digital Memory Agents in Canada: Performance, Representation, and Culture (2024) and Clara de Massol’s Remembering the Anthropocene: Memorials Beyond the Human (2024)—into dialogue, inviting a diverse group of scholars to explore specific issues, questions, or problems arising from the juxtaposition of the two texts and their respective interventions into debates at the intersection of the Anthropocene, climate change, memory, and posthumanism.

Schedule

10:30-10:50 Matthew Cormier (Assistant Professor, Department of English Studies, Chair, MA Program in Canadian Comparative Literature, Université de Moncton): “Post-apocalyptic Memory and Anthropocene Fiction in Canada”

10:50-11:10 Amanda Spallacci (Lecturer, Gender and Social Justice Department, McMaster University): “Remembering Otherwise: Empty Spaces as Counter Archive”

11:10-11:30 Stephanie Lewis (PhD Student, English and Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University): “Blood Memory: Interconnectivity, Reconciliation, and Embodiment in Indigenous Graphic Novels”

11:30 – 11:50 Jenny Kerber (Associate Professor, English, Wilfrid Laurier University): “Always be ready for winter”: Imagining Indigenous praxis for climate-altered futures”

11:50 – 12:10 Coffee Break

12:10-12:30 Sandra Annett (Associate Professor, Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University): “Going with the Flow?: Memory, Animals, and the Anthropocene in Canadian and European Art Animation”

12:30-12:50 Christine Daigle (Professor, Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Humanities, Brock University): “Encountering Crawford Lake Ghosts: a Canadian Anthropocene Haunting”

12:50-1:10 Clara de Massol (Lecturer, Memory Studies, King’s College London): “Remembering the Anthropocene – A Canadian perspective”

Moderator

Russell Kilbourn (Professor, English and Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University)

Thanks to:

The Posthumanism Research Institute, the Balsillie School of International Affairs, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) / Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines (CRSH).