The 2013 FEL Conference (The Seventeenth Conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages) will be held October 1 – 4, 2013 at Carleton University, in Ottawa, the capital of Canada and headquarters of the country’s national Aboriginal organizations.

“This conference is all about connections and building collaborations , locally and internationally,” explains conference co-organizer and professor in Sociology and Anthropology, Donna Patrick. “We see it as a way to bring together all kinds of people who have concerns about Indigenous languages, as well as endangered languages in general. The conference provides a forum to share work being done, discuss current challenges and think about new projects and collaborations. Our theme embraces everything from academic research to building solidarity and connections within and among communities.”

The conference itself is a collaborative effort between the non-profit UK-based international organization, Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL) and a group of Carleton professors in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies (Marie-Odile Junker, Kumiko Murasugi and Ida Toivonen), the Department of Sociology and Anthropology (Donna Patrick) and the Department of French (Erik Anonby). Nicholas Ostler, Chairman of FEL, invited Mary Jane Norris, a FEL member and a Carleton sociology alumnus, to serve as local chair for their 17th annual conference in 2013, to be held for the first time in Canada. As a former graduate, Mary Jane approached her home university of Carleton to collaborate in hosting the conference here in Ottawa.

The conference itself reflects connections, collaboration, and cross-disciplinary research with respect to Ottawa’s Algonquin heritage, community and the University. Mary Jane, a specialist in the demography of Aboriginal languages in Canada, is also a member of the Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation. Simon Brascoupé, an Adjunct Research Professor in Carleton University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology and internationally known Aboriginal artist from the Algonquin community of Kitigan Zibi Anishnabek, contributed his art work to the front cover of this year’s Conference Proceedings. There is also a pre-conference trip organized to visit Kitigan Zibi School which runs an Algonquin immersion program and is about a two-hour drive north of Ottawa.

These kind of collaborations are fruitful, not only with respect to what they achieve together, in the form of the conference and publication of the proceedings, but also in the benefits found in the learning process and in the relationships that are made along the way.

Visit the FEL Conference website for more information:  http://www.carleton.ca/fel2013/

Focusing on the upcoming 2014 World Cup in Brazil, this research project aims to contribute to theoretical and empirical understandings of the intersections between major sporting events, moral panics and anti-prostitution/trafficking campaigns.  While the scholarly literature on this issue provides substantial evidence of the use of anti-trafficking campaigns to promote the abolition of prostitution, little is known of the ways in which these types of campaigns unfold locally through specific cultural contexts.  This project seeks to address this gap through an ethnographic analysis of the campaigns against sex tourism during the World Cup 2014 in Brazil, with a focus on the city of Natal, one of the twelve host cities.  Natal offers a unique case in point due to both its long history of anti-sex tourism campaigns and the processes of gentrification expressed through these campaigns.  The proposed investigation thus seek to analyse whether the campaigns linked to the 2014 World Cup might further stigmatize, criminalize and spatially marginalize the women engaging in practices of sex tourism.

Christine Duff (Department of French): Lire le zombi: Haïti et au-delà/ Reading the Zombie: Haiti and Beyond

The last few years have seen a resurgence of popular interest in the zombie in North America: witness the advent of Zombie Walks and the use of the zombie metaphor in the Occupy Movement.  There have been international conferences devoted to the subject, two recently taking place in Montreal: Autopsie du zombi in May 2012, and Invasion Montréal: colloque international sur le zombi in July of the same year.  In short, the undead are experiencing a renaissance.  While the zombie is a useful metaphor in contemporary debates regarding exploitation and oppression, its contemporary revival obscures its origins, along with much of its signifying potential.  Literature represents one of the richest arenas in which this signifying potential plays out.  In literary studies, however, work on the zombie has focused exclusively on Haitian literary production, extending only recently to writings of the Haitian diaspora.

The proposed project seeks to: 1) establish the extent to which the motif of zombification is present in the literatures of the Americas (in the hemispheric sense of the term); and 2) determine overarching tendencies in its use and explore their implications.  The trope of zombification undergirds a larger number of literary works than is currently acknowledged.  If, as Kaiama Glover maintains in her 2005 article on Haitian literature, the zombie is a particularly rich site of metaphorical potential and is “highly exploitable as a literary device”, it is my assertion that the full and myriad implications of the zombie and zombification as literary devices remain to be identified and articulated, especially with regard to literatures outside of Haiti.

Michel Hogue (Department of History): Empire of Possibilities: Isaac Cowie and the Making of the Prairie West

In putting his recollections to paper, former fur trader Isaac Cowie sought to preserve in print some of his experiences during a critical period in the Prairie West’s history.  “These papers may prove interesting,” Cowie suggested, “to anyone connected with the ‘days of auld lang syne’ in Western Canada, and perhaps to a few of the numerous newcomers who have come to build an empire of infinite possibilities therein.”  Born in the Shetland Islands, Cowie entered the Hudson’s Bay Company’s (HBC) service at Fort Qu’Appelle in 1867 at a critical moment in both the history of the fur trade and that of the Prairie West.  He was an active participant in the final days of the Plains fur trade and in the promotion of the economic and social order that displaced it.  When success in his business ventures eluded him, Cowie found a career as an advocate for “pioneers” seeking government recognition and as an amateur ethnographer and historian preserving and promoting aspects of the western past, particularly the exploits of its early settlers.  Cowie’s “empire of possibilities” evoked the enduring and cherished myth of the orderly and peaceful nature of the Canadian West’s settlement and embodied his own personal hopes and dreams.  It overlooked, however, the people for whom “settlement” meant dispossession or marginalization, not opportunity.  By narrating Cowie’s own version of his life alongside stories of the Metis and First Nations with whom he lived, worked, and traded, whose land he bought and sold, and whose histories and material culture he collected, this project will re-contextualize Cowie’s narrative of the West and interweave the stories of “pioneers” with those of Indigenous peoples.  In so doing, it will open a new window on the processes of dispossession and repossession that made the Prairie West.

Jody Mason (Department of English Language and Literature): Workers, Readers, Citizens: Canada’s Frontier College, 1899-1950

This project will study the vast archive of Canada’s most significant adult literacy initiative, Frontier College.  The College, founded as the Canadian Reading Camp Association in 1899 by Protestant minister Alfred Fitzpatrick, developed a labourer-teacher model that enabled its work among immigrant labourers in Canada’s resource frontier.  Frontier College is an organization with roots in the social gospel movement and, by the interwar period, it was actively involved in discouraging political radicalism in work camps through its promotion of democratic citizenship and naturalization.

While much is known about the institutional history of Frontier College, I aim to use the organization’s archive at Library and Archives Canada to learn more about the workers as learners, as readers, and as consumers of culture in the first half of the twentieth century.  This research has several main objectives: it will study, synthesize, and analyze a large body of largely unstudied archival material, while enriching nascent work on the history of reading in Canada and fostering important interdisciplinary links among literary and cultural studies, labour history, book history and print culture studies, and the study of immigration and ethnicity.

Mohammed Rustom (College of the Humanities): The Philosophical Mysticism of ‘Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani (d. 1131)

Rustom’s first book on the famous Persian philosopher Mulla Sadra (d. 1640) has afforded him with the ability to understand how a number of key figures’ ideas came together in Sadra’s own synthetic project, the most prominent example being the work of the controversial Andalusian Sufi Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240) and the immediate generations of his followers (somewhat misleadingly referred to as the “school of Ibn ‘Arabi”).  Yet what can be said about the phase immediately before Ibn ‘Arabi, that is, the twelfth century?  We admittedly have a great deal of information concerning the early development of Islamic theology and philosophy from the eighth century to the beginning of the twelfth century.  But when we come to the twelfth century proper, many important questions remain unanswered.

In other words, the one area of inquiry which has largely been neglected is the phase between the famous Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1111) and Ibn ‘Arabi.  This period is particularly problematic owing to its indebtedness to the earlier Islamic philosophical tradition, particularly the work Avicenna (d. 1037).  Rustom’s background in Islamic theology and philosophy in general and the writings of Avicenna and al-Ghazali in particular, coupled with his work in Islamic thought from Ibn ‘Arabi onwards, has positioned him well in terms of grappling with the complexity of the twelfth century of Islamic thought, which, he argues, bears witness to a very unique shift in Islamic intellectual history.

Although there are a number of key authors who belong to the era in question, Rustom maintains that one of the most important is the great martyr ‘Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani (d. 1131).  This figure is famous for having been the student of Ahmad Ghazali (d. 1126) (the brother of the aforementioned al-Ghazali), and for having been put to death by the Seljuq government, ostensibly on charges of “heresy.”  Yet, to date, there is not a single, thorough presentation of ‘Ayn al-Qudat’s thought and influence.  Rustom’s project seeks to fill this lacuna by demonstrating ‘Ayn al-Qudat’s pivotal role in the development of the Persian poetic tradition on the one hand, and the Islamic intellectual tradition on the other.

Paul Mkandawire (Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies – Human Rights): Indigenous Knowledge Transfer and Adaptation to Climate Change Among Orphans in Malawi 

This research project aims at examining whether pathways for transmitting traditional ecological knowledge between the elderly and the youth are dissolving under the weight of heavy adult mortality in Malawi in a context where more than 1.3 million children live without one or both biological parents due to HIV/AIDS. While contributing the least amount of greenhouse gases, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) will experience the vilest impacts of global warming in the foreseeable future.  Unfortunately, the region also doubles as home to the overwhelming majority of the world’s orphaned and vulnerable children. The prime focus accorded to vulnerable groups in the global agenda on combating the negative effects of global warming means that future efforts aimed at building social resilience in communities in SSA cannot proceed without considering the unique needs of this expanding group of youth coming of age without natal parents.

While orphans’ vulnerabilities in other domains such as healthcare, schooling, discrimination, stigma, and HIV/AIDS have largely been documented, not much is known as to whether this cohort is similarly disadvantaged with regard to access to indigenous ecological knowledge vital for mitigating and adapting to climate change.  This study draws upon an ecosystem approach and employs qualitative approaches to explore how heavy adult mortality being triggered by the AIDS epidemic in Malawi is affecting the transfer of indigenous climatic knowledge between elders and youth. Though often bypassed in scientific discourse, indigenous knowledge, rooted in African smallholder farming systems and longstanding familiarity with local climatological events, can significantly improve the ability of marginalized populations to adapt to climate change.

Julie Murray (Department of English Language and Literature): British Women Writers and the Forms of Life, 1790-1840

In this project, Murray argues that the life-writing produced in the early decades of the nineteenth century is intimately linked to the politicization of “bare life” that writers such as Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, and before them, Edmund Burke, argue is a result of the discourse of the “rights of man.”  The link is a sure sign of the chilling effect that a universalizing concept of rights has on life understood as bios.  Murray’s hypothesis is that writers’ desire to clothe a newly politicized (or, as Agamben puts it, formerly “creaturely”) “bare” or “naked” life motivates a range of experiments in life-writing in the early nineteenth century.  The texts that she examines replay a tension, however, already internal to 1790s political debates about the relationship between chivalry and rights, discussions of which are saturated with metaphors of the “naked” and the “clothed.”  Ultimately, this project examines the relationship between the biographical and the biopolitical at the turn of the nineteenth century, and takes seriously the “life” in life-writing in order to explore how literature is intimately bound up with the discursive terrain of life in this period and beyond.

David Wood (School of Linguistics and Language Studies): An Idiodynamic Investigation of the Relationship between Willingness to Communicate and Speech Fluency in a Second Language

Second language (L2) speech fluency has typically been identified as a set of observable temporal features of speech, but has not been analyzed in relation to learner factors in performance such as willingness to communicate (WTC), which can be defined as readiness to engage in communication at a specific time and with specific interlocutors.  With the exception of exploratory case study work by Wood (2012), focusing on general links between overall WTC and fluency gain over time, no researchers have examined  the relationship between WTC and L2 fluency.  A clearer, evidence-based perspective on the link between WTC and fluency can have significant implications for classroom teaching and assessment. Among other benefits, it can help in determining whether dysfluency influences WTC, and whether lowered WTC can lead to dysfluency, or whether the relationship between WTC and fluency development is more complex than that.

The proposed study is an exploratory, case-study attempt at answering the question of what the interrelationship is between L2 speech fluency and WTC. It presents an examination of the influence of WTC on fluency in monologic speech of for Chinese learners of English L2, with a non-Chinese interlocutor, in intensive English as a foreign language (EFL). Monologic narrative speech samples from the Chinese EFL learners in Canada will be analyzed for markers of fluency and interpreted in light of the learners’ WTC profiles and retrospective self-analysis of WTC in stimulated recall.  The results can potentially illuminate the relationship between dysfluency and WTC, particularly the directionality of the relationship, whether fluency breakdowns lead to lowered WTC or vice versa. This can serve to establish a research methodology foundation for a larger-scale study in future, focusing on larger groups of learners in several different learning contexts, such as EFL abroad, and part-time and full-time EFL intensive programs in their own country.

The opening will take place on the third floor of St. Pat’s, in various rooms of the new Language Centre.

There will be food and a cash bar, as well as video demonstrations from various languages, and live poetry readings.   We look forward to seeing you there!

Please R.S.V.P. to Connie Wall

Dr. Bever will present a series of four related lectures on language and cognition, and a seminar on reading and text formatting. He will also be available for meetings with individuals and groups. To schedule a meeting with him please contact Kumiko at Kumiko_murasugi@carleton.ca. Information on his visit, including abstracts, are available HERE.

The revised schedule and titles of his talks are as follows:

Linguistics lecture
Date: Mon. Mar. 11
Time: 3:00-4:30 pm
Location: 100 St. Patrick’s Building
Title: Language learning as problem solving: Its role in culling linguistic universals

Psychology lecture
Date: Tues. Mar. 12
Time: 2:30-4:00 pm
Location: 2017 Dunton Tower
Title: Normal variation in the behavior and neurology of language: Implications for genetic modularity of mind and brain

Cognitive Science lecture
Date: Wed. Mar. 13
Time: 3:00-4:30 pm
Location: 238 Tory Building
Title: Laws of form in Perception: Aesthetic theory, the golden ratio and depth perception

Interdisciplinary lecture for a general audience
Date: Thurs. Mar. 14
Time: 3:00-4:30 pm
Location: 180 University Centre
Title: The bio-psychology of linguistic universals – present puzzles and possibilities

Applied Linguistics seminar
Date: Thurs. Mar. 14
Time: 10:00-11:30 am
Location: 2203 Dunton Tower
Title: How to make linguistics relevant: The case of reading

2012 FASS Distinguished Visitor, Departmental Lecture

Communicating Europe: “Hegemonic Multilingualism / National Monolingualism?”  Integrating Sociolinguistics, Language Policy Research and (Critical) Discourse Studies

Ruth Wodak, Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies, Lancaster University
Friday, October 26, 2012, 12:00 p.m.
Southam Hall, Room 417

In this lecture, Wodak will discuss different theoretical and methodological approaches which are deemed adequate in analyzing, understanding and explaining multilingual policies and practices (and their history) in the European Union, taking the 6^th  EU framework project DYLAN as point of departure (see here).  Simultaneously, Wodak will also discuss recent tendencies of re/nationalisation while focussing on the established hegemony of specific languages or by re-emphasising the national language and /or the language of the majority.

In linking macro, meso and micro levels of investigation, it is worth reflecting on the current scope of sociolinguistics, language policy research, as well as (critical) discourse studies. Does it still make sense to draw distinct boundaries between different paradigms, schools, and approaches? Or would it make sense to transcend traditional boundaries in order to arrive at the best possible analysis and explanation?

In this lecture, Wodak will thus first present the various theoretical and methodological approaches employed in analyzing multilingual practices in interactions inside European Union (EU) institutions as well as the policies which regulate and govern such practices and the language attitudes and ideologies underlying both regulations and practices. On the basis of vast fieldwork conducted in EU organizational spaces throughout 2009 (with the project team located at Lancaster), Wodak then explores different types of communication in order to illustrate how Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and officials at the European Commission practise and perform multilingualism in their everyday work (Wodak et al. 2011; Krzyżanowski & Wodak 2011). Here, Wodak draws on existent sociolinguistic ethnographic research into organisations and interactions, and integrates a multi-level (macro) contextual and sequential (micro) analysis of manifold data (observations, field notes, recordings of official and semi-official meetings, interviews, and so forth). In this way, a continuum of context-dependent multilingual practices becomes apparent which are characterised by different patterns of language choice and which serve a range of both manifest and latent functions.

By integrating the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with sociolinguistic ethnography, the intricacies of the increasingly complex phenomenon of multilingualism in transnational-organizational spaces, which are frequently characterised by diverse power-related and other asymmetries of communication, can be adequately coped with.

Invitation to all faculty, staff and students
Sponsored by the School of Linguistics and Language Studies and the
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Reception to follow.  Seating is limited.
To register for this event, please email connie_wall@carleton.ca

2012 FASS Distinguished Visitor, Public Lecture

Re/Inventing Nationalism and National Identities: Recontextualising Traditional Themes in Global Politics – A discourse-historical perspective

 Ruth Wodak, Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies, Lancaster University
Tuesday, October 30, 2012 at 4:30 p.m.
Residence Commons, Room 274

Our world is constantly changing, due to processes of globalization and migration, changes in political systems, the era of web 2.0, and other, broader socio-cultural trends. On the one hand, global media, linguae francae, standardized ‘benchmarks’ and global economies are determining our lives; on the other hand, a return to ever more local policies and ideologies can be observed, on many levels: traditions, rules, languages, visions, and imaginaries. The role of language and communication is, of course, essential in these processes of change, since it is through language that change is talked or written into being, that genres gradually change or drastically alter, that evolving, general societal discourses are voiced.

These developments are not new: Already in 1996, Gerard Delanty stated that [‘T]he crisis of national identity in Western Europe is related to the rise of a new nationalism which operates at many different levels, ranging from extreme xenophobic forms to the more moderate forms of cultural nationalism (p.2). Hence, Wodak claims that recent heated political debates across Europe, about citizenship, language tests related to citizenship and immigration, and the construction of the immigrant per se coincide with the huge crisis of the welfare state. We are dealing with global and glocal developments (Wodak 2010, 2011). Post-nationalism (Heller 2011) and cosmopolitanism (Bauman 1999) seem to have become utopian concepts.

In this lecture, Wodak will analyse recent European developments from a discourse-analytical perspective: She focuses on the discursive construction of national and transnational identities, on the analysis of citizenship- and language tests, and on the continuous reconstruction of national histories by frequently ‘re/inventing new narratives’. The data – analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively – consist of a range of genres (focus group discussion, political speeches, comic books, TV documentaries, and election campaign materials).

This lecture is free and open to the public.
Sponsored by the School of Linguistics and Language Studies and the
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Reception to follow.  Seating is limited.
To register for this event, please email connie_wall@carleton.ca

Dr. Ruth Wodak

Ruth Wodak has held the position of Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University, UK, since 2004 while remaining affiliated to the University of Vienna as Full Professor of Applied Linguistics. Besides many other prizes, she was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize for Elite Researchers in 1996. In 2008, she was awarded the Kerstin Hesselgren Chair of the Swedish Parliament and in 2010 received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Örebro in Sweden. In 2011, she was awarded the Grand Decoration in Silver for Services for the Austrian Republic. She is Past-President of the Societas Linguistica Europea, member of the Academia Europaea and corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.  Recent book publications include Migration, Identity and Belonging (with G. Delanty, P. Jones, 2008 [2011]), The Discursive Construction of History. Remembering the Wehrmacht’s War of Annihilation (with H. Heer, W. Manoschek, A. Pollak, 2008); The discursive construction of national identity (with R. de Cillia, M. Reisigl, K. Liebhart, 2009); The Politics of Exclusion (with M. Krzyżanowski, 2009);  Gedenken im Gedankenjahr (with R. de Cillia, 2009); The SAGE Handbook of Sociolinguistics (with B. Johnstone and P. Kerswill) and The discourse of politics in action: ‘Politics as Usual’ (Palgrave), 2^nd revised edition (2011).

Hartwick and a colleague overlook the virtual quad

Huddled around a campfire, you attentively discuss last week’s reading with your classmates and your professor.  If the discussion wasn’t so captivating, the glossy green laurel surrounding the camp would almost be distracting.  As your professor wraps up this week’s discussion, you say goodbye to your classmates and close your laptop, leaving the virtual world behind you.  It’s time to study for next week’s mid-term; because you don’t want any distractions, you shut your bedroom door…

As part of the Carleton Virtual Pilot Program, this scenario is one that many Carleton students faced in 2011, and will continue to enjoy in the future.  Associate Professor of Interactive Multimedia, Ali Arya has created an online platform in the same vein as SIMS and Second Life, which replicates the Carleton University campus and beyond.  This 3D virtual learning environment knocks down the constraints of classroom walls, allowing students to experience things and learn in ways that would not be possible in a traditional context.

Peggy Hartwick, Instructor of English as a Second Language for Academic Purposes and ESLA Coordinator, has just completed her first semester using the online platform to teach her ESL class.  This sort of thing was totally new to Hartwick, so her skepticism was natural.

“I’d seen my kids play SIMS, but I had personally never experienced anything like this before.   I didn’t think it would work as a classroom. Once I started playing, I was surprised how easy the platform was to use.  It is a fun way of learning; it brings out the kid in you.  I was immediately hooked.”

Creating and being represented by a customizable avatar means students have a degree of anonymity that allows them to shed some timidity and increase their confidence in a new language.  In this environment, Hartwick saw many of her students flourish.

“I had one student who was particularly shy in class and rarely spoke.  In the virtual environment, while she was hooked up to a headset and her laptop, she was able to let this go and emerged as a well organized leader who wasn’t afraid to practice her English in front of other students.”

The platform proved to be a popular option amongst her students.  When given the choice to perform their end of term presentation either in class, or in the virtual world with all their classmates present, fifty percent of the students selected Virtual Carleton.

Department of History Professor, Shawn Graham, who is well known for his innovative teaching methods, embraced Virtual Carleton as a tool to introduce a module on Archaeology in one of his courses.  Graham used the venue as a meeting space for his long distance students, and as a way to augment the classroom experience.

“In many situations, we’re loath to let students get their hands dirty. An archaeological excavation can happen only once – to excavate is to destroy. If I can record that data in a 3D world, preserving and reconstructing the three dimensional relationships inherent in archaeological data, others can ‘re-excavate’ and ideally, interrogate the archive anew… Archaeology can also be dangerous. The virtual world lets us try things out, and try them again, where it is safe to fail.”

Graham believes the most valuable aspect of projects like this, is that it presents students with differentiated learning opportunities.

“People learn in different ways – not everyone responds well to a lecture. Projects such as this offer multiple avenues to learning, to formative development, and it’s exciting that FASS and Carleton support it.”

Both Hartwick and Graham will continue piloting the project, and working out the inevitable kinks.  This fall, Hartwick will teach a non-credit ESL course in the virtual learning environment.

For those interested in experiencing learning in a 3D Virtual environment and as an avatar, Hartwick will be facilitating a Teaching Roundtable hosted by EDC on September 21^st.   For more information on the Roundtable

Graham

For more FASSinate 2012 content Click here

Genre 2012 will continue the tradition and scholarly conversation that originated with the first international colloquium on Genre Studies, “Rethinking Genre,” organized by now-retired Carleton Professors Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway, which was held at Carleton University in 1992.

2012 will investigate the relevance of genres that people encounter every day, outside of literature.  It examines any text that belongs to a recognizable genre—from memos to love letters to scientific articles. The conversation goes beyond the theoretical and can be applied to concrete situations. For example, this perspective has been used to teach new immigrants to be sensitive to genres they may encounter in the workplace.

Providing a renewed impetus to the entire field, Genre 2012 will advance the dialogue and innovative thinking that emerged at Carleton University two decades ago.

The goals of Genre 2012 are the following:

• To create a dialogue among the three major traditions of Genre Studies: (a) English for Specific Purposes (ESP), (b) North American/New Rhetorical Studies, and (c) Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics (the Sydney School);
• To present the most recent research developments in each of these three traditions with respect to writing in academic, workplace, and community settings;
• To explore possible convergences among the three traditions; and
• To provide a communicative space for discussion of other possible approaches to Genre Studies.

Keynote speakers: Charles Bazerman (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA), Vijay Bhatia (City University of Hong Kong), Ken Hyland (University of Hong Kong), James Martin (University of Sydney, Australia), Carolyn Miller (North Carolina State University, USA), David Russell (Iowa State University, USA), Catherine Schryer (Ryerson University, Canada), John Swales (University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, USA).

Special session presenters: Anis Bawarshi (University of Washington, USA), Heidi Byrnes (Georgetown University, USA), Amy Devitt (University of Kansas, USA), Ann Johns (San Diego State University, USA), Anthony Paré (McGill University, Canada), David Rose (University of Sydney, Australia), Clay Spinuzzi (University of Texas at Austin, USA), Christine Tardy (DePaul University, USA).

Conference co-organizers: Natasha Artemeva, Jaffer Sheyholislami, and Graham Smart (Carleton University).

Local organizing committee: Chloe Fogarty-Bourget, Janna Fox, Guillaume Gentil, Clara John Gulli, Lynne Young (Carleton University).

Sponsorship: The conference is sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and co-sponsored by Carleton University’s Office of the Vice-President (Research and International); Office of the Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences; and the School of Linguistics and Language Studies.

For more information please visit the conference website at: www.carleton.ca/genre2012