Labour History News Archive

Labour History News

Workers in Canadian Cinema

Images of the Working Class in Canadian Cinema

Call for Papers

The Film Studies Association of Canada (FSAC) in co-sponsorship with the Society for Socialist Studies (SSS) announce a joint session on the topic of Images of the Working Class and Labour in Canadian Cinema. The session will be part of the upcoming Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, at the Université Laval, Ste-Foy, Quebec, May 26-28, 2001.

The depiction of labour and working people in Canadian cinema is among the least investigated topics in Canadian Film Studies and in interdisciplinary research. The emphasis on Canadian national identity has often elided examination of class issues in general, and until recently, has substituted for the examination many other social and cultural identity formations, such as those based in gender, ethnicity, race and sexual orientation. This session is designed to encourage proposals for papers featuring interdisciplinary approaches to film, labour studies, Canadian Studies, cultural studies, etc. Papers presented for this historically significant session (the first to be conducted by an academic conference focussing on these issues) will be considered for publication as part of an anthology in the making to be edited by Dr. Malek Khouri of the Studies Program in the University of Calgary.

Proposals that engage with the general framework of the session are welcome. We especially encourage proposals for papers dealing with Canadian cinema's approach to:

differences between blue and white collar workers;
working women and the gendering of labour;
class in the NFB films before and after the Cold War;
images of workers in the 1960s and 70s;
Quebec workers in Canadian cinema;
Depicting workers in the context of the 'collapse of socialism;'
Canadian nationalism and class erasure in Canadian film criticism;
the construction of the classless gay and lesbian Canadian worker;
depicting workers from the Canadian east coast provinces;
reconstructing the image of the Canadian worker in the context of the "globalized" and/or the communication technology economy;
urbanization and class construction.

Please send a brief proposal by January 15, 2001 to:

Dr. Malek Khouri
Film Studies Program
Faculty of Communication and Culture
University of Calgary
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4
E-mail: khouri@ucalgary.ca

For more information regarding the FSAC / SSS joint session please contact FSAC co-chairs:

Malek Khouri at khouri@ucalgary.ca
or
Barbara Rockburn at barbara.rockburn@sympatico.ca

For more information regarding FSAC and the Annual Conference see: www.film.queensu.ca/FSAC/Home.html.

Please feel free to forward this call to any other scholars and/or associations with interests in these issues and topics.

Posted: 15 December 2000