This innovative conference will bring together the fields of Early Modern and Canadian Studies, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Henry VII's grant of letters patent to the Italian explorer John Cabot in March, 1496.
Henry gave Cabot and his men "full and free authority . . . to set up our aforesaid banners and ensigns in any town, city, castle, island or mainland whatsoever, newly found by them." This conference will challenge the conceptual boundaries apparent in such statements by looking at the extent to which Canada, in the period roughly 1350-1700, was not merely an arena of European operations -- whether Renaissance, Reformation, or Early Modern -- but an authentic historical sphere interacting with forces and events from within and without.
The conference brings together students of Italian Humanism with those in Native North American studies, investigators of the Atlantic trade with those studying Jesuit learning, historians of science with students of Mohawk culture, of the lives of women and working people, of English courts from Henry VII to Charles II, of aboriginal languages, of researchers working on Basque and Portuguese fishing practices, and of the life of aboriginal nations living far in the interior and in the north.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: NATALIE ZEMON DAVIS, Princeton University
PLENARY SESSION SPEAKERS: SELMA BARKHAM (London, England), "The Mentality of the Spanish Merchants who Financed Sixteenth-Century Voyages to North America"; LUCA CODIGNOLA (Universit di Genoa, Italy), "The Creation of a North Atlantic Network, 1350-1700: Roman Catholicism as an Overall Context"; OLIVE DICKASON (History, University of Alberta), "The Sixteenth- Century French Vision of Empire: the Other Side of Self-Determination"; GILLES THERIEN (Semiotics, Universite` du Que'bec a` Montre'al), "La memoria comme lieu de fabrication du nouveau monde"
SPECIAL SESSIONS: 1) Native/European Linguistics; 2) The Frobisher Expeditions to the Eastern Arctic, 1576-78; 3) Origins and Beginnings in Newfoundland; 4) Other Constructions of History: Opportunities and Problems in Representing First Nations Views of the Past; 5) "Colonisation franc,aise et Ame'rindiens aux XVIe-XVIIe sie`cles: De'couverte, appropriation, et transformation du territoire".
Special and regular sessions include papers by Peter Bakker, Conrad Heidenreich, Alain Beaulieu, Re'al Ouellet, Hans Rollman, Jack Warwick, Toby Morantz, William Fitzhugh, Wallace Chafe, Richard Preston, Anne Lake Prescott, Pierre Berthiaume, and many others.
Registration Fee is $65.00 before Feb. 7, 1996; $75.00 afterwards, and $20.00 for graduate students. It includes: draft copies of the papers (to be circulated in February, 1996), coffee, supper hour receptions, lunch on Friday and Saturday, and the banquet on Saturday evening.
CONFERENCE REGISTRATION IS LIMITED TO 125 -- for registration forms write now to: "De-Centring Conference" c/o G. Warkentin, Victoria University, 73 Queen's Park Crescent, Toronto, Ont. M5S 1K7, CANADA
Or fax: (416) 585-4584, attn. G. Warkentin; or send e-mail (including postal address) to warkent@epas.utoronto.ca
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
(Chair) Germaine Warkentin, English, Victoria College, University of Toronto Rodney Bobiwash, Director, First Nations House, University of Toronto Jennifer S. H. Brown, History, University of Winnipeg Jane Couchman, French Studies, Glendon College, York University, Toronto Franc'ois Pare', French, University of Guelph Krystyna Sieciechowicz, Anthropology/Canadian Studies, University College, University of Toronto
CONFERENCE SPONSORS:
Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria University in the
University of Toronto (conference office)
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Rupert's Land Record Society, Winnipeg
Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies/Socie'te' Canadienne d'Etudes de la
Renaissance
Victoria University in the University of Toronto
Glendon College, York University