Our Conference Goals:
In Interventions, the 50th Anniversary issue of Canadian Literature (2010), twenty-two contributors from across Canada provided intervention strategies aimed at challenging and furthering the scope and reach of future scholarship of Canadian Literature. The purpose of these intervention strategies was put forth as the following by scholar Laura Moss:
“…to consider a diverse range of perspectives on where the field of Canadian literature should go in the future, [and] to consider what the next fifty years of Canadian literature might look like and to ponder the significant obstacles we might face in getting there…”
(Moss, 103)
We will be producing a research plan which evaluates and considers one of these intervention strategies – Susan Gingell’s Negotiating Sound Identities in Canadian Literature . During the course of our collaboration, we aim to ascertain the ‘sound identity’ within the Indigenous cultures of BC, both written and spoken or sung, and to gain a better understanding of the significance of aural and oral traditions. Ultimately, we hope to clarify the idea that identity is the reciprocal of cultural tradition, and that this identity is directly represented and expressed within the oral and aural traditions of each culture.
Introduction of Our Team’s Research:
Our research will mainly engage with issues of orality, and examine how oral traditions intersect with cultural, political, sociological and literary skeins. Susan Gingell’s article “Negotiating Sound Identities in Canadian Literature” will be the scholarly heart of our conference. Gingell invites us to consider the “sound identities” of Indigenous poetics, and the revealing nature of cadences in regards to one’s cultural community.
Although oral traditions may seem dated in a steadily globalizing and technological world, we hope to prove in our research that there is indeed, a relevant and immeasurable value that orality possesses.
“Toni Morrison Refuses To Privilege White People In Her Novels!”, TheAntiIntellect, Youtube Video (2014).
Toni Morrison speaks about the presence of the white gaze within American literature.
This video serves to highlight the issue of sound identity across the world, in both indigenous and colonized societies; by being expected, or forced to adopt the language, culture, and worldview of colonizers, communities and cultures across the world have faced a removal of identity, and a disenfranchisement of humanity as a result of colonization, imperialism, and worst of all racism. Toni Morrison speaks about the stance her white audience and critics take on her thematic decisions within her novels, in which they suggest a lack of validity to her chosen (and inherent) sound identity, as compared with the ‘status quo,’ or Western, white perspective. This video highlights the same issues we would like to focus on within our intervention, and provides another example of oral storytelling from an individual, societal, linguistic and artistic point of view; it is this tradition of storytelling that will reconstitute the significance of sound identity in individuals and communities, and will ultimately allow for the growth and regained strength of Indigenous and other marginalized communities across Canada and the United States.
Lena River Delta. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr. 27 July 2000. Web. 08 Apr. 2016.
Susan Gingell. Credit: University of Saskatchewan. 2015. Web. 08 Apr. 2016.
TheAntiIntellect. “Toni Morrison Refuses To Privilege White People In Her Novels!” YouTube. YouTube, 19 Feb. 2014. Web. 08 Apr. 2016.
HI Guys,
This looks like a great start. I’m really really looking forward to watching your research develop and create dialogue between us. What I have found interesting in our course so far is how many of the readings have a poetic nature to them. This speaks to the cadence you mention in your introduction and its connection to culture. I look forward to reading more.
Danielle
Hi group,
thank you for organizing your website in such a coherent manner; it’s really easy to follow. We find Rita Wong’s intervention article “Watersheds” thought-provoking and relevant to the class. As we have done throughout the semester, she cleverly makes a clear connection between the language and the land. Wong’s analogy of weeds cracking through pavements of English smothering the land as indigenous language trying to survive, and the concept of remapping to gain a new perspective seem to be consistent with her suggestion. We are interested to see an elaboration on her definition of literature as creative responses to current ecological crisis (117), as Wong identifies language as “a gift from the land that humans can in turn reciprocate with gifts” (117). We look forward to see the compilation of “ways to change our cumulative impact” (116) on the watersheds we belong to.
-The Future of Canadian Literature (Clara “Subin” Kang, Karen Fang, Marie Folléa, Emma Riek)
https://blogs.ubc.ca/literaryintervention/
Sorry, please ignore my previous comment:
Hi guys,
we absolutely love the way you have organized the “About” page, especially the incorporation a short introduction to the author of the intervention article you will be discussing. We think your decision to limit the scope of the conference to discuss “the Indigenous cultures of BC” is a great one. The article identifies the key function of music, and by extension literature, for “both fans and performers” as “the formation of identity and the development of a sense of place and social context” (127). This quotation reminds us of the lesson from the beginning of the semester when we were first introduced to the idea of storytelling and how it impacts both the speaker and the listener, possibly more than the written text does. We are also curious to see whom you will identify as “fans” in your conference. Will these fans be the members of the Indigenous cultures in BC or the general public? Moreover, Gingell’s article focuses on print textualized orality in poems; do you plan to expand this to include other forms of literature? For instance, Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water weaves in Cherokee seamlessly shares many qualities of colloquialism noted in the exemplar poems; could this novel be seen as an example of print textualized orality? Thanks again for a great proposal. We look forward to following up and learning more about orality in Canadian literature.
-The Future of Canadian Literature (Clara “Subin” Kang, Karen Fang, Marie Folléa, Emma Riek)
https://blogs.ubc.ca/literaryintervention/
Hi everyone! Thanks for what promises to be some very interesting research. Our team is also pursuing a very similar thread of topics, looking at the future of Canadian literature. Only instead with the added angle of neoliberalism’s intersection with technology and how this affects Canadian literary future.
Orality is something that I definitely enjoyed discussing a lot in this course. I like your point about how some say it loses relevancy with technological advances because I also beg to disagree. For complex reasons rooted in euro centrism and colonialism, orality and its place in literature has always been second-classed. Before it was considered not ‘civilized’ literature but primitive instead. Now it is an issue of no longer relevant. I think that orality has a unique place and offers something special to the literary world. Also,it is something inherently part of the human experience and so I look forward to reading your take on this topic.
All the best!
Hey,
This research group really interests me, and especially the video with Toni Morrison. I remember her novel Jazz as one of the first pieces of literature that I had immense trouble interpreting due to an unfamiliar cadence and narrative voice. There are a lot of sounds “PHBBT”, “ZSSTH” in the novel that we spent hours dissecting in a previous ENGL200 class and it ultimately revolves around a sense of, what Morrison calls, a “black aesthetic” that informs the narrative.
In many of the pieces in this course I have noticed a type of rhythm in the writing, asides literature that begs for this analysis upfront like poetry, in works like the Coyote story and some of the ways even Chamberlain conducts his sentences.
I look forward to seeing how you analyze and find meaning in melody, sound, beat and rhythm in literature as this conference progresses!
Hi everyone!
Your website looks great! I am intrigued to see how your research goes pertaining to oral and aural traditions and their intersection with cultural, political, sociological and literary skeins. For my portion of my groups conference, I am focusing on the current issues surrounding the intersection of cultural knowledge and tradition of Indigenous people within literature. Specifically, I will be examining the discrepincies between identity presented through cultural tradition, and the identity that is represented in literature. I feel like our research may yield similar results and I am fascinated to see what you guys come up with!
Cait 🙂
Hi Cait,
Thank-you for your comment on our blog. It does sound like there will be some intersections between our research areas. I am looking forward to you exploring the gaps between identity presented in cultural tradition and that in literature. I am curious as to what literature your research sources are looking at? This course has made me very aware of the very different representations of Native people in a Western novel (okay, not really “literature” is it!), a Harry Robinson story (orally told in English and written in English by working through an English professor), and oral stories communicated in a Native language. Will your research focus on contemporary literature?
… full of questions – I look forward to seeing what you post!
Good luck on the assignment, Andrea
Hi Everyone,
After reading your about page and your area of research I am really intrigued by your topic! I never thought about considering sound identities, and I am very curious to see you finished research. The fact that First Nations traditions were based in oral storytelling makes sound very relevant, but is something I have not given much thought to before.
I look forward to learning about this through your conference!
Nicole
Hey guys!
I agree with the above comments – this is not a topic I’ve ever really thought about or considered before. That being said, I think the fact it is more uncommon will make it very interesting to read about. Curious as to why you chose or how you guys came up with this idea? I’m very interested to know more and am keen to follow your research!
Courtney
Hey everyone!!
Really interesting post and all the dialogue following it, I loved following along! However, although I agree that orality has certain qualities, just what immediately comes to mind is orality becoming more relevant with the proliferation of technology, as recording technologies make oral stories more accessible? Just a thought that sprung to mind. I’m looking forward to seeing what you all come up with!
– Natalie