Ecotones
Encounters, Crossings, and Communities
2015-2020
Post/Colonial Port Cities : Place and Nonplace in the Ecotone
Information and Program
October 24 - 26, 2019
Concordia University
Location: Mileux Institute, EV 11.45
Language: English
In partnership with EMMA (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3), MIGRINTER (CNRS-Université de Poitiers) and La Maison Française d’Oxford
After conferences in Montpellier, Poitiers and La Réunion (France, 2015, 2016 and 2018), as well as Kolkata (India, 2018) and Purchase (NY, USA, 2019), this is the 6th opus of this conference cycle in Montreal, Concordia University. An “ecotone” initially designates a transitional area between two ecosystems, for example between land and sea. The “Ecotones” program (2015-2020) is a cycle of conferences which aims to borrow this term traditionally used in geography and ecology and to broaden the concept by applying it to other disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. An “ecotone” can thus also be understood as a cultural space of encounters, conflicts, and renewal between several communities. This interdisciplinary conference will more specifically focus on colonial and postcolonial port cities as ecotonic dialectics between places and non-places.
Commonly understood, a port is the site where ships’ passengers enter or exit, and cargo is loaded or unloaded. Thus, it represents the flow of people and exchange of goods, in the age of sail, as well as in the contemporary globalized world. The unbounded space of the port offers opportunities to explore “discontinuous histories” of port cities, and “its interfaces with the wider world” (Gilroy 1993), as a site that decentres the nation through its slippery flows. In addition, port cities anchor urban development around shipping routes and international trade. Ports of call offer the hope of safe harbours for migrants, a refuge in a storm, or alternatively a vulnerable site for colonial concessions or gateways that must be regulated or controlled. Ports are also passages of communications. In computer networking, a port is a nodal point of communication through which data flows, a portal to information. Lastly port cities occupy that liminal space between land and water, an in-between ecotonic zone of transition.
Ports are often referred to as nonplaces – gateways subject to global forces that historically shaped trans-oceanic connections, expansion into hinterlands, and crossroads of historical and contemporary encounters. Nonplaces within cities are commonly perceived as liminal locations reduced to their function of transportation or commercial nodes, or as locations that crush the sense of individual empowerment. But artists, writers, critics and researchers have depicted them as multiple, paradoxical spaces, where new possibilities arise and new cultures emerge. Nonplaces may produce social flows and networks that are not only a defining feature of our “super-modernity”, but also, in the longue durée of urban and semi-urban dynamics, a matrix for identity formation, cultural transitions and environmental adaptation.
Port cities, however, are also placed. Cities such as Georgetown in Guyana, Shanghai, Dar es Salaam, Liverpool, Calcutta, Nantes, or Montreal among many others, may be viewed through longstanding geographic imaginaries, linguistic collectivities and/or colonial and postcolonial histories, suggesting an ongoing struggle over who ‘claims’ the city (in Montreal’s case, unceded territory), and gestures towards political, social, or economic insecurities apparent in the spatial configurations of urban life, with implications that potentially destabilize national narratives. For example, as an island in the Saint Lawrence River, the city of Montreal is not only connected to multiple elsewheres through migration, but also through trade. The Saint Lawrence opens on to the Atlantic ocean through which flowed a long-standing trade in bauxite from towns in the Caribbean to Quebec (following circuits laid by imperialism). Thus, ports shape material channels of profit and power, as well as modes of resistance that occur around these networks of control.
Downloadable content:
Download the Ecotones Conference program [806 kb]
Download and read the complete list of presenter abstracts [1.2 mb]
Individual downloads for the keynotes:
Lisa Paravisini-Gerbert [445 kb]
Dr. Patricia Noxolo [402 kb]
David Chariandy & Shazia Hafiz Ramij [279 kb]
Conference Program
Day 1 : October 24, 2019
9:00 – 9:30 |
Registration and Coffee |
9:30 – 9:45 |
Welcome and Opening Remarks Judith Misrahi-Barak, Associate Professor at Paul-Valéry University Montpellier 3; Co-founder of Ecotones conference series |
9:45 – 10:45 |
Keynote Introduction: Nalini Mohabir, Geography, Concordia University Cruise ships and containers: towards a literary geography of the Caribbean port Patricia Noxolo, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Birmingham; Chair of the Society for Caribbean Studies; Co-editor of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Respondent: David Chariandy, Professor, English, Simon Frasier University |
10:45 – 11:00 |
Coffee Break |
11:00 – 12:15 |
Chair: Sherry Simon, French, Concordia University Aesthetics and Architecture in the Hold The Azulejo as Colonial Symbol of Power: A Deconstruction through Sugar and Art Shelley Miller, Artist, Montreal Fantasy in the Hold: The Queer Logistics of Critical Mobilities and Container Architecture Shauna Janssen, Assistant Professor, Theatre, Concordia University Artist at Sea: cargo and codes, place and non-place Kelly Thompson, Associate Professor, Fibers and Material Practices, Concordia University |
12:15 – 1:30 |
Lunch and Artist’s tour. Kelly Thompson’s woven works from the Artist at Sea series will be exhibited on the EV10th floor (near EV10.730) during the conference for independent viewing. A guided tour of the Milieux Textiles and Materiality digital loom will be available during lunch. |
1:30 – 2:45 |
Port Cities and Oceanic Worlds Chair: Jesse Arseneault, English, Concordia University Lewis Nkosi’s Durban: a port city in flux Lindy Stiebel, Professor Emerita, English, University of KwaZulu-Natal Going against the flow. Transnational circulation of books in times of censorship Rachel Matteau Matsha, Senior Lecturer, Communications, Durban University of Technology. Borders and Ecotones: Alternative Social Configurations in Leaving Tangier Mike Lehman, PhD Candidate, Emory University. |
2:45 – 3:00 |
Coffee Break |
3:00 – 4:15
|
Ports of Call: Black and Indigenous Experiences Chair: TBA Ontologies in ecotone: Comércio, port of Salvador de Bahia Cécile Martin, M. Architecture, PhD student in Humanities, Concordia University. Literary Opportunities: The Australian Black Atlantic Kerry-Jane Wallart, Université d'Orléans Intercultural dynamics in post-colonial European ecotones, Lisbon and Copenhagen Cristiano Gianolla, ECHOES project (Horizon 2020) |
4:30-5:15 |
Wine Reception |
6:00 – 8:00 4th Space |
Writers Read (welcome remarks, Sina Queyras, Writers Read) Introduction: Linzey Corridon, MA student, English, Concordia University Poet Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Finalist for BC Book Prizes: Port of Being Introduction: Nalini Mohabir, Geography, Concordia University Novelist and Professor of English David Chariandy, Recipient of Windham-Campbell Prize, Author of Soucayant; Brother; and I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You. |
Day 2: October 25, 2019
9:00 – 9:30 |
Coffee |
9:30 – 10:45 |
Chair: Hsuan Hsu, English, Concordia University Asian Port Cities + Postcolonial Metropole Travel, Ports, and Imperialism: Delineations of Formosan Ports in Nineteenth-Century Western Travelers’ Port Texts Li-Ru Lu, Professor of English, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan The Post/Colonial Port of Yangon, Myanmar (Rangoon, Burma): Global Flows, Vehicular Modernity, and Im/mobile Bodies Beth Notar, Co-Director of the Trinity Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Trinity College, Author of Displacing Desire: Travel and Popular Culture in China. Peter Ackroyd’s Sensuous Detective Methods in Hawksmoor (1985) Ann Tso, English, Lethbridge College |
10:45 – 11:00 |
Coffee Break |
11:00 – 12:15 |
Canadian port: Montreal Chair: Kevin Gould, Human Geography, Concordia University Unsettling place through a ghost river (this used to be in the waterways panel below) Tricia Toso, Ph.D. Candidate, Communication Studies, Concordia University The Infrastructure of Emplacement: The Re-formation of Urban Living in the Cradle of Canada’s Industrial Revolution Elie Jalbert, PhD student, Anthropology, Concordia University The Settler-Colonial Construction of Sud-Ouest Montréal Devon McKellar, BA Honours student, Geography, Concordia. |
12:15 – 1:15 |
Lunch |
1:15 – 2:30 |
Water, Waterfront, and Liminal Flows Chair: Manish Sharma, English, Concordia University Towards residential real estate zones on the contested waterfronts of the Vancouver Region Annika Airas, Post-doctoral Fellow, Urban Studies, Simon Fraser University Ports, Privatization & Precious Water in Ondjaki’s Transparent City and Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place Sunjay Mathuria, City Planner, Toronto “A Ship Caught In-between”: Interrogating the Ecotonal Dynamics of the Port of Vancouver in the light of Komagata Maru Incident of 1914 Urmi Sengupta, Jadavpur University |
2:30 – 2:45 |
Coffee Break |
2:45 – 4:15
|
Urban Redevelopment of the Port Chair: Pierre Gauthier, Urban Studies, Concordia University Re-Enchanting the Post-Industrial Kai Wood Mah, M. Arch Studio, McEwen School of Architecture, Laurentian University Graduate students: Chad McDonald, Daniel Everett, James Walker, Jennie Philipow, Kelly O'Connor, Kristin Aleong, Pascal Rocheleau, Sarah Cen, Sarah Fox, and Shiyan Pu. |
4:15 – 4:30 |
Coffee Break |
4:30 – 5:30 |
Keynote Introduction: Jill Didur, English, Concordia University The Port of Santo Domingo: Tidal Debris, Metal Pollution, and the Perils of Poverty where the Caribbean Meets the Ozama Lisa Paravisini-Gebert, Professor of Hispanic Studies on the Randolph Distinguished Professor Chair, and Director of Environmental Studies, Vassar College Respondent: Amanda Perry, English, Concordia University |
Day 3: October 26, 2019
9:00 – 9:30 |
Coffee |
9:30 – 10:45 |
Port City and the Nation: Traveler Narratives and Literary Representations Chair: Judith Misrahi-Barak, English, EMMA, Université Paul-Valery French Atlantic Ports and American Commerce During the French Revolution Wayne Bodle, Senior Researcher, University of Pennsylvania A Step into the Modern World: Revisiting Hugh MacLennan’s Barometer Rising (1941) André Dodeman, Associate Professor, University of Grenoble Alpes The World in Sydney: Disruptive Repetition and Gail Jones’ Five Bells Kris Singh, Assistant Professor, English, Royal Military College of Canada
|
10:45 – 11:00 |
Coffee Break |
11:00 – 12:15 |
Capitalism, Migration, and Socio Spatial Divisions Chair: Thomas Lacroix, CNRS / Maison Française d'Oxford Life and Death in the Port: The Literary Representation of Globalization in Abdul Rahman Munif’s Cities of Salt. Ian Pemberton, PhD Student, University of Manchester Calais: Doorway or Wall? John C. Hawley, Professor of English, Santa Clara University Depo Pèpè: Networks of Labour and Resistance in Cap-Haïtien’s Secondhand Clothing Trade Charlotte Hammond, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Cardiff School of Modern Languages |
12:15-1:00 |
Closing Remarks and Lunch Thomas Lacroix, CNRS / Maison Française d'Oxford; Co-founder of Ecotones conference series |
1:00-2:30 |
Tour of Montreal (Sex Work Industry in a Port City) with Karen Herland |
