The recurrent lockdowns and travel restrictions of the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020-2022 threw into high relief how nomadic many of our lives have become in the 21st century. With the option or necessity of working from home, many white-collar workers decamped to extra-urban locales with good weather and nice views. At the same time, for many of us, the Pandemic came as a relief from the sometimes-excessive demands of work-related travel. Now that the Pandemic is more or less over, many of us again find ourselves clocking the kilometers on planes, trains and automobiles. We also look forward to resuming our regular Partnership Conferences!
Russia’s attack on Ukraine early in 2022 set off yet another wave of movement, this time both of refugees from Ukraine and young men leaving Russia, looking to build a life beyond the threat of the military draft for a war they don’t support. Of course, these recent developments echo earlier waves of human movement, both individual and group migrations, as well as nomadic, semi-nomadic or quasi-nomadic lifestyles. The wave of Ukrainian refugees and Russian refuseniks recapitulates waves of emigration of past generations. On the Canadian Prairies, for example, many immigrants from Northern, Central and Eastern Europe arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, looking for land. These immigrants displaced Indigenous peoples, such as the Anishinabe, Cree, Oji Cree, Lakota, Siksika and Dene peoples who had lived nomadic and semi-nomadic lifestyles on this land before they were forced to settle in “reservations” as a result of treaties. The nomadic Inuit populations of northern Canada were forced to settle into communities only in the 1950s. With every migration, ideas, customs, practices and languages migrate with the people. As Deleuze and Guattari have pointed out, people pick and choose which ideas to adopt: “Psychical Nomadism.”
These waves of movement have had all kinds of implications that may be examined in a wide range of disciplines, including health care, law, education, social services, the production of knowledge in both the sciences and humanities, the migration of art forms, musical styles, architectural typologies, etc.
For this conference, we welcome proposals for papers from all disciplines that invoke movement, migration and nomadism—understood in the broadest sense of peoples, ideas and culture, and what this implies for knowledge and consciousness wrought by changes in perspective.
Submissions
Submission deadline is March 15, 2023.
Email a 150-word abstract and a short CV to Dr. Oliver Botar and Dr. Elena Baraban.
Early submissions are encouraged. Submissions will be peer-reviewed by a committee of faculty members.
