Living on the extreme end of the continent has its perks. Besides a rich culture, gorgeous beaches, and something we call weather–sorry folks, most of you don’t have weather–we in Prince Edward Island also have Anne of Green Gables.

It’s true, it gets a bit much with the tourism and TV remakes. But even those have upsides. Lucy Maud Montgomery’s work has introduced the world to a gem of an Island, and this interest, in turn, has buoyed the prosperity of Canada’s poorest province. And as far as TV remakes go, the cartoon and the Martin Sheen version were painful, but the 1980s Kevin Sullivan miniseries and the new Anne program on Netflix/CBC were very well done.

As part of encouraging the worlds of Anne from an Academic perspective, the L.M. Montgomery Institute has a biennial conference at the University of Prince Edward Island (where I teach part-time in religious studies). The Institute is looking for strong, interdisciplinary papers that draw out the best of Canada’s century-old literary superstar with the best of 21st century scholarship. Extremely rigorous, the proposal deadline is August 15th–a full 10 months before the conference next June (see CFP below).

Besides spending time in Prince Edward Island at the end of June, this conference might be interesting to you as an academic or as a reader of L.M. Montgomery. My own proposal considers how Montgomery uses the character of Anne to forge for the reader a spirituality of joy that fuses together what C.S. Lewis called the “two hemispheres” of his mind, that of reason and romanticism. What would your approach be? Perhaps you want to talk about the bookshelves in Avonlea, or the effect of WWI on her work, or issues of mental illness in Montgomery’s short stories. Or perhaps you want to come and just soak in the words and the work.

In either case, you should come to this little Island! For me, I’m back to my reading of Anne’s House of Dreams.

CFP: L.M. Montgomery and Reading (link here)

The L.M. Montgomery Institute’s Thirteenth Biennial Conference
University of Prince Edward Island, 21-24 June 2018

“I am simply a book drunkard. Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.” –April 4, 1899 (from The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery: The P.E.I. years, 1899-1900)

“In spite of this proliferation of approaches to Montgomery, her fictions flourish in their original form. They continue to draw people from all over the world to the island of reading pleasure.” –Elizabeth Waterston, Magic Island: The Fictions of L.M. Montgomery

The 2018 conference invites research that considers “L.M. Montgomery and Reading” in all its forms and possibilities. The allusions in Montgomery’s novels and the richness of her own reading life raise a host of questions about the politics, history, culture, technologies, and practice of reading. In turn, fans and scholars explore what it means to read Montgomery as they continue to visit and revisit her novels and autobiographical work. Her enduring popularity continues to inspire translations and transformations that offer readers new ways to experience Montgomery’s texts.

This conference will also mark the 25th anniversary of the L.M. Montgomery Institute, providing an important opportunity to (re)read and reflect on the past and future of Montgomery scholarship and to explore how the presenters see themselves in a community of international, interdisciplinary, and interrelated readers.

The conference theme inspires topics including:

• Reading politics and history in and of Montgomery’s works
• Material cultures and the class implications of reading
• Influence and intertextuality across texts including explorations of Montgomery’s literary allusions
• Global experiences of reading classics
• Literacy in all forms, teaching Montgomery texts, and reading education
• The neurobiology and neuroscience of reading and the human capacity to read
• Reading and ways of seeing, reading and visual culture, alternative reading methods
• Reflections on and readings of Montgomery scholarship
• Reading in translation, reading personally and culturally, and reading over a lifetime

Please submit 250-300-word proposals and short CVs to the submission form on the LMMI website (lmmontgomery.ca) by 15 August 2017.

Proposals should not only clearly articulate a strong argument but they should also situate that argument in the context of previous Montgomery scholarship. All proposals are blind reviewed. Proposals for workshops, exhibits, films, and performances are also welcomed.  For more information please contact Laura Robinson (lrobinson@grenfell.mun.ca) or Emily Woster (ewoster@d.umn.edu).