Cultural Crossings | Registration Open

CCUSB are pleased to announce that registration is now OPEN for our second international conference, “Cultural Crossings: Production, Consumption and Reception Across the Canada-US Border”.

The conference takes at the University of Nottingham, from the 20th to the 22nd June 2014, featuring keynote speakers Charles Acland, Danielle Fuller, and DeNel Rehberg Sedo.

You can register and pay for the conference, and book accommodation, via the University of Nottingham secure site:


http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/conference/fac-arts/americancanadian/cultural-crossings/index.aspx

We look forward to seeing you in Nottingham!

Workshop: Security, Immigration, and the Cultures of the Canada-US Border

REGISTRATION OPEN | Security, Immigration, and the Cultures of the Canada-US Border:
Saturday May 31st, Niagara Falls.
 

The “Culture and the Canada-US Border” (CCUSB) research network are pleased to announce a second one-day workshop, on the theme of border security and immigration, to take place on Saturday May 31st 2014, at the Sheraton at the Falls Hotel, Niagara Falls, NY.

The event, hosted in conjunction with the University of Buffalo, will feature presentations from Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly (University of Victoria), Emily Gilbert (University of Toronto), Geoffrey Hale (University of Lethbridge), and Christopher Sands (Hudson Institute).

The workshop is free to attend, and if you require accommodation, you can book a room at the Sheraton at the Falls Hotel, with group rates available until April 23rd. Please see our website for full details, and to register for the event:

Note: a small amount of travel assistance funding, awarded on a first-come first-served basis, is available for graduate students wishing to attend the event. Please contact Catherine Barter for more information (cjb61@kent.ac.uk).

This event is part of a series of workshops and conferences organised by CCUSB, and will be followed in June by an international conference at the University of Nottingham. CCUSB is a Leverhulme Trust funded network, bringing together scholars in Europe and North America with research interests in cultural issues around the Canada-US Border. To learn more about the network and its activities, visit: http://www.kent.ac.uk/ccusb

With any further queries, contact CCUSBorder@kent.ac.uk. We hope to see you there!

CCUSB News | Parallel Encounters: Culture at the Canada-US Border

Now available from Wilfrid Laurier University Press | Parallel Encounters: Culture at the Canada-US Border, edited by Gillian Roberts and David Stirrup.

From WLU Press:

The essays collected in Parallel Encounters offer close analysis of an array of cultural representations of the Canada–US border, in both site-specificity and in the ways in which they reveal and conceal cultural similarities and differences. Contributors focus on a range of regional sites along the border and examine a rich variety of expressive forms, including poetry, fiction, drama, visual art, television, and cinema produced on both sides of the 49th parallel.

Stephen Harper: ‘I’m confident Keystone XL will proceed’ | theguardian.com

Tuesday 7 January 2014 10.13 GMT

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday he was confident that TransCanada Corp’s controversial Keystone XL pipeline would be eventually approved by US authorities. 

US President Barack Obama is set this year to decide the fate of the northern leg of the proposed project, which would carry crude from the Alberta oil sands in Canada to the US Gulf Coast. Obama is under heavy pressure from environmental activists to block the pipeline. 

“I am confident that in due course – I can’t put a timeline on it – the project will one way or another proceed,” Harper said during a question-and-answer session at the Vancouver Board of Trade. 

The event was disrupted when two climate protesters walked onto the stage and held up signs as they stood next to Harper. One of the placards said “Climate justice now.” 

Green groups say building the pipeline will speed up extraction of oil from the tar sands – a process that consumes more energy than regular drilling.

Full story: Stephen Harper: ‘I’m confident Keystone XL will proceed’ | Environment | theguardian.com.

Border refusal for depressed paraplegic shows Canada-U.S. security co-operation has gone too far| Toronto Star

By: National Affairs, Published on Fri Nov 29 2013

A Canadian is prevented from entering the U.S after border officials gain access to her confidential medical history.

Meanwhile, in Ottawa, the Commons is in an uproar over revelations that U.S. spies set up shop here in 2010 — with Canadian government assistance — to snoop on international leaders attending the G20 meeting in Toronto.

What’s common to these two stories is the practice of information sharing between Canada and the U.S.

It has long existed in some form. It accelerated wildly after the 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington. It now threatens to veer out of control.

That Canada and the U.S. share some information makes sense. We live next door to each other. At some points in history (the Second World War is one example) we have had common enemies.

It seems reasonable that Canadian border guards have some forewarning when, say, a convicted criminal attempts to cross the frontier at Niagara Falls. And vice versa.

What isn’t reasonable is what happened to Ellen Richardson. As the Star’s Valerie Hauch reported, the Toronto paraplegic was turned back at Pearson airport by U.S. immigration officials Monday, while attempting to fly to New York.

Full story: Border refusal for depressed paraplegic shows Canada-U.S. security co-operation has gone too far: Walkom | Toronto Star.

Canadian border ‘most likely entry point’ for terrorists, U.S. Congress hears | Ottawa Citizen

By Ian MACLEOD, Ottawa Citizen November 22, 2013
 

OTTAWA — Canada represents the greatest threat from terrorists trying to enter the United States, a top U.S. border agent told congressional lawmakers this week.

“As far as I am aware, all recent threat assessments have pointed to the northern border as the most likely point of entry into our country for terrorists,” Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told a House of Representatives’ subcommittee on national security.

Judd, who represents more than 17,000 unionized Border Patrol agents, offered no specifics in his prepared statement to the committee, hearing testimony about reforming the agents’ pay system.

Still, he warned the panel that U.S. officials must not become complacent about the dangers that lurk along the border with Canada and “the ongoing threat … to the safety of the American public.”

“In the early to mid-1990s, San Diego and El Paso were ground zero for both illegal immigration and drug smuggling,” he said. “In response, the border patrol threw all of its resources at those two areas without also strengthening the other areas of the border.”

The thinking was that Arizona’s inhospitable climate and terrain would help deter other illegal traffic from Mexico. The presumption proved wrong. But Judd said the same misguided thinking now threatens U.S. security along its northern front.

 

Full story: Canadian border ‘most likely entry point’ for terrorists, U.S. Congress hears.

People smuggling to Canada from U.S. increasing | Calgary Herald

By Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press November 19, 2013

OTTAWA – Smugglers were caught trying to slip dramatically more people into Canada in 2011 over the previous year at largely unguarded points along the border with the United States, says a newly declassified report.

Authorities apprehended 487 people as smugglers attempted to sneak them into Canada at remote locales, up from 308 in 2010, says the binational report on border security.

At the same time, the number of people nabbed while being spirited into the United States from Canada fell slightly during the same period to 360 from 376.

The figures on smuggling between official ports of entry appear in the 2012 Integrated Border Enforcement Team threat assessment report, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

The report indicates that stronger enforcement may partly account for the increase in arrests, but adds there is concern that “a significant portion” is the result of “a surge in human smuggling activity.”

 

Full story: People smuggling to Canada from U.S. increasing, says binational threat report.

CfP | “Crossing Boundaries in a Post-Ethnic Era – Interdisciplinary Approaches and Negotiations”

Ninth Biennial MESEA Conference

May 29th – June 1st 2014
Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken Germany

“Crossing Boundaries in a Post-Ethnic Era – Interdisciplinary Approaches and Negotiations”

Moving into the second decade of the twenty-first century, interdisciplinary border studies are still in need of new theoretical approaches that not only move beyond the “borderless” discourses of the post-Cold War era, but that also respond to the urgent need that was articulated in the late 1990s for a conceptualization of borders/boundaries as the sum of social, cultural, political, and economic processes. Following the 9/11 attack in the U.S., the reality of increased border securitization as part of the “war on terror” has undermined the neo-liberal rhetoric of the “borderless world.” At the same time, partly as a reaction to globalization and partly as a response to emerging regionalism and ethno‐regionalist movements, a number of states have set in motion a process of re‐scaling in which they have devolved part of their power in governance to supra‐state and sub‐state regions (Paasi 2009). As a result of the above, the complex roles of borders and boundaries have become more relevant than ever, necessitating a reconceptualization that sees them as processes, discourses, practices, even symbols, through which power functions.

“Crossing boundaries” is to be understood literally as well as metaphorically; possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Ethnic/National/State boundaries
  • Redrawing boundaries, modifying ethnic categories—expansion or limit?
  • Ethnic conflict versus decentralization—redesigning political arrangements, mapping out new borders
  • Boundaries in literary criticism: world literature; comparative literature; national literature
  • Boundaries (physical and discursive) and the material reality of cultural production
  • Crossing language borders – multilingualism
  • Social or class boundaries
  • Migration processes and global/national/regional mobility; eg. tourism, work migration, human trafficking
  • Religious boundaries– from religion to fundamentalism
  • Contemporary and historical globalization processes from the epoch of “discoveries” (16th/17th century), to the imperial expansion of the West (19th century), and the global “virtual village” of the 21st century
  • Technology and borders; virtual biopolitics
  • Post–ethnic border performances
  • Negotiating North-South divisions (Europe/Americas) and economic disparities
  • Theories and realities of post-ethnicity
  • Deterritorialization and/or reterritorialization

 

Proposals should be submitted between August 15 and November 15, 2013.

Submitters will receive notification of acceptance by January 1, 2014.

Preference will be given to complete panel proposals with an inter/transdisciplinary and/or transnational focus. Panels may not include more than 2 participants from the same institution. Presenters must be members of MESEA or MELUS in 2014.

As in previous years, MESEA will award two Young Scholars Excellence Awards.

 

Fore more information, see: http://www.mesea.org

Program Director:

Jopi Nyman, PhD DSocSc
Professor of English
School of Humanities
University of Eastern Finland
P. O. Box 111
FI-80101 Joensuu
FINLAND
Tel. +358-2944-52143
Email: jopi.nyman@uef.fi

 

Spills revive U.S.-Canada waterway concerns | The Detroit News

Three environmental accidents straddling the U.S.-Canadian border during the past 15 months have revived longstanding questions about the ability of the two countries to protect water supplies in emergencies in Metro Detroit and elsewhere.

Officials from both nations agreed there was confusion last year when a dredge sinking in U.S. waters north of Port Huron leaked diesel fuel and another loading cargo in Sarnia, Ontario, leaked ethyl benzene into the St. Clair River. A rupture nearly five weeks ago in an underground pipe in Sarnia that released diesel fuel into the St. Clair also prompted criticism about post-accident communications.

 

Full story: Spills revive U.S.-Canada waterway concerns | The Detroit News.