In Rehearsals for Living (2022), Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg story-teller, scholar, activist, and a member of Alderville First Nation) and Robyn Maynard (a public intellectual, activist, and assistant Professor of Black Feminisms in Canada at UofT-Scarborough) offer an extended reflection on anti-colonial relationality in settler sites like Canada: if ‘solidarity’ presumes a singular, uniform response to settler-colonialism’s ongoing depredations, Simpson and Maynard’s discussions of “constellations of co-resistance” emphasize the complex refusals that frustrate colonial power by honouring nuanced differences in positionality. As a relational practice, co-resistance emerges from Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Queer coalitions; it fosters anti-colonial action through the collaborative unlearning of colonial legacies, racial capitalism, and gender-based violence.
For this guaranteed panel for the MLA’s 2025 conference in New Orleans (Jan 9th-12th), the Canadian Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Executive seeks papers that foreground co-resistance in settler sites. This can include studies of co-resistance within ‘Canadian’ literature (broadly conceived) or research that considers how anti-colonial scholars can navigate the academy by learning to sight, cite, and create co-resistant constellations themselves.
Co-resistant topics include, but are not limited to:
- Creative kinships
- Mobilizing narratives
- Intergenerational solidarities
- Boundary-crossing manifestations of care
- Collaborative and/or interdisciplinarity scholarship
- Activism across borders, whether disciplinary or national
- The ethics of cross-racial graduate student supervision
- Narrative sanctuaries and/or stories of refuge
- Citational practices in anti-colonial research
- Communal archives/archiving community
- Land-based coalition building
- Fugitive intimacies
- Cluster hires
The Canadian LLC invites 250-word paper proposals with 50-word bios to be sent to Dr. L. Camille van der Marel at vandermarell@macewan.ca by March 31st, 2024.
Many thanks for sharing your time and insights.