Conférenciers

This presentation aims to highlight some of the trajectories delineated by contemporary Indigenous comics published in Canada, engaging with both the visual and the verbal. Indeed, some Indigenous creators have experimented with and tested the limits of the traditional/structural features/elements of the medium (lines, layout, perspectives, linearity, temporal sequences, among others) to insert new subjectivities. Hence, these comics demonstrate how the medium can prove to be a dynamic place of encounter, syncretism, and (visual) innovation (if not subversion). Moreover, comics also offers Native authors the opportunity to investigate complex histories, experiences, and identities, while contrasting the misrepresentation of their culture (and that of people of color in general) in mainstream comics (and pop cultural artifacts at large). Graphic narratives can visualize traditional oral tales facilitating their transmission to new generations. They can also encourage the reinvention of old/traditional myths and the creation of new ones through hybridization. Ancient stories are now set in a futuristic landscape. The exploration of myths becomes a means to reconnect elements of the past with those of the present and the future. Similarly, Superheroes’ narratives (one of the most visible genre of the medium) are molded according to new sensibilities and understanding of the notion of heroism, adding nuances to a Western tradition. The traditional understanding of the superhero as the ‘champion of the oppressed’ is challenged/implemented by the figure of the superhero as healer. Finally, Indigenous creators also explores testimonial, documentary, and historiographic modes of telling to recuperate an often neglected past, educate the audience about what is happening in the present, and investigate what the future might look like for indigenous people.

After 50 years from the Toronto Spadina Expressway (SE)’s cancellation, scholars consider the battle over the proposed urban motorway as one of the greatest symbols of successfully citizen resistance in Canada. In fact, the mobilization against the SE project encouraged Toronto inhabitants to become more involved in city planning over the next decade. The paper means to spot the light on the interplay of diverse group identities inside the SE protest coalition, demonstrating the essential role of each one of the alliance’s three main components: the grassroots activism of Stop Spadina Save Our City Coordinating Committee (SSSOCCC), the public exposure of well-known figures such as Jane Jacobs and Marshall McLuhan, the administrative pressure by the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB). Indeed, despite the Jacobs’ outstanding legacy in Canadian urban planning and the SE consequential stop in Toronto have been already acknowledged by the urban history literature, an inquire of the protest organization behind the SE cancellation and its long-standing political impact is still lacking. In fact, several actors actively participated in the grass-roots resistance, even inspired by practices of community organizing spreading through the US-Canada border. In this direction, the paper especially aims at presenting the research’s first steps, introducing a review and revision of the existing literature and reconstructing – through historical archival findings and press analysis - how the SE protest coalition worked against the political, social and cultural background of the late 1960s-early 1970s context. Through the SE case history, the paper eventually intends to show the relevance of a strong relationship between civil servants and citizens to produce liveable cities, in Canada and in North-America generally speaking.

The queer experience is not traditionally discussed in Italian-Canadian households. It’s not a topic for Sunday lunch with the whole family. This paper explores and analyzes the cultural production and lived realities of Canadian writers who function at the intersection of two communities: the LGBTQ+ and the Italian-Canadian. We will look at interviews and creative works by Christopher DiRaddo, Monica Meneghetti, Liana Cusmano, and Steve Galluccio, among others. We will discuss 1) the writers’ experiences at the intersection of their sexual/gender and ethnic identities; 2) their published creative work and its connection to their gender/sexual and ethnic identities and experiences. In particular, we will look at Christopher DiRaddo’s The Family Way (2021), Monica Meneghetti’s What the Mouth Wants (2017), and writings in Licia Canton’s Here & Now: An Anthology of Queer Italian-Canadian Writing (2021).

Facteur contingentiel du développement d'une langue, l'emprunt linguistique est une innovation qui s'introduit à un certain moment dans l’usage et qui contribue à faire évoluer le système. Il s'agit d'un phénomène organique, qui tend à s'adapter à la langue d'accueil au fur et à mesure qu'il s'installe dans les pratiques linguistiques des locuteurs (Deroy 1956). L'étude des emprunts lexicaux du français à l'italien a produit une large littérature orientée essentiellement vers le français de France. Mais qu'en est-il des italianismes dans les autres variétés géographiques de français? L'exploration d'un ensemble d'italianismes récents, appartenant au domaine sémantique de l'alimentation, permettra de s'interroger sur les éléments d'innovation que l'italien apporte au français québécois et sur les stratégies d'assimilation attestées dans cette variété de langue. Cette recherche permettra d'ailleurs de réfléchir aux modalités par lesquelles l'italien peut encore s'avérer une langue d'enrichissement pour le français, notamment dans son expansion hors de France.

Il paper esaminerà il modo in cui il regista Paul Tana e lo storico Bruno Ramirez (Université de Montréal) come sceneggiatore hanno presentato al pubblico canadese le vicende degli italiani immigrati a Montrèal nel corso del XX secolo. Saranno discussi i film Caffè Italia, Montréal (1982), La Sarrasine (1992), La Deroute / Mr. Aiello (1998), Il Duce Canadese (2004) e il documentario Ricordati di noi! / Souviens-toi de nous! (2004). Caffè Italia, Montréal rappresenta un punto di svolta nella cinematografia canadese. Si tratta del primo film interamente dedicato alla storia di una minoranza immigrata e si propone come scopo quello di sfatare gli stereotipi sino allora invalsi nella rappresentazione degli italocanadesi. Infatti, se un personaggio di origine italiana appariva sullo schermo, inevitabilmente esi trattava di un mafioso o un pizzaiolo o un latin lover. La spiegazione di ciò è molto semplice. Sino alla fine degli anni 1970 nessun studio serio era stato fatto sulle comunità immigranti stabilitesi in Canada, sia in generale che in particolare su quella italiana. Ramirez fu il primo accademico a iniziare ricerche in questo campo. È quindi particolarmente interessante studiare come un regista e uno storico accademico abbiano interagito nel produrre un film che rappresentava un’assoluta novità. La collaborazione tra regista e storico è proseguita nel corso degli anni e ha portato all’uscita di La Sarrasine e La Deroute / Mr. Aiello, due film che scavano nella complessa realtà del mondo degli immigrati in cui le tradizioni del paese d’origine si scontrano con gli usi e le abitudini di quello d’accoglienza. Lo scontro spesso avviene nell’ambito familiare, dove i giovani nati in Canada entrano in conflitto con i loro genitori. Al centro della narrazione sta il tema dell’identità culturale e dell’autodefinizione. Infine Ramirez, sia in Caffè Italia, Montréal che in Il Duce Canadese si è confrontato con il tema controverso del fascismo in Canada e del trattamento subito dagli italocanadesi durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale. Si tratta di un argomento molto complesso sul quale di recente si è espresso il Primo MinistroTrudeau, che ha presentato pubbliche scuse alla comunità italiana per i fatti del 1940-1945. Il paper discuterà anche di questo, mostrando che sarebbe meglio che i politici si occupassero appunto di politica e non di storia.

Au cours des dernières décennies la scène littéraire québécoise s’est enrichie d’un nombre grandissant d’écrivains et d’écrivaines des Premières Nations : en plus de témoigner des valeurs et de la spécificité culturelle de leurs communautés, ainsi que de leur prise de parole, leurs œuvres revêtent un intérêt auquel la critique n’a pas encore accordé une attention convenable, à savoir la valeur de renouveau qu’elles vont représenter pour la littérature québécoise. Les traditions culturelles autochtones ne constituent pas qu’une occasion d’envisager d’après une « autre » perspective les défis de l’époque contemporaine concernant l’environnement, le développement durable, la gestion de la diversité, mais elles constituent également pour les auteur(e)s québécois(e)s une nouvelle source d’inspiration littéraire pour ce qui concerne les thèmes et le système de valeurs de référence. Cette communication vise à mettre en regard des œuvres d’écrivain(e)s des Premières Nations avec des romans québécois à thème amérindien, écrits par des auteur(e)s non autochtones, afin d’analyser, chez les uns, la façon dont la tradition ancestrale est revisitée et adaptée au progrès contemporain, et chez les autres la façon dont la culture autochtone influence une approche nouvelle des thèmes traditionnels québécois, tels que le questionnement identitaire, le pays, l’origine et l’appartenance, jusqu’à mettre en valeur les liens incontournables que la tradition et l’innovation établissent entre les voix multiples de la littérature québécoise.

The queer experience is not traditionally discussed in Italian-Canadian households. It’s not a topic for Sunday lunch with the whole family. This paper explores and analyzes the cultural production and lived realities of Canadian writers who function at the intersection of two communities: the LGBTQ+ and the Italian-Canadian. We will look at interviews and creative works by Christopher DiRaddo, Monica Meneghetti, Liana Cusmano, and Steve Galluccio, among others. We will discuss 1) the writers’ experiences at the intersection of their sexual/gender and ethnic identities; 2) their published creative work and its connection to their gender/sexual and ethnic identities and experiences. In particular, we will look at Christopher DiRaddo’s The Family Way (2021), Monica Meneghetti’s What the Mouth Wants (2017), and writings in Licia Canton’s Here & Now: An Anthology of Queer Italian-Canadian Writing (2021).

Language in Canada has always been a political issue: in 1969, for instance, the equal status of the two languages of the European colonization had to be regulated through the promulgation of the Official Languages Act. More than fifty years have passed, and Canada has embraced its cultural diversity turning it into a marker of national identity. Over the last decades, however, the country’s much celebrated multiculturalism has been questioned, especially by the First Nations, for its lack of authentic inclusivity and inherent inequality. As cultural (super)diversity is also expressed through linguistic plurality, several Indigenous communities have claimed the official recognition of their languages as founding languages of Canada and the creation of policies to ensure their survival. Concomitantly with the United Nations proclamation of 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages, in June of the same year the Canadian Parliament passed the Indigenous Languages Act with the main purpose of supporting and promoting the use of Indigenous languages and the efforts of their speakers to preserve them. On 15 June 2021, on the other hand, the first reading of “An Act to amend the Official Languages Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts” took place in Ottawa. The Bill, as a matter of fact, intends to redefine the role and status of the two official languages following the socio-cultural changes of the past few years. Starting from a linguistic analysis of the above-mentioned Acts, the presentation aims at mapping the ongoing debate on language policy and the plurality of languages of Canada, and to assess whether it is truly inclusive and socially innovative or if it is merely reiterating power dynamics of the past.

In this paper I would like to discuss, analyze, and assess the results of the experimental project conducted under the auspices of Canada-Italy Innovation Award 2021. The project involved two target groups of senior people (over 60), one based in Turin and one based in Montreal. The Turin group called “Third Time” has been active since 2016, and coalesced around the objective of healthy and active ageing, with year-round activities and laboratories which have three main purposes: socialization and psychological well-being, physical training, and cognitive engagement. The Montreal group, of about 30 members, was recruited in the Spring 2021, with the purpose to create a twinship and a joint workshop, on-line, thanks to Zoom meetings. The two groups responded enthusiastically to the first joint on-line meeting and agreed on working together on two different areas: 1) producing flash fiction, or flash poetry in relation to their own experience of Covid-19; 2) producing “memory maps” of a place they are particularly fond of. The workshop in creative writing was mainly focused on giving voice to seniors, not only to empower them as storytellers of their own Covid experience, but also as advisers for future generations on how to mitigate and endure difficult times. The second workshop was meant to map out people’s mobility, for both Torino and Montreal are cities with a high rate of immigrants. In this context, I would like to draw conclusions on the results achieved, within the framework of Narrative Medicine Studies and Pshychogeography Studies.

Multilingualism in Canada has captured the interest of applied linguists from a socio-political, cognitive, and pedagogical point of view to discover the effects of the phenomenon in terms of both policy and educational practices. Language and linguistic diversity are a political issue in Canada in that the country has two official languages, English and French, an official multiculturalism policy that encourages the retention and use of non-official languages, and basic measures for the promotion of aboriginal languages. The work aims at filling the gap between official language policy on one hand and research on multilingualism in Canada on the other. In particular, it investigates the important question of language policy choices. That is, the reasons why Canada privileged English and French over other languages, including aboriginal languages. It provides an overview of recent discussions on Canadian policy in the most predominant literature on bilingual education, current research on multilingual learners, and emerging innovations in multilingual pedagogies with a special focus on translanguaging. Indeed, the research on multilingual learners reveals how multilingual language practices are complex, dynamic, and aiming at the construction and retention of multiple identities. Innovative pedagogical practices, in multilingual countries, suggest that more and more educators acknowledge the importance of shifting the focus from the target languages to the multilingual learners. First, this is crucial to teach students of diverse origins in order to meet their complex linguistic, cognitive, and socio-cultural background. Second, the focus on the multilingual learners allows a rethinking of the concept of multilingualism to convey multiple identities, representations, and pedagogical practices.

Dal 1876 ebbe inizio il fenomeno della “diaspora italiana”. In circa 40 anni oltre 7 milioni di italiani decisero di emigrare nelle Americhe. In Canada questo processo raggiunse il suo culmine tra gli anni ‘50 e la metà degli anni ‘60 del XX secolo, quando si giunse a contare annualmente più di 20.000 emigrati dal Bel paese. Si trattava per la maggior parte di contadini e operai in cerca di una vita migliore, “per fare l’America”. Quale idea/concezione del Canada avevano gli emigrati italiani prima di partire? Come cambiò la loro percezione una volta arrivati? La ricerca geostorica presentata – che nasce dall’interesse verso l’argomento nato durante il percorso di studi di geografia e ‘Italian Studies’ completati in Canada – ha l’obiettivo di ricostruire il lungo viaggio degli emigrati italiani analizzando la letteratura odeporica da loro prodotta. Applicando lo schema “cercare-trovare-scoprire”, esposto da Ilaria Luzzana Caraci, le memorie di questi viaggiatori possono essere utilizzate come fonte per ricostruire le conoscenze geografiche possedute da quelle persone e per delineare il cambiamento dell’immagine del Canada nell’arco degli anni. Tali memorie aiutano inoltre a comprendere il futuro che gli italiani immaginavano per loro stessi in una nuova terra ed evidenziano come il retaggio culturale abbia influenzato non solo questa visione ma anche il loro modo di vivere in Canada. Un retaggio che sembra tramandarsi da una generazione all’altra, che mantiene ancora oggi vivo lo spirito dell’italianità negli emigrati e che questa ricerca analizza sotto diversi aspetti.

Il bilinguismo del Québec è la caratteristica di questa provincia che maggiormente la distingue dal resto dello Stato federale canadese. Il Québec è notoriamente l’unica provincia a maggioranza francofona; esso ha per lungo tempo attirato l’attenzione degli osservatori nazionali ed internazionali, soprattutto a causa delle tensioni createsi proprio intorno alla questione del bilinguismo. Essere anglofoni o francofoni significava, almeno in un passato non troppo lontano, occupare una certa posizione sociale, avere un certo reddito, professare una certa religione, vivere in città o in campagna. È naturale, quindi, che differenze sociali di questo calibro non passassero inosservate, e che venissero necessariamente ricondotte all’appartenenza ai gruppi linguistici. Non è un caso, inoltre, data la portata delle differenze, che si sia parlato di biculturalismo oltre che di bilinguismo. La composizione dei gruppi linguistici della popolazione di Montréal presenta differenze notevoli rispetto alla media del Québec. La presenza degli anglofoni è molto più consistente, a scapito del peso dei francofoni. Potenzialmente questa potrebbe essere la regione di maggiore conflitto tra gruppi linguistici, e di conseguenza la più chiusa all’ingresso delle tecnologie dell’informazione, portatrici di un inglese che scorre più agilmente attraverso le reti telematiche. Il centro del multimediale nasce invece proprio qui. Il Québec si è messo in moto alla ricerca della sua specificità e probabilmente raggiungerà traguardi migliori puntando tutto sulla struttura portante della sua economia piuttosto che sulla disputa tra anglofoni e francofoni e Montréal, una metropoli rimasta in ombra per diverso tempo, ha ormai acquisito un ruolo fondamentale proprio grazie a precise scelte di politica economica. La domanda quindi è: perché Montréal?

À travers l’étude de quelques ouvrages contemporains d’auteures québécoises dont Louise Dupré, Carole David et Françoise de Luca, nous focaliserons notre communication sur le couple mère-fille en analysant ce lien du point de vue intime, mais également comme l’indicateur d’un changement social qui a affecté tout particulièrement la condition féminine.

In January 1980, Jean-Claude Germain, playwriter and actor at the Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui, presented Les nuits de l’Indiva. Apparently, the play was the sequel to Les hauts et les bas de la vie d’une diva; however, the text reveals inedited reflections on the personality of Canadians, especially Québécois. Indeed, the protagonist of the play is Sarah Ménard, a caricature of the theater French star Sarah Bernhardt. The latter made a great career in Paris in the second half of the XIX century and it is still considered as a great French icon. In opposition to the image of Sarah Bernhardt, skinny and with a nervous temperament, Germain decided to portrait Sarah Ménard as a good-natured, decadent singer, who celebrates the great moments of her career through songs and monologues. This woman had to represent a Québec version of the diva and because of this it couldn’t be as glamourous and austere as the French one, contrariwise she had to mark the gross features which characterize, in people’s common opinion, the Québec spirit. Irony and allegory are Germain’s favourite weapons in theatre to attract the audience and start a reflection about contemporary society, tradition, and colonial heritance. In fact, the playwriter provokes his public through comic mascapade: he wants Sarah to claim immortality with ridicule, not austerity or tragic performances. In this way, the play is an antithesis to the French cultural influence, but also a re-evaluation and interpretation of what is considered, in Europe, tradition. It is necessary to study Québec’s roots, but also to understand what makes Québec colony unique and independent from its colony. Québec culture and artistic production has often been considered subordinated and inferior compared to the French one, which is the reason Germain uses his plays as a claiming French-Canadian culture manifesto.

After 50 years from the Toronto Spadina Expressway (SE)’s cancellation, scholars consider the battle over the proposed urban motorway as one of the greatest symbols of successfully citizen resistance in Canada. In fact, the mobilization against the SE project encouraged Toronto inhabitants to become more involved in city planning over the next decade. The paper means to spot the light on the interplay of diverse group identities inside the SE protest coalition, demonstrating the essential role of each one of the alliance’s three main components: the grassroots activism of Stop Spadina Save Our City Coordinating Committee (SSSOCCC), the public exposure of well-known figures such as Jane Jacobs and Marshall McLuhan, the administrative pressure by the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB). Indeed, despite the Jacobs’ outstanding legacy in Canadian urban planning and the SE consequential stop in Toronto have been already acknowledged by the urban history literature, an inquire of the protest organization behind the SE cancellation and its long-standing political impact is still lacking. In fact, several actors actively participated in the grass-roots resistance, even inspired by practices of community organizing spreading through the US-Canada border. In this direction, the paper especially aims at presenting the research’s first steps, introducing a review and revision of the existing literature and reconstructing – through historical archival findings and press analysis - how the SE protest coalition worked against the political, social and cultural background of the late 1960s-early 1970s context. Through the SE case history, the paper eventually intends to show the relevance of a strong relationship between civil servants and citizens to produce liveable cities, in Canada and in North-America generally speaking.

This paper examines the life and work of a tattoo artist born in Kingston, Ontario named Joseph George Simmons, better known by his pseudonym “Sailor Joe.” Employing visual culture, archival documents, and popular media from across Canadian and the United States, I begin by investigating Simmons’s occupation as both a tattooist and showman across North America between the 1920s and 1940s. I then consider how he became the subject of nearly a decade long manhunt by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after he was charged with violating the White Slave Traffic Act (1910) in 1942 for allegedly taking a teenage girl from Mississippi to Louisiana. Simmons avoided apprehension in America by fleeing to Canada. Accordingly, I proceed to demonstrate how a liaison between the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) created during wartime enabled American law enforcement to continue to monitor the tattooer’s movements within Canada. I consider the implications of this surveillance on his private life and public career as an entertainer and tattooist and ask: What tactics did Simmons employ to evade law enforcement and how did his line of work as a tattoo artist both facilitate and hinder such efforts? What sorts of interagency cooperation and techniques did law enforcement in Canada and the United states use to pursue him? Crossing several areas of historical inquiry, including the history of tattooing, labour, travel, popular entertainment, and policing in a transnational context within Canada and the United States, this paper argues that “Sailor Joe” was an amalgam of identities—some true, many half-true, and several completely false—cultivated and maintained by the tattooer to serve purposes ranging from occupational self-promotion to evading law enforcement.

Il rapido moltiplicarsi di recenti scoperte dei resti, la prima, di circa 215 bambini in una fossa comune sul terreno della ex Kamloops Indian Residential School, nello Stato di British Columbia in Canada, la seconda, di 761 persone, principalmente bambini indigeni, nel sito di una ex scuola nella provincia del Saskatchewan, e da ultimo, di 182 nuove tombe anonime nel terreno di una ex scuola per nativi gestita dalla Chiesa di St. Eugene vicino a Cranbrook, anch’essa nella Columbia Britannica, ripropongono, con scottante urgenza, la necessità di riconsiderare, da un punto di vista giuridico, la fattispecie autonoma di “genocidio culturale” (locuzione coniata da Raphael Lemkin nella sua opera Axis Rule in Occupied Europe del 1944) o “etnocidio” (secondo la dizione forgiata da Robert Jaulin in La paix blanche: Introduction à l’ethnocide del 1970). La Truth and Reconciliation Commission, creata nel 2006 e presieduta da Murray Sinclair – il primo nativo Ojibwa diventato giudice dello Stato di Manitoba – ha indicato nel suo rapporto finale 94 raccomandazioni. Fra queste, spicca l’invito al governo canadese, invito a tutt’oggi non accolto, ad adottare la Dichiarazione dei Diritti dei Popoli Indigeni delle Nazioni Unite del 2007, come base giuridica (per quanto questa sia un atto di soft law, ossia non dotato in sé di poteri vincolanti) per un nuovo percorso di dialogo. Anzi, va sottolineato come il Canada, sia uno dei solamente quattro Paesi a votare contro l’adozione della Dichiarazione in seno all’Assemblea Generale (unitamente a USA, Nuova Zelanda e Australia). Purtuttavia, né la summenzionata Dichiarazione, né la Convenzione per la prevenzione e la repressione del crimine di genocidio, approvata dall’Assemblea generale delle Nazioni Unite il 9 dicembre del 1948, sanciscono e sanzionano il genocidio culturale. L’intervento che si propone verte dunque sull’analisi, in una prospettiva gius-internazionalistica, circa la (mancata) tutela che si è ritenuto di (non) dover accordare al legame tra un popolo e il suo patrimonio culturale, auspicando che il Canada, per le sue peculiari caratteristiche di Stato precursore della cittadinanza multiculturale, possa farsi attivo promotore nei consessi istituzionali intergovernativi di interventi fattivi che colmino (finalmente) la lacuna juris del genocidio culturale, posto che a tutt’oggi la posizione prevalente ritiene che non possa configurarsi il crimine di genocidio qualora siano perpetrate condotte che, pur minando la cultura di uno dei gruppi protetti di cui si intende perseguire la distruzione, prescinda però da forme di aggressione fisica o biologica nei confronti dei suoi membri.

In her essay “Aboriginal Narratives in Cyberspace” (1996), award-winning Métis and Cree filmmaker and scholar Loretta Todd sees cyberspace as a Western product, a cyber-land dominated by the colonizer’s language and cultural ownership. While it is true that cyberspace has often been represented as “a new frontier” for Western civilization and control, Indigenous communities across the world have seen its potential as a means for resistance and revitalization. As a matter of fact, over the past decades, the use of technology like the Internet, mobile phones and social media by Indigenous peoples has rapidly increased, consequently leading to important changes in the way Indigenous activism is performed. Therefore, Indigenous spaces in the digital realm have soon become decolonized places of cultural affirmation and empowerment. New dynamic forms of Indigenous self-determination and network sovereignty (Duarte 2017) through social media, in particular, allow Indigenous people to “agitate, demand political recognition for Indigenous causes, and proffer contesting and challenging views that dismantle colonial preoccupations with Indigenous political unity” (Carlson and Frazer 2016). The present study presents an analysis of recent Indigenous online activism in Canada, such as the Fairy Creek Blockade, to investigate the remediation of Indigenous resistance across cyberspace. This research aims at understanding how social media users utilize Twitter and Facebook to increase social actions. A social media analysis (Zappavigna 2018) approach is therefore employed to examine patterns of information flow focusing, in particular, on the use of hashtags to identify attitudes and experiences, and the way Indigenous activists build their online/offline identity.

Over the past three decades, African Canadian women playwrights have countered the social marginalization and cultural misrepresentation of Black Canadians by creating theatre pieces that explore different manifestations of the African diaspora across time and space. Ranging from spiritual realism to history play, musical comedy, and solo autobiographical performance, their work has questioned simplistic interpretations of multiculturalism, race, and ethnicity in dominant Canadian discourse by articulating, on both page and stage, the specificities of what George Elliott Clarke refers to as the ‘poly-consciousness’ of African Canadians. By glimpsing at the work of Trey Anthony, Lisa Codrington, Lorena Gale, Ahdri Zhina Mandiela, and Djanet Sears, this contribution illustrates how contemporary African Canadian women playwrights recur to performative storytelling to unearth suppressed Black stories, ancestral reminiscences, and personal recollections through bodily acts of remembrance that weave together past and present, memory and matter, the collective and the individual. In their work, theatre is experienced by practitioners and audiences alike as a site of revival, recovery, and recognition of Black Canadian histories, cultures and intraracial diversity, one in which remote and recent, colonial and postcolonial, racist and post racial acts of physical violence, social injustice and symbolic obliteration can be resisted through dramaturgical and performative gestures that foster communal healing, civic awareness, and active citizenship.

As the world faces a terrible pandemic and global economies are crumbling, it is ever more urgent to radically rethink the ideological and cultural tenets on which our societies and economies are based. The devastating consequences of dominator attitudes over Nature that ecofeminists have warned us against are now more tangible than ever and it has become obvious that greedy capitalist interests need to be replaced by a more eco-sustainable economy and social relationships based on caring, solidarity, respect, altruism and partnership, if humanity wants to save the planet and itself. Precious in this crucial battle to heal the Earth are the teachings of those peoples who still preserve their ancestral ties with the land and value their earth-centered mythologies. This paper examines the narratives of Indigenous women of North America who teach us how to restore a renewed respect for Mother Earth and its creatures so as to re-establish an ethical relationship with the land and with each other. In particular, attention will be focused on econarratives such as whispering in shadows (2002) by Okanagan writer and land speaker Jeanette Armstrong and Celia’s Song (2014) by Salish/Cree writer and mythmaker Lee Maracle, which foreground the interdependency between women and the Earth and focus on how the shift away from the dominator model hinges on a re-evaluation of feminine principles which entails a relinquishing of violent behaviors against women and the Earth.

Since the early colonial times, Indigenous women in Canada have experienced systemic oppression under settler colonialism. Growing activism exposing the extent of violence against Indigenous women, manifested in movements like Idle No More and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG), profoundly impacts dominant settler sensibilities. Numerous calls for social justice in that respect prompted Justin Trudeau’s government to conduct a nation-wide inquiry into the problem of MMIWG (2019). Hence, it seems that we are witnessing an important moment for the acknowledgment of Indigenous women’s collective cultural traumas by the dominant settler Canadian society. Literary representations of First Nations and Métis women’s issues constitute an important part of the efforts to voice traumatic experiences, acknowledge them, and provide space for reconciliation. This paper aims to explore the poetics of space emerging from The Break (2016) penned by Katherena Vermette (Métis). Vermette’s debut novel centers at the sexual abuse of a teenage Indigenous girl, Emily, at the hands of her female coeval and, therefore, addresses the problems of collateral violence and intergenerational trauma⸺important contemporary issues for Indigenous communities in Canada. The analysis concentrates on the spaces of degeneration generated by settler colonial land politics, assimilation policies and Canadian institutions that dehumanize and criminalize Indigenous women’s bodies as represented in The Break. Moreover, the paper directs attention to Vermette’s strategies of transgressing these imposed degenerate spaces in her narrative. The sites of resurgence that demonstrate Indigenous women’s sovereignty propose alternative frameworks for approaching the ubiquitous violence against First Nations and Métis women and girls. The discussion will be framed within contemporary Indigenous feminist theoretical orientations, including such voices as Andrea Smith, Robyn Bourgeois, and Suzanne Methot.

Il contributo intende presentare i principi fondamentali della redattologia, disciplina che si è costituita nei primi anni 2000 nel Canada francofono (Labasse 2006; Beaudet et al. 2016) e che è ora studiata anche in altri paesi francofoni e italofoni (Pereira, Romain, e Rey 2016; Vecchiato 2019). L’avvento di Internet e le ricerche periodiche PIAAC-OCSE sulle competenze alfabetiche funzionali nei paesi industrializzati sono due dei fattori che hanno determinato una maggiore consapevolezza riguardo all’importanza dell’intelligibilità del testo scritto. In Québec, come in Francia, diversi percorsi di Licence e di Master forniscono la formazione per diventare “rédacteur professionnel”, una figura professionale dedicata alla comunicazione aziendale, e che è ricercata in particolare come: consigliere in comunicazione, correttore di bozze, redattore web, divulgatore scientifico (Coloé 2020). La redattologia nasce dunque come risposta a nuove esigenze relative sia alla scrittura professionale, che alla didattica universitaria della scrittura professionale. Inerentemente interdisciplinare, essa distingue i propri obiettivi da quelli della “redazione tecnica” e della didattica della scrittura intesa come formazione scolastica generale (Beaudet et al. 2016). Trova naturale applicazione nella comunicazione istituzionale, al cittadino, per la quale intende sviluppare una metodologia di “redazione benevola” (Clerc 2019). Parte del contributo intende illustrare il potenziale della redattologia in un quadro socio-culturale come quello italiano, dove per motivi storici non si è ancora completamente affermata una concezione della comunicazione istituzionale come risolutamente orientata al lettore (Sabatini 2003; De Mauro 2013; Cortelazzo 2015). In particolare, l’attuale situazione di neoplurilinguismo (Voghera 2003; Vedovelli 2017) rende utile non limitarsi a una redazione in lingua italiana, bensì concepire il testo anche in una prospettiva di traduzione (Vecchiato e Gerolimich 2018; Vecchiato 2021). Un’applicazione pratica è fornita dall’esperienza effettuata presso l’Università di Udine con il progetto HFVG, un portale trilingue dedicato all’informazione sui servizi sanitari nel Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

Nel quadro degli obiettivi di sostenibilità (2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development), un ruolo centrale è riconosciuto per le città del terzo millennio, alla riattivazione del sistema di relazioni tra luogo, inteso come stratificazione storica di valori e attributi culturali e naturali (Unesco, 2011), e comunità, intesa come heritage community (Council of Europe 2005, settembre 2020). Bene comune, lo spazio pubblico è arena in cui si attiva la cittadinanza: nodo di aggregazione e relazione all'interno di dinamiche fisiche ed economiche (Lefebvre, 1968). La produzione artistica contribuisce a definire i modelli di fruizione dello spazio urbano, ultima linea di difesa dell’umanità (Tosatti, Zecchi 2015), promuove la negoziazione tra interessi privati e pubblici (Pioselli, 2015). Sono sempre più numerose le esperienze di rigenerazione attivate in contesti segnati da profonde trasformazioni, in cui le pratiche artistiche, diventano occasione per promuovere impatti sociali, economici, e culturali di grande rilevanza (Bagnasco, 1992). Il Nord America è stato pioniere nello sperimentare le sinergie tra rigenerazione urbana e produzione artistica. A partire dagli studi di Florida sulla creatività per la crescita economica (2002), pubbliche amministrazioni, imprese e comunità hanno unito le forze per modificare attraverso l’arte, il vissuto urbano. In questo quadro, un caso particolarmente significativo è quello della rigenerazione condotta a Montréal dallo studio Daoust Lestage per Place Riopelle (2004, https://daoustlestage.com/en/project/place-jean-paul-riopelle-quartier-international-de-montreal/). Le qualità architettoniche del luogo, rigenerato grazie ad una foresta urbana, si scontrano con la complessa vicenda del trasferimento della fontana la Joute dal Parc Olimpique al nuovo quartiere internazionale. A partire dalla descrizione dei livelli prestazionali conseguiti sul piano architettonico dal progetto, il paper intende investigare il contributo rigenerativo, che la scultura di Riopelle apporta allo spazio fisico e alla comunità. Osservando le soluzioni morfologiche, spaziali, la cura nel disegno di dettaglio per le pavimentazioni e gli arredi, gli effetti speciali ottenuti con il ricorso ad acqua, fuoco, nebbia, il contributo riflette sulla capacità delle simbiosi tra arte e architettura di sanare i conflitti sociali e promuovere l’empowerment delle comunità.

Le problème de l’engagement social des Canadiens-Français est présent dans nombreux textes en prose de De Saint-Denys Garneau (1912-1943) à partir de son plus jeune âge. Plusieurs pages du Journal et des Lettres, en différents moments, montrent son attention au rôle de la culture ; finalement une longue méditation, écrite probablement en mars 1938, est charpenté aussi sur les pivots de l’économie et de la politique. En particulier dans ce texte l’attention est portée à l’éducation - dont le but doit être de faire « des hommes et non pas des Canadiens-français » car, « dès qu’on parle d’éducation, il semble que le mot “national ” tombe de lui-même comme inadéquat ». L’humanisme de De Saint-Denys Garneau ne se borne donc ni à son recueil de poèmes, Regards et Jeux dans l’Espace (1937), ni à son œuvre picturale - bien qu’estimable : il est un intellectuel à part entière qui complète son élan artistique par la prise de conscience de l’homme dans la société.