The Fourth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Emotional Geographies
July 1-3 2013, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
Session organisers: Jeanette den Toonder, Director Centre for Canadian Studies, University of
Groningen and Kim van Dam, Centre for Canadian Studies, University of Groningen
Emotion, Space and Indigenous Populations
Many interpretations of the term “postcolonial” neglect the fact that, before the arrival of
Europeans, there were pre-existent traditions/cultures in former colonies such as Canada, Australia
and South-Africa. In many cases, the word postcolonial thus primarily serves to reinforce the legacy
of colonization. As an alternative, Native Canadian novelist Thomas King proposes a non-centred
method to include locally identified and marginal voices by presenting new descriptors that avoid
privileging one culture over another. Offering terms such as “tribal”, “interfusional”, “polemical” and
“associational” (1990, 186) to describe the range of indigenous writing, King identifies “vantage
points from which we can see a particular literary landscape” (1990, 186).
In this session, new vantage points are explored to study not only literary but also cultural,
anthropological, geographical, social and other landscapes in which Indigenous communities are
living today. Land and/or territory are not only crucial for the survival of Indigenous peoples, but they
also have a symbolic meaning for many communities that do not live on their ancestral land. In order
to discuss the emotional effects of recent developments such as migration and urbanisation of
Indigenous peoples, it is essential to reflect on representations of space and on the relationship
between identity and physical and social environment.
In this interdisciplinary session we welcome papers that discuss spatial knowledge of
Indigenous communities and their culturally distinct understanding of landscape through the concept
of participatory mapping, that identify and explore Indigenous heritage places, that examine
geopolitical issues and Indigenous governance, that focus on land boundaries and border crossings
from a wide range of perspectives and within a variety of domains such as Arctic studies,
anthropology, cultural and social geography, literary and minority studies.
Please send abstracts of approximately 300 words to Jeanette den Toonder
(j.m.l.den.toonder@rug.nl) by February 1, 2013.