CHA 2010 “Telling Stories/Storytelling”

Storytelling is one of the oldest forms of communication. In telling stories about the past, historians, novelists, playwrights, teachers, museum curators, film makers, artists, illustrators, musicians, and public historians (to name just a few) engage in the task of making sense of “histories” that are often violent, always contradictory, and endlessly fascinating. These stories matter; for what is being told, how it is being told, and what is being left unsaid shapes our sense of place, community and nation, indeed our very sense of self.

Hundreds of colleagues from across the country (and beyond) responded to our invitation to reflect on practices of “Telling Stories” and engage in some “Storytelling” of their own. The resultant program features ninety-four conference panels that explore the dynamics of history and storytelling in the world of graphic novels (“Getting Graphic with the Past”), on stage (“Theatre, History and Storytelling”) and in the digital age (“Researchers, New Media and Archives: Case Studies of Immigrant Subjectivity”), to name just three examples. We were excited to learn that our call for papers resonated in unexpected ways, inspiring a collage of Canadian history that will be on display at this year’s book fair (for more information, see “Historians’ Stories”).

Our keynote speaker Joy Parr (University of Western Ontario) has been practicing as an oral historian since 1974. Trained as an economist and economic historian at McGill and Yale, she is now a member of the Environment, Health, and Development unit within the Geography Department at University of Western Ontario. A former visiting fellow at All Souls, Oxford, and King Chair of Canadian Studies at Harvard, her book Sensing Changes: Technology, Environment and the Everyday was researched with guidance from the Concerned Walkerton Citizens, the Base Gagetown, the Arrow Lakes and the Lost Villages Historical Societies. In her keynote address “Don’t Speak For Me”: Oral History Amongst Vulnerable Populations, Dr. Parr will reflect on her past and present practice as an oral historian.

As part of our special programming activities “Outside the Box,” we will offer a one-day series of free public history workshops, free historical walking tours offered by Montreal historians, and a free theatre performance of “Someone Between” that played at Montreal’s recent Wildside Festival to a packed and enthusiastic house. All graduate students and post-doctoral fellows are invited to attend the Graduate Students’ Welcome Social on Saturday, 29 May 2010 from 19:30 to 23:30 p.m. at Brutopia, 1215 Crescent Blvd.

Here is to three-days of “telling stories” and meeting friends, both old and new!

Barbara Lorenzkowski
CHA Program Chair 2010
Department of History, Concordia University
E-mail: shc_cha@alcor.concordia.ca