The L.M. Montgomery Institute’s
15th Biennial International Conference

June 22-26, 2022

2022 L.M. Montgomery and Re-vision

The conference theme for 2020 – L.M. Montgomery and Vision – gave us the opportunity to think about what is seen and not seen, and the processes of seeing and being seen, in the author’s life and works. The conference theme for 2022 – L.M. Montgomery and Re-vision – allows us to revisit this theme, looking through new lenses at Montgomery and her legacy that the events of 2020 have brought into focus. Most importantly, the theme encourages us to re-vision – re-see and re-think – Montgomery’s life, writings, translations, adaptations, and scholarship.

Be sure to follow #LMMI2022 for more details.

    Our Co-Chairs for LMMI’s L.M. Montgomery and Re-vision Conference 2022:

    Dr. Alan MacEachern

    Dr. Alan MacEachern

    Dr. Alan MacEachern is a professor of History at the University of Western Ontario. He has published extensively in environmental history, the study of the relationship between humans and nature through time. He is the editor of the Canadian History & Environment series at University of Calgary Press and has co-written/edited textbooks on environmental history methodology and on Canada’s history. He has also written about the role of Green Gables in the history of Prince Edward Island, in Natural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada and (with Edward MacDonald) in The Summer Trade: A History of Tourism on Prince Edward Island (spring 2022). He is also the author of The Miramichi Fire: A History (2020).

    Dr. Lesley Clement

    Dr. Lesley Clement

    Dr. Lesley Clement, Visiting Scholar with the LMMI (2019-21), co-organized the 14th biennial conference in 2020, “L.M. Montgomery and Vision.” She was responsible for planning the transition from an on-site conference (cancelled in April 2020 due to COVID-19) to an online platform, the “L.M. Montgomery & Vision Forum.” She was on the inaugural editorial board for the Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies and assumes the role of co-editor in July 2020. She has held teaching and administrative positions at various Canadian universities. She has published on visual literacy, empathy, and death in children’s literature. She is currently working on artists’ biographies in children’s nonfiction picturebooks. Her work on Montgomery appears in Studies in Canadian Literature and L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature(s). Recent projects include co-editing, with Rita Bode, L.M.Montgomery’s Rainbow Valleys: The Ontario Years, 1911-1942 (MQUP 2015) and, with Leyli Jamali, Global Perspectives on Death in Children’sLiterature (Routledge 2016). She is currently co-editing a volume of essays on Montgomery and childhood with Rita Bode, Holly Pike, and Margaret Steffler.

    Call for Papers: L.M. Montgomery and Re-Vision

    "It is never quite safe to think we have done with life. When we imagine we have finished our story fate has a trick of turning the page and showing us yet another chapter." — L.M. Montgomery, Rainbow Valley (1919)
    "… at every given moment of writing in her journal she presents a truth as she sees it at that moment, but that truth may include a distortion of what actually happened, and it may be different from how she saw it earlier." —Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, Introduction, Selected Journals, Volume 3

     

    The 2022 conference invites proposals for research pertaining to L.M. Montgomery’s life, writings, and/or scholarship through the lens of “re-vision.” The theme plays off the “Vision” theme of the cancelled 2020 L.M. Montgomery Institute conference, but it also stands on its own, speaking to the editing of literary works and to reinventions within Montgomery’s own life. “Re-vision” might also suggest proposals on translations, new editions, or literary, dramatic, cinematic, musical, or new media adaptations; on revisionist scholarship or confronting orthodoxy; and/or on seeing Montgomery’s work and life anew.
    The conference theme might inspire papers that explore: 
    • Adaptations or revisions of Montgomery’s life and works on/in film, stage, art, new media, and beyond
    • The art and artistry of the illustrators of Montgomery’s works
    • Re-seeing, revision, remembering, and nostalgia in Montgomery’s creative and/or autobiographical processes
    • How Montgomery adapted her writing to changing environments
    • Revising genres (e.g. romance, pastoral, epic, literature for children and young adults)
    • Telling and retelling, or rescripting master narratives
    • Metaphors of change and renewal in and around her work

    Please submit 250-300-word proposals (individual paper or panel) and 100-150-word biographical statements by 15 August 2021. Individual paper and panel proposals are double-blind reviewed. Proposals for workshops, special exhibits, films, performances, or other visual displays are also welcomed. Proposals that view Montgomery’s life and art from different cultural and theoretical perspectives are also encouraged.

    The conference is being planned as an in-person event in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, 22-26 June 2022, but virtual presentation will be possible in some circumstances. Should travel still be restricted as it currently is, an online or hybrid conference will be held. Updates will be provided as available.