Cosmopolitanism and forgiveness in Canadian literature
Dr. Eva Darias Beautell visited the University of Vigo on November the 27th, where she delivered a lecture entitled “Responding to Crises: Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness in Canadian Literature”. Starting with a brief introduction to theoretical approaches to cosmopolitanism and the ethics of state apologies, Dr. Darias Beautell dedicated a part of her analysis to the case of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada that investigated the policy of forced assimilation of Indigenous children in Residential Schools in Canada. On the second part of her lecture she offered an extensive overview of diverse and divergent responses to crimes against human rights in the Canadian fiction written in English, including outstanding examples like Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, Rawi Hage’s Cockroach, Madelein Thien’s Certainty, and Joseph Boyden’s The Orenda. Her lecture was followed by an engaging Q&A period with the participation of graduate students and colleagues in our Ph.D. program.
Dr. Eva Darias-Beautell is Associate Professor of Canadian Literatures at the University of La Laguna. She has been Visiting Scholar at the Universities of Toronto, Ottawa and British Columbia, London, Berkeley and Masaryk. Her books include Shifting Sands: Literary Theory and Contemporary Canadian Fiction (Mellen, 2000), Graphies and Grafts: (Con)Texts and (Inter)Texts in the Fictions of Four Canadian Women Writers (Peter Lang, 2001), the collections (co-ed. with María Jesús Hernáez Lerena) Canon Disorders: Gendered Perspectives on Literature and Film in Canada and the United States (Universidad de La Rioja, 2007) and Unruly Penelopes and the Ghosts: Narratives of English Canada (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2012). A new edited collection The Urban Condition: Literary Engagements with Canada’s Postmetropolis is forthcoming. She currently leads the international research network “TransCanadian Networks: Excellence and Transversality from Spain about Canada towards Europe” (FFI2015-71921-REDT) and is the co-principal investigator (with María José Guerra Palmero) of the research project “Justice, Citizenship and Vulnerability. Narratives of Precarity and Intersectional Perspectives” (FFI2015-63895-C2-1-R).
