Events

We have an exciting calendar of events for the 2024-2025 academic year, including the Doctoral Fellow Lecture Series and the NFC Annual Lecture. If you want to explore the catalog of past NFC talks, please visit our YouTube Channel linked here, follow us on Instagram (@northropfryecentre), or visit this page for all upcoming and past events. Please note that all are welcome to attend NFC lectures, and registration is available via Eventbrite here.

“Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: The Black Prairies' Multi-Species Archive”

About the talk

This talk follows the muscle memory of Black cowboy songs on the Canadian prairies to retrieve knowledge of the prairies' ongoing entanglements with slavery and its aftermaths. By working with an interdisciplinary methodology that moves between history, musicology, agrarian and genomic science, this paper argues that the archives of the Black prairies must expand to encompass other-than human species and kinships.

About the speaker

Karina Vernon researches and teaches in the areas of Canadian and Black Canadian literature, archives, critical pedagogy and Black-Indigenous relations. She is editor of The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology (WLUP 2020) and a companion volume, Critical Readings in the Black Prairie Archives, which is forthcoming. She is the co-editor, with Winfried Siemerling (UWaterloo) of Call and Response-ability: Black Canadian Works of Art and the Politics of Relation (McGill-Queens, forthcoming), which offers a Black Canadian theory of reception and relation.

This talk is co-presented by the Northrop Frye Centre and the Centre for Comparative Literature.

“How to Win the Fight for Public Power”

This event will include a screening & discussion of a short film by Ashley Dawson entitled Peaker, which focuses on dirty power plants in New York City, where Dawson lives and is an activist with the Public Power NY campaign. In addition to focusing on environmental injustices connected to fossil capital, the event will include time to workshop ideas and strategies for building out public-controlled renewables in the US, Canada and beyond.

About the speaker

Ashley Dawson is currently Professor of Postcolonial Studies in the English Department at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), and at the College of Staten Island/CUNY. He currently works in the fields of environmental humanities and postcolonial ecocriticism. He is the author of three recent books relating to these fields: People’s Power (O/R, 2020), Extreme Cities (Verso, 2017) and Extinction (O/R, 2016).

This talk is co-presented by the Northrop Frye Centre and the Institute for Environment, Conservation, and Sustainability.

The Heady Highlands: Olfactory Impressions of the North

About the talk

The subject of innumerable novels, poems and landscape paintings, the Scottish Highlands are no stranger to representation. That their stark beauty has also been frequently captured onscreen is also no surprise; we see lochs, bens and braes in sweeping vistas while babbling burns, eerie winds or faint, stereotypical bagpipes fill the soundtrack. But what of our other senses? In this presentation, Professor Davidson proposes that we turn our noses to the North and explore how scent can function as a marker of place in both metaphoric and literal terms. Through an examination of typical Highland notes and with particular attention to Jo Malone’s “The Highlands” collection of fragrances, we will consider what it means to invoke a space from an olfactory perspective while actively smelling the scents in question.

Note: This talk will feature active smelling; those with sensitivity to scents are advised.

About the speaker

Bob Davidson, Mary Rowell Jackman Professor of Humanities at the University of Toronto’s Victoria College and faculty in the Dept. of Spanish & Portuguese, specializes in the study of food, drink and hospitality. Author of Jazz Age Barcelona (shortlisted for the Canada Prize) and The Hotel: Occupied Space, his latest project, The Scent of Spain: Fragrance, Odour and Culture, looks at key fragrances and smells that were part of Spain’s modern experience. Prof. Davidson currently serves as Director of the Northrop Frye Centre and as Chair of the Manuscript Review Committee of University of Toronto Press. He takes his martini with a little extra vermouth and an olive.

This talk is generously sponsored by the Centre for Scottish Studies, University of Guelph.

“Flavours from the Past: Translating and Modernizing Martínez Montiño’s The Art of Cooking, Pie Making, Pastry Making, and Preserving (1611)”

About the talk

In this talk, Professor Nadeau will introduce Francisco Martínez Montiño’s 1611 work – the most important Spanish cookbook for centuries – and discuss both the process of translating it into English for the first time and the modernization of its recipes for today’s kitchen.

About the speaker

Professor Carolyn Nadeau is the Byron S. Tucci Professor of Spanish at Illionois Wesleyan University. Her research focuses on food representation in sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century Spanish literature. With the support of an NEH fellowship, she recently published a critical edition and translation of Francisco Martínez Montiño’s 1611 cookbook, Arte de cocina, pastelería, vizcochería y conservería [The art of cooking, pie making, pastry making and preserving] (University of Toronto Press, 2023). Taking readers back to the Spanish Habsburg court, this project presents a nuanced understanding of what foods were prepared and consumed during a monumental time in Spain’s culinary history.

Other recent publications include the monograph Food Matters. Alonso Quijano’s Diet and the Discourse of Early Modern Food in Spain (University of Toronto Press, 2016), which contextualizes the shifts in Spain’s gastronomic history at many levels of society and in the process explores the evolving social and cultural identity of early modern Spain. She has also published articles on images of taste on the early modern Spanish stage, sensory ailments in early modern domestic literature, peppers and basil as Old World-New World markers in the writing of Cervantes, a gastronomic map of Don Quixote, the role of wine in the formation of Morisco identity, and contributions of medieval food manuals to Spain’s culinary heritage.

This talk is presented by the Northrop Frye Centre, the University of Toronto Press, and the Culinaria Research Centre.

“Rural Spain as a Space of Anger”

About the talk...

Rage and the rural have long been intertwined in Spanish literature and film, shaping narratives of identity, trauma, and resistance. This talk explores how canonical works like Yerma by Federico García Lorca and recent films like As Bestas by Rodrigo Sorogoyen depict the rural not merely as a passive backdrop but as an active force that mirrors, amplifies, and conditions anger. By examining the emotional and symbolic weight of barren landscapes, isolation, and historical displacement, the talk highlights how these literary and cinematic works construct a uniquely Spanish vision of rage, one deeply rooted in the tensions between past and present, nature and nationhood.

About the speaker...

Marta Rocatín is a PhD candidate in Spanish Literature at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation explores the significance of rage in modern and contemporary Spanish literary texts, analyzing its connections to social and political change and its impact on shaping national identity. In addition, she investigates visual culture and food studies in Spain, examining how these elements intersect with themes of nationality, identity, and racism.

Registration available via Eventbrite here.

Anne Carson: A Time for World Literature

Opening remarks to be provided by Prof. Eloisa Morra

Patrizio Ceccagnoli (University of Kansas), “Anne Carson between LucaSignorelli and Pietro Vannucci: An Umbrian Perspective”

Elisa Biagini (New York University - Florence), “ ‘I touch you and you are ink’: Anne and I, a logbook"

Anne Carson: Italian Crossroads Roundtable: Antonella Anedda (Poet and Essayist); Maria Borio (University of Perugia); Carmen Gallo (La Sapienza University - Rome); Sara Sermini (USI University)

Organized by Prof. Eloisa Morra (University of Toronto) & Dr. Roberto Binetti(Università di Padova)

Image courtesy of Courtney Wotherspoon

This event is made possible due to the support from the Department of Italian Studies, the Department of English, the Jackman Humanities Institute, and the Italian Cultural Institute, and the Northrop Frye Centre at Victoria College. A light lunch will be served after the conference.

Putting the Femme in Feminist: Trans Feminism and the ‘Male Lesbian’ in the American Second Wave

About the talk...

A slur, a joke, or a post-structuralist case of mistaken identity? Surely the ‘male lesbian’ is one of these. Yet this term’s actual herstory is far more interesting. Throughout the period historicised as American feminism’s Second Wave, potentially thousands of trans femmes organized under this identity across North America and Europe. Despite being entirely overlooked in scholarship, the lesbian feminism articulated by a community of femme-for-femme trans femmes in the 1970s constitutes one of the most enduring and intellectually significant subsets of lesbian feminism to come out of the Second Wave. Based off her forthcoming Gender & History article, join CSUS-Northop Frye Fellow Chris Aino Pihlak for her reconstruction of the archive of trans lesbian feminism first developed by Sally Douglas in 1970, and then popularized through her cross-continental organisation the Salmacis Society the year after. The herstory of Salmacis, Sally Douglas, and the ‘male lesbian,’ disrupts dominant ideas of the supposed antagonisms between ‘trans” and ‘lesbian” in the 1970s. Indeed, the distinctly trans femme led, sex-positive, lesbian femme-inism of the organisation can reanimate lesbian feminism today.

About the speaker...

Chris Aino Pihlak is a Doctoral Fellow with the Centre for the Study of the United States and the Northrop Frye Centre at Victoria College. She is a trans woman, PhD student at the University of Toronto, and social historian of past articulations of trans feminine existence. Her dissertation examines the robust and cross-continental trans feminine subcultural periodical networks that existed from 1960 until the mid-2000s across the Global North. Anchored in oral history, this project thinks through the affective and experiential dimensions of existing in these spaces of care, sociality, and sisterhood. She further studies the socio-intellectual discourses of gender and embodiment found within these American-centred networks. In addition, she is a scholar of 20th-century trans feminine erotica where she works with these texts to think through subcultural and societal notions of trans feminine desirability. Her work can be found, or is forthcoming, in the Journal of the History of Sexuality, The Abusable Past, Sexualities, and Intersections. She hopes her analyses of the complexities and messiness of past trans lives honours those who built the path she now walks on.

Registration available via Eventbrite here.

“Guests beside the Grain: Parasitism and Hospitality in Late Capitalist Spain”

About the talk...

Immunity, from the moment it becomes a biopolitical concept, was long associated with the security and integrity of bodies. The modern nation state, in imagining its own sovereignty and boundaries, represents the body politic under the same immunological paradigm of defense, and like in biomedical discourse, those who contaminate the homeland are coded as external and often castaway as parasites, viruses, and other malignant presences. This talk reconsiders the utility of the parasite in light of changing notions of immunity in recent decades, from a security to a symbiogenetic paradigm of the self. A set of Spanish- and Catalan-language novels will be analyzed that together provide a comprehensive reflection on, and reconsideration of, the concept of parasitism as a powerful instigator for rethinking the complex associations between the subject and the external environment and for producing systemic complexity in the context of social, political, and anthropocentric crisis.

About the speaker...

William Viestenz is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where he holds a joint appointment in the Institute for Global Studies. He graduated from Stanford University with a Ph.D. in Iberian and Latin American Cultures in 2011.

Prof. Viestenz specializes in modern Iberian literature and culture, with an emphasis on the intersection of Catalan Studies and political theory. He is the author of By the Grace of God: Franco’s Spain and the Sacred Roots of Political Imagination (U. Toronto Press, 2014) and has coedited The New Ruralism: An Epistemology of Transformed Space (Iberoamericana/Vervuert 2013), Ethics of Life: Contemporary Iberian Debates (Vanderbilt University Press 2016), and A Polemical Companion to Ethics of Life: Contemporary Iberian Debates (Hispanic Issues Online). He has published multiple articles in specialized journals and contributed to a number of edited volumes. At present, he is the Editor-in-Chief of The Catalan Review and an Associate Managing Editor of Hispanic Issues/Hispanic Issues Online.

Registration available via Eventbrite here.

“Iran is my Land: Subliminal Dialogue and Modernity in Iranian Cinema”

About the talk

The film "Iran is My Land" (1999), directed by the distinguished Iranian filmmaker Parviz Kimiavi, presents a nuanced exploration of cultural heritage and censorship through the lens of its protagonist, Sohrab—a writer and intellectual in Iran. Sohrab is driven by his aspiration to compile an anthology featuring the works of eminent Persian poets, including Rumi, Hafiz and Firdawsī. His odyssey from southern Iran to the capital city of Tehran reflects a quest for permission from the Ministry of Censorship of the Islamic Republic, underscoring the tension between artistic expression and state control.

Upon his encounter with a censorship department employee, Sohrab confronts an ideological barrier regarding the publication of his anthology. The employee asserts that the poetry in question contains references to wine, which he deems unacceptable within Islamic cultural sensibilities. The film climaxes through a non-linear narrative structure, as Sohrab finds himself in an imaginary caravanserai. In this surreal setting, surrounded by the spectral presences of classical Persian poets, Sohrab engages in a profound discussion regarding the themes of wine and the portrayal of women in Persian poetry.

Sohrab positions his argument by contending that references to wine in poetry should be interpreted literally, while the employee counters that such references embody mystical and religious significance. This dialogue raises critical questions about the nature of interpretation and the role of cultural symbols in a contemporary Iranian context. Furthermore, Sohrab's journey from an ancient qanat to the bustling Tehran subway serves to highlight the disconnection between the rich heritage of Persian literature and the modern urban landscape, where the names of poets are reduced to mere street names by a populace that has largely forgotten their works.

An ironic dimension of this narrative is the alignment of many Iranian intellectuals with the censorship employee's perspective on classical Persian poetry, suggesting a broader societal ambivalence toward cultural legacy. In this lecture, I propose to analyze Kimiavi's film through the theoretical frameworks of Marshall Berman's "experience of modernity" and Jürgen Habermas's concept of "communicative action." This analysis aims to illuminate the ongoing discourse regarding the interpretation of Persian heritage in contemporary Iranian life while scrutinizing the potential for establishing equitable dialogue within a sociopolitical system predisposed to a more instrumental and system-oriented worldview. The central inquiry of this study thus pertains to whether a meaningful dialogue can be fostered in a context that challenges both artistic freedom and the legacy of Persian literature.

About the speaker

Yaser Farashahinejad is a Northrop Frye Centre Visiting Research Fellow, Victoria College, the University of Toronto. He also served as a researcher and editor at the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies, University of Toronto. Yaser holds a PhD in Persian literature and language. In addition to his academic pursuits, he is also a fiction writer, poet and translator. To date, Yaser has authored four books: Gūrʹhā-yi kāghaz̲ī (Paper Graves), published by Diyār Nāmag in 2022; Farār az furm (Escaping Form), with Tarh-e-no Publications, Tehran, in 2020; Minārahʹhā-yi vārūnah (Inverted Minarets), also published in 2020 by Tarh-e-no; and Nazarīyahʹhā-yi rumān dar Īrān (Theories of the Novel in Iran), which was brought out by Pāyā Publications in 2019. As a translator, Yaser has thus far rendered two books from English to Persian: Hamid Rezaei Yazd’s Persian Literature and Modernity (as Mudarnītah-yi guftugūʼī, published in 2021 by Tarh-e-no), and The Rumi Prescription by Melody Moezzi (also published by Tarh-e-no in 2021, under the title Darmāngarī-yi Mawlānā). He has recently finished translating Ali Mirsepassi’s Transnationalism in Iranian Philosophical Thought, the manuscript of which is currently in press. Yaser has published numerous articles both in Iran and internationally, with a particular focus on contemporary Persian literature and history. His work has appeared in various publications, including Iran Namag, where he has already published two articles. A third piece, titled “Subliminal Dialogue,” is forthcoming in the same journal. Since 2020, Yaser has also worked as an editor and book reviewer at Tarh-e-no, a highly reputable and prestigious publisher in Iran. His research interests revolve around modernity, dialogue and the philosophy of literature.