Diana Brydon PhD FRSC

Canada Research Chair
Globalization and Cultural Studies

Calendar Work in progress

Director

Centre for Globalization and Cultural Studies
Room 230 Isbister Building
Phone (204) 474 6346
Fax (204) 474 7669
http://umanitoba.ca/centres/gcs/
gcs at cc.umanitoba.ca
@centregcs
http://www.facebook.com/GlobalizationCulturalStudies

North American Convenor Building Global Democracy

Member of the interregional, intercultural, interdisciplinary steering group (of 8) for a four-year team project, “Building Global Democracy,” directed by Jan Aart Scholte at Warwick/LSE, which has core funding from the Ford Foundation to begin. Participation in the first coordinating meeting in April 2008; second meeting at the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil, in Jan/Feb 2009; “Conceptualizing Global Democracy,” December 2009 (Cairo). Details available at www.buildingglobaldemocracy.org

Deputy Director Globalization and Autonomy MCRI

A SSHRC-funded Major Collaborative Research Initiatives project, Globalization and Autonomy (2002-09) is now almost complete. A capstone volume for the project is now in process: Globalization and Autonomy: Conversing across Disciplines Diana Brydon, William D. Coleman, Louis W. Pauly, and John C. Weaver

Renegotiating Community: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Global Contexts UBC Press Edited by Diana Brydon and William D. Coleman 2008

This volume is part of the Globalization and Autonomy Series: Dialectical Relationships Facing the Contemporary World.

Other volumes are:
Empires and Autonomy: Moments in the History of Globalization
Global Ordering: Institutions and Autonomy in a Changing World
Unsettled Legitimacy Political Community, Power, and Authority in a Global Era
Cultural Autonomy: Frictions and Connections
Property Rights: Struggles over Autonomy in a Global Age
Autonomy, Democracy, and Legitimacy in an Era of Globalization
Indigenous Peoples and Autonomy: Insights for a Global Age
Deux Méditerranées: Les voies de la mondialisation et de l’autonomie

Research Cluster

Critical Literacies, Digital Inclusions is a project being undertaken with Professors Walkyria Monte Mór and Lynn Mario Menezes T. de Sousa from the University of Sao Paulo.

Students who are considering carrying out research working with Professor Brydon may wish to consult a list of her publications. A full cv is available in a separate pdf file. A statement about her research program is contained on the Centre for Globalization and Cultural Studies site under Director's Research. Some of her current research documents are contained in a related document section on that site.

Professor Brydon’s research projects each include some opportunities for graduate students to work as research assistants, or to carry out independent research. Students whose research interests mesh closely with those set out in the research project descriptions are encouraged to contact Professor Brydon. She welcomes projects from students applying for SSHRC postdoctoral fellowships.

Teaching

Spring 2010 UWinnipeg ENGL-7741-6 Topics in Local, National, and Global Cultures
National and Global Imaginaries: Culture, Community, Citizenship This course is offered @uwinnipeg as part of their new MA in English with a Focus in Cultural Studies

Home in National and Global Imaginaries

I will be undertaking this project at the Humanities Research Centre Australian National University for a 12 week period starting February 1 2010.

Because home is where community, citizenship and culture intersect, it has emerged as an important area of study for literary and cultural critics interested in questions of national belonging and the possibilities for developing a new cosmopolitanism in a global age (Benhabib, Cheah, Gilroy, Spivak). How different people can live and work together in changing global conditions depends in part on how people can negotiate contested claims to home and how our local and planetary homes should be run. Images and verbal representations of home play important roles in many disciplines, yet there is little agreement as yet about either the value or the functioning of home, or the role of circulating images of home, in national and global contexts. Hamid Naficy’s suggestion, that house, home and homeland are among the key concepts “that are most in dispute and under erasure today” (2) requires further investigation within these contexts.

This individual project builds upon collaborative interdisciplinary team research that led to the publication of my co-edited book, Renegotiating Community: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Global Contexts (2008). That project has led me into two related investigations: another interdisciplinary, international collaboration working on “building global democracy” (with Ford Foundation funding) and the project I wish to pursue at ANU, both of which form part of my Canada Research Chair program investigating global imaginaries and Canadian culture. Imaginaries, the representational systems that mediate reality and form identities, have long been studied in their national formations. With globalization, national imaginaries are increasingly forming in relation to the global circulation of images from elsewhere. For example, globally circulating images of women being stoned in Iran contributed to the Hérouxville declaration, issued by a small town in Quebec, which led in turn to a major media event, the launching of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, their subsequent report with advice to the Premier, and increased tensions within Quebec and between Quebec and the rest of Canada on questions of migration, social cohesion, and the social management of identity claims centred on contested images of home.

“Home in National and Global Imaginaries” will examine a number of texts (creative, critical, and theoretical) produced out of different contexts to refine understanding of the many affective dimensions of home and how images and representations of home contribute to social engagements and democratic participation (ranging from affiliation to dissent). The project aims to advance the study of home (which has generated a huge body of critical literature in different fields) by asking three key questions: 1. how is home represented in contemporary multicultural and postcolonial contexts and in various geopolitical locations?; 2. What can we learn about new options for conviviality, human security, and solidarity from these representations?; 3. How might different images of home be employed in educational initiatives to work toward “cognitive justice” (Santos de Souza) and educate more effectively for practising global citizenship?