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Title: Sports, Nations, and Utopia in Canadian Literature and Culture

Guest Speaker: Prof (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, EUTOPIA Alliance Partner)

Convenor: Dr Emrah AtasoyLink opens in a new window (English and Comparative Literary Studies & Institute of Advanced Study)

Date-Venue: 5 May 2023 Friday, 14:00-16:00,

Dear Colleagues,

We warmly invite you to our guest Prof Jason Blake's talk "Sports, Nations, and Utopia in Canadian Literature and Culture" held at 14:00 on Friday 5th May 2023.

When we enter a sporting arena as fans or when we play a game of pick-up football, we expect to be surrounded by what Johan Huizinga called the 鈥榤agic circle鈥� of play; we expect to experience freedom from quotidian troubles and even the tyranny of regular clock-time. Philosopher Bernard Suits even argued that 鈥楿topian existence is fundamentally concerned with game-playing.鈥�

In this talk, I consider Canadian literature and, more broadly, culture in terms of sports, utopian ideals, and ideas of nationhood. Canada鈥檚 most famous story is surely Roch Carrier鈥檚 nostalgic 鈥淭he Hockey Sweater.鈥� Would the same story have enjoyed such acceptance if it were about curling or baseball? Unlikely. After providing an overview of types of Canadian sports literature, I consider the roles individual sports (can) have in the game of performing nationhood.

Jason Blake is a professor in the University of Ljubljana鈥檚 English Department. He is the author of Canadian Hockey Literature, co-editor (with Andy Holman) of The Same but Different: Hockey in Quebec, and the author of Culture Smart Slovenia. As well, he has contributed to Im Ausland Leben f眉r Dummies (鈥淟iving Abroad for Dummies鈥�). He is the editor-in-chief of the Central European Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue d鈥橢tudes Canadiennes en Europe Centrale.