Jonathan Allan, on behalf of the conference committees of the Centre

Dear President Naylor,

 

I write to you on behalf of the organising committee—past and present— of the International Graduate Conference of the Centre for Comparative Literature, a committee of which I have been a member for the past three years. As you know, the graduate students of the Centre organise this annual conference every spring, based around questions that are at the heart of the human sciences. In 2009, our central question was: what does it mean to read and how does one read? In 2010, we turned to the experience of time and narration. In 2011, we will explore the question of iconicity, a particularly timely question in light of the front-page image of Northrop Frye in the Globe and Mail this week.

 

The conferences that have been organised over the past three years have received no fewer than one hundred abstracts from scholars from around the world. Last year’s conference alone received close to two hundred fifty abstracts. This number is nearly three times that which the Canadian Association for Comparative Literature generally receives each year for their annual conference. The abstracts we receive come from a range of scholars, from those at the beginnings of the careers to firmly established professors who are members of the highest levels of academia: University Professors, Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, and so on.

 

Over the past few years, the conference has hosted some of the biggest names in literary studies to present keynote lectures. In honour of Linda Hutcheon and Ted Chamberlin, we invited Sander L. Gilman to participate in 2009, an invitation that he quickly and gladly accepted because of the prestige of the Centre and its place in the field of literary studies. Sander Gilman has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Toronto and also held the position of Northrop Frye Professor in Literary Theory. I will not list all of the scholars who have graced the University by attending this conference, but such a list would include Svetlana Boym, Piero Boitani, and Mario J. Valdés. In 2011, we will welcome Carol Mavor, an art historian, and Michael Taussig, an anthropologist, who will speak to the interdisciplinary and multi-media concerns of icons and their meanings: Why are icons so powerful? What does it mean to break them?

 

And if these two aspects of our conferences were not enough, for the past three years the conferences have either received SSHRC funding or have been established as “fund-worthy but no funds available.” The 2010 conference, “Radiant Past, Explosive Future,” received the full amount of funding requested. The 2011 conference is the recipient of a Jackman Humanities Institute Program for the Arts award, and we anticipate equal success with our SSHRC application. Publications are forthcoming for the proceeding of the 2008, 2009, and 2010 conferences, and the committee of the 2011 conference is currently negotiating publication of the proceedings.

 

Sander L. Gilman has called our conference a “destination” conference for comparative, interdisciplinary, and literary scholars from around the world. Indeed our conferences are noted for challenging the ways we conceive of comparative literature and continue to challenge, in Dean Gertler’s words, “what was revolutionary or radical in the 60s.” If the University and the Dean of Arts and Science decide to continue along this destructive path of closing the Centre for Comparative Literature, there is no way that this conference will be able to continue.

 

Professor Sylvia Söderlind of Queen’s University notes, in her letter (July 13, 2010) to you, “I have attended several of the annual international conferences organized by the students over the years and have been constantly amazed both by the quality of scholarship presented and the caliber of scholars the students manage to attract. Where else do students organize large meetings of scholars of international reputation? More to the point, perhaps, in what other venues organized by students are international scholars eager to participate?” I submit these same questions to you. Where are these same types of conferences being organised by students and where are scholars of international repute so interested in participating? These conferences are another testament to the academic excellence and reputation of the students at the Centre for Comparative Literature and the continuing relevance and strength of our discipline.  

 

On behalf of the organising committees of the 2009, 2010, and 2011 conferences, I urge you and the Dean of Arts and Sciences to consider just what is at stake if the plan to close Northrop Frye’s Centre for Comparative Literature continues. No other program at the University of Toronto, and no other group of students working together at the University, organises a conference that is any way comparable to those run through the Centre for Comparative Literature. This will be a tremendous loss to the intellectual community at the University of Toronto, as well as our neighbouring universities.

 

Finally, let me personally invite you and any of the university administration to attend our annual conference, “Iconoclasm: the Breaking and Making of Images,” that will take place March 17-19, 2011 at Victoria College.

 

Yours truly,

 

Jonathan A. Allan

 

CC: Dean Meric Gertler

Provost Cheryl Misak

Dr. Neil ten Kortenaar, Centre for Comparative Literature

Dr. Sylvia Söderlind, Department of English, Queen’s University

Dr. Sander L. Gilman, Emory University

Dr. Noreen Golfman, President of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Elizabeth Church, Education Reporter, Globe and Mail

Karen Birchard, Chronicle of Higher Education

Peggy Berkowitz, Editor, University Affairs

Save Comparative Literature Campaign