UWinnipeg to co-host annual meeting of l’APLAQA

Wed. Apr. 29, 2026

The Association des professeurs des littératures acadienne et québécoise de l’Atlantique (APLAQA) will hold its annual meeting and conference in Winnipeg, October 1 to 3, 2026 bringing together scholars from Manitoba, Ontario, the Maritimes as well as Europe, the Unites States, The Caribbeans and Africa. The Universities of Winnipeg and Manitoba will co-host the conference with sessions to be held at UWinnipeg on Oct. 1, 2 and at UManitoba on Oct. 3. According to Dr. Adina Balint and Dr. Glenn Moulaison, Professors of French Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and co-organizers of the event – along with Dr. Irène Chassaing and Dr. Paolo Matteucci, Professors at UManitoba) – this is the first time that the APLAQA’s annual meeting has been held in Western Canada.

Conference panels and presentations will speak to the theme: “Crises et transformations. Repenser les littératures de langue française / Crises and Transformations: Rethinking French-Language Literatures.” Dr. Balint states that “The APLAQA conference program, rich and diverse, will bring together presentations by established and emerging scholars from Canada and beyond, highlighting the vitality of French-language literatures and cultures in Canada, in minority contexts and in Quebec, as well as on an international scale.”

Invited speaker, Dr. Gregory Kennedy, Professor of History and Dean of Arts at Brandon University, and an alumnus of UWinnipeg, taught at Université de Moncton in New Brunswick from 2009 to 2023. He served as Scientific Director of the Institut d’études acadiennes from 2015 to 2023. Dr. Kennedy’s talk is entitled “Du Grand Dérangement à la Première Guerre mondiale: les crises historique comme points de départ pour repenser l’Acadie dans le monde / From the Great Upheaval to the First World War: Historical Crises as Starting Points for Rethinking Acadia in the World.”

Invited speaker, Dr. Marie Carrière, is Professor and Vice-Dean of Research at the University of Alberta, where she researches, writes, and teaches in the fields of Canadian and Québécois literatures. Dr. Carrière will give her talk: “Les écologies féministes dans l’anthropocène / Feminist Écologies in the Anthropocene” on Saturday morning at UManitoba.

On Saturday, the conference will wrap up with a banquet at which two APLAQA awards will be presented: (i) the François Paré Award is a biennial award recognizing the best paper submitted by a graduate student/post-doctoral student or professor who is within the first five years of their appointment, and (ii) the Prix Marguerite-Maillet is an annual award highlighting a professor’s contribution to the “development and study of Acadian and Francophone literatures in the Americas.”

For the conference program and other information, please go to the Conference website.