Guelph Gets $1.4 Million From CRC Program
October 12, 2012 - News Release
A University of Guelph professor heading a major rethinking of Canadian literature has had her prestigious Canada Research Chair (CRC) renewed. The renewal, announced today by Industry Canada, will bring U of G $1.4 million over the next seven years.
Prof. Smaro Kamboureli, School of English and Theatre Studies, has held a Tier 1 CRC in Critical Studies in Canadian Literature since 2005. Tier 1 chairs are considered international leaders in their fields and are awarded $200,000 a year for seven years.
“This is fitting recognition for Smaro by the Canada Research Chairs program,” said Kevin Hall, vice-president (research). “She had a vision for renewing the study of Canadian literature, both in how it is studied and taught and in its role in creating a sense of culture. She has used her CRC to bring that to fruition, and we look forward to seeing what the next seven years will bring.”
With her CRC funding and a Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grant, Kamboureli established U of G’s TransCanada Institute in 2007. The institute supports collaborative studies of Canadian literature and culture, both nationally and globally.
One of Kamboureli’s major initiatives is the “TransCanada: Literature, Institutions, Citizenship” conference, which has brought together international scholars on work aiming to question structures and institutional models influencing Canadian literature. Conferences have been held in Vancouver (2005), Guelph (2007) and Sackville (2009).
Kamboureli has co-edited publications from these conferences — Trans.Can.Lit: Resituating the Study of Canadian Literature and Shifting the Ground of Canadian Literature — and will release two more volumes from the TransCanada project.
Her book Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literature in English Canada won the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Canadian criticism. She has published two editions of an anthology of multicultural writing, Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Literature and Making a Difference: Multicultural Literatures in English Canada.
In 2011, she co-edited an essay collection called Retooling the Humanities: The Culture of Research in Canadian Universities about the purpose of post-secondary education and the influence of corporate culture on the arts and sciences.
Kamboureli was a finalist in 2011 for the Lois Hole Award for Editorial Excellence and the Tom Fairley Award for Editorial Excellence for her editing of Roy Miki’s In Flux.
Ottawa established the CRC program in 2000 to attract and retain excellent faculty.
The program’s steering committee consists of the presidents of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the CFI, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, as well as the deputy minister of Industry Canada.
For media questions, contact Communications and Public Affairs: Lori Bona Hunt, 519-824-4120, Ext. 53338, or lhunt@uoguelph.ca, or Shiona Mackenzie, Ext. 56982, or shiona@uoguelph.ca.
