CASCA hosts conferences annually, and our members are the first to receive invitations to attend and present.
CASCA 2025 – McGill, Montreal
May 7 – May 10, 2025
Confluences
The 2025 conference of the Canadian Anthropology Society/La Société Canadienne d’Anthropologie inaugurates the association’s second half century by inviting reflections on confluences. Confluences at once intimate the location of the meeting in Montreal, where waters, languages and peoples have long met, and the conditions and aims of anthropology as a discipline concerned with relations between persons, other-than-human beings, and their environments. Our current conjuncture is characterized by divisiveness and war, by “echo-chambers” and ecological crisis. However, in this conjuncture we are also witness to new waves of social and political mobilization and renewed efforts to fight inequalities, establish coalitions, and mitigate the deleterious effects of climate change. Our conference invites reflection on anthropology in this conjuncture, with particular attention to anthropologists’ ability to observe, analyze and interpret the relations between local realities and larger processes. How do anthropologists navigate shared and contested presents and the possible futures that might arise? Just as sharing is never a foregone conclusion but rather the outcome of material and imaginative labour, so too contestation is not only a negative act but carries within it the potential for movement in different directions. Confluences may be about convergence but they can also indicate points of solidarity that ignite productive disruption.
The conference invites contributions, in the form of research papers, panels and roundtables that together give us a picture of where anthropology is and where it is headed. What are the confluences—of history, material conditions, individual and collective choices—that constitute anthropology’s present, and what are the confluences anthropologists seek in the future? Bringing together emerging and established scholars, researchers working within interdisciplinary teams, anthropologists working in academia and in other areas, on theoretical and applied projects, and in a range of media, the conference hopes to continue building Canadian anthropology as vibrant, diverse and collaborative.
Student Travel Grant
Grant Information Every year, CASCA offers small travel grants to doctoral and master’s students who are presenting at our annual conference. Every year, the award committee struggles with the gap…
Grant Information
Every year, CASCA offers small travel grants to doctoral and master’s students who are presenting at our annual conference. Every year, the award committee struggles with the gap between the many strong applications we receive and our limited resources. Students tell us that even a small amount of money makes a huge difference to their ability to attend, but we would like to be able to do more. With that in mind, CASCA has added a new category to our charitable donations options: Student Travel Reimbursement. As with all CASCA donations, a receipt will be issued for tax purposes. Please consider supporting the next generation of anthropologists and strengthening CASCA by donating through the following link.
Value
Awards of up to $600 may be granted to an applicant. Approval of and the amount of the award will be calculated at the discretion of CASCA’s Executive on the basis of travel distance, financial need, stage of program, scholarly merit and number of applicants.
Funds will be disbursed at the conference, upon submission of original receipts, including proof of travel/ticket stub, a copy of student I.D. Please come prepared to provide copies.
Eligibility
- Available to Masters and PhD students who are presenting at annual conference (priority to students who have completed their fieldwork).
- Applicants MUST BE affiliated with a Canadian institution and be CASCA members in good standing at the time of conference attendance, as well as an active participant in the meeting, i.e. delivering a paper, poster or other original contribution.
- Applicants can only collect grants one time at each level of study (one MA max and one PhD max).
Submission
Applicants must submit the following for consideration:
- The abstract of your paper or panel submission
- CV (2-page maximum)
- A completed application form
Applications must be received by March 15, 2025. Incomplete and/or late applications will not be considered. Do not assume your message has been received unless it has been acknowledged.
Notice to successful applicants should be available by late March 2025, giving sufficient time for applicants to make travel reservations and arrangements.
Email inquiries should include the subject line “CASCA Student Travel Grant”.
Conference Classifieds
Beyond Remnants: Rethinking Ruins as Methods in Anthropology
The word “ruins” often conjures images of rubble and partially standing structures. Anthropology has provided complex and nuanced ways to understand ruins as sites of decay and as active participants in contemporary social and political life (Gordillo 2014; Povinelli 2016). Ruins and ruination make the spectral tangible and felt (Navaro 2012), embodying and disrupting linear temporalities and shaping the present (Napolitano, 2015).
This roundtable draws on social anthropologies of traces, ruins, and debris, to ask how ruins become methods for understanding the intersections of time and memory. We are particularly interested in how ruins make claims on imagined, possible futures, and expectations of change in different social contexts; and how ruins mediate between presence, absence, and expectation in ethnographic research (Al-Khalili 2024). We welcome broad conceptualizations of ruins and debris, from abandoned structures to rubble in the aftermath of violence, toxic residues and contaminants, and more.
Interested participants should send a 150-word abstract of their contribution to the roundtable to Luisa Isidro Herrera (isidrohl@yorku.ca) and Alexandra Frankel (frankela@yorku.ca) by January 22.
Al-Khalili, C. (2024). Present/absent futures: waiting in the aftermath of a defeated revolution. History and Anthropology, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2024.2346901
Gordillo, G. 2014. Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction. Durham: Duke University Press.
Napolitano, V. (2015). Anthropology and traces. Anthropological Theory, 15(1), 47–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499614554239
Navaro, Y. (2012). The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity. Durham: Duke University Press.
Povinelli, E. A. (2016). Geontologies : a requiem to late liberalism. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822373810
Call for participants on teaching and AI (roundtable)
CASCA 2025, May 7-10, McGill, Montreal. Roundtable Co-organizers: Maggie Cummings (University of Toronto) & Karl Schmid (York University)
Ready or Not: The Challenge of Generative AI for Anthropology Instructors. Anthropology instructors today inevitably face the challenge of generative artificial intelligence (AI). AI tools are already able to assist with academic work like performing literature reviews, summarizing articles and books, developing arguments, drafting papers, and creating presentations. To what extent does generative AI contribute to plagiarism and pose a challenge to academic integrity? Will many of the skills that anthropologists value—close reading, critical thinking, research and writing skills—be rendered obsolete by generative AI? On the other hand, can AI allow us to create new pedagogical approaches? How can we best teach anthropology in this context? This roundtable is a forum in which to raise questions and to share some of our experiences (the good, the bad, and the ugly). Interested participants please contact Maggie Cummings (maggie.cummings@utoronto.ca) and Karl Schmid (kschmid@yorku.ca) by January 22, 2025.
Call for participants on teaching and AI (roundtable)
CASCA 2025, May 7-10, McGill, Montreal. Roundtable Co-organizers: Maggie Cummings (University of Toronto) & Karl Schmid (York University)
Ready or Not: The Challenge of Generative AI for Anthropology Instructors. Anthropology instructors today inevitably face the challenge of generative artificial intelligence (AI). AI tools are already able to assist with academic work like performing literature reviews, summarizing articles and books, developing arguments, drafting papers, and creating presentations. To what extent does generative AI contribute to plagiarism and pose a challenge to academic integrity? Will many of the skills that anthropologists value—close reading, critical thinking, research and writing skills—be rendered obsolete by generative AI? On the other hand, can AI allow us to create new pedagogical approaches? How can we best teach anthropology in this context? This roundtable is a forum in which to raise questions and to share some of our experiences (the good, the bad, and the ugly). Interested participants please contact Maggie Cummings (maggie.cummings@utoronto.ca) and Karl Schmid (kschmid@yorku.ca) by January 22, 2025.
CALL FOR STORIES (Papers):
ORGANIZING OBJECTS THROUGH THE STORIES WE TELL (PART 4)
CASCA 2025, May 7-10, McGill, Montreal
Roundtable Co-organizers: Jason Ellsworth (Dalhousie University) & Zabeen Khamisa (University of Winnipeg)
Objects are continuously in transition through creation, circulation, consumption, and/or destruction. Their value and meaning are subject to the shifting perspectives of the social, political, and economic contexts they are enmeshed. Participants are asked to consider how objects are being made and unmade in new ways by the humans that organize them. Members of our roundtable will show-and-tell the ethnographic stories of the objects we encounter in our research. Each speaker will take on their object of choice for only 7 minutes! These short form presentations will be unpacked in a discussion and allow time for the audience to share their own stories.
The previous three panels we organized at recent AAA & CASCA meetings in 2023 & 2024 included objects such as Woven Wraps, Miniature Carnival Throws, Mix Tapes, License Plates, Currency, Shapewear, Turbans, Not Milk, Heritage Protection Maps, Police Barricades, Potatoes (The Great Andean Star, The Kachun Waqachiy), a Ashanti Fertility Statuette, Handmade Printed Circuit Board, Street Mural Art, Speakers, & Bullets.
We are looking for new objects and stories that may also become part of a publication.
Virtual or In-person: We are open to both options depending on the submissions we receive. Please let us know your preference when submitting.
Please send a very short one paragraph description of your object and story for us to consider to jason.ellsworth@dal.ca before January 24th.
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