14th Colloquium on Québec Studies: “Québec Past & Present”
- March 27–28, 2026
- Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Québec, Canada
Researchers, academics, and students from a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences will present papers in English and French languages at this international colloquium dedicated to the overarching theme, “Québec Past and Present.” Following the February 15 deadline for paper proposals, selection for the program will be finalized by early March. Faculty are especially encouraged to identify students to participate.
This initiative is sponsored by: Bishop’s University, the Eastern Townships Resource Centre, the Institute of Québec Studies at SUNY Plattsburgh, and the Québec Ministry of International Relations and la Francophonie. Colloquium organizers are Dr. Christopher Kirkey (SUNY Plattsburgh) and Etienne Domingue (Bishop’s University).
BMP Lecture in Canadian Studies: “Hide & Seek: Indigenous Remains & Canadian Institutional Architecture” by Dr. Annmarie Adams, McGill University
- April 13, 2026 at 2 p.m.
- Krinovitz Hall, Hawkins Hall 0125, SUNY Plattsburgh
Speaker: Dr. Annmarie Adams holds the Stevenson Chair at McGill University, with joint appointments in Architecture and Social Studies of Medicine. Her research examines the cultural landscapes of homes and hospitals. She is the author of Architecture in the Family Way: Doctors, Houses, and Women, 1870–1900 (1996), Designing Women: Gender and the Architectural Profession (2000) with Peta Tancred, and Medicine by Design: The Architect and the Modern Hospital, 1893–1943 (2008). A leader in architectural and medical education, Adams has served as Director of McGill’s School of Architecture and President of the Canadian Society for the History of Medicine.
Can architecture remember? This talk focuses on the role of architecture in the contemporary struggle of Indigenous peoples in Canada to reclaim land and seek retribution for cultural genocide. To tease out how forms of discriminatory and restorative spatial justice are manifested, Dr. Adams explores the power of architecture to hide and to reveal. The presentation shows how the erasure, denial, mobility, and commodification of Indigenous bodies in two settler institutions are forms of "spatial injustice" and how acting on such spaces and the production of new architecture can promise healing.
Engaging the trope of invisibility, this work links a search for Indigenous remains on a former hospital site and the recorded use of Ancestor body parts in a medical museum in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal, Canada). It is nearly impossible to find Indigenous traces in hospital and university archives, but cross-disciplinary research can help us to trace them. In this case, archeological and archival investigations illuminate injustices committed against Indigenous peoples, allowing us to place events and objects, and even bodies in specific architectural contexts.
This work responds to the question: “How does the border create or work against familiarity or belonging?” Medical specimens were received at McGill University from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (Pennsylvania), the Pine Ridge Indian Agency (North Dakota), and several famous American archaeological sites. The talk asserts space and its visibility as a restorative step towards such acquisitions. We begin by undertaking spatio-temporal readings of two sites, the former Royal Victoria Hospital and the Maude Abbott Medical Museum. We then turn to new university architecture in other Canadian cities, exploring its potential to visualize Indigenous histories.
Since 2013, Canadian Studies programs at Bridgewater State University, McGill University, and SUNY Plattsburgh have partnered to offer the BMP Lecture in Canadian Studies, an annual event featuring a faculty member from one of the partner universities who travels to the other two universities to present their research.
Annual Men’s & Women’s Basketball Banquet Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Canada
- May 3, 2026
- Valcour Inn & Boathouse, SUNY Plattsburgh
SUNY Plattsburgh students rostered on the Men’s and Women’s Basketball teams, along with coaches Mike Blaine and Ben Sarraf, additional coaching and training staff, plus various other team supporters will gather together for a celebratory banquet. Remarks at the event will be delivered by the Center for the Study of Canada Director, Dr. Christopher Kirkey, followed by an inspirational keynote address, and awards presentations. Graduating seniors will also take the podium to share reflections on their SUNY Plattsburgh experiences.
The Center for the Study of Canada is delighted to sponsor this annual event to honor the achievements and efforts of the Men’s and Women’s Basketball teams and in recognition that the founder of basketball, James Naismith, was Canadian.
Authors’ Workshop & Book Project “The Dynamics of International Political Leadership — Canada & the United States: Incentives, Constraints & Outcomes”
- May 27–29, 2026
- École nationale d’administration publique, Québec, Québec
International political leadership, involving Canada and the United States, is today at the forefront of political discussion and analysis. This workshop is designed to investigate, methodologically and empirically, those domestic and international factors that most directly impact the ability of various political leaders to exercise power in international affairs. How does the prevailing construction/structure and workings of domestic and international political institutions, for example, affect how political leadership is and can be exercised in the international community by Ottawa and Washington? What role do domestic factors such as political parties, interest groups, public opinion, the bureaucracy, and the judiciary play in influencing international political leadership by either/both nations? How does the prevailing international political system (including nations, alliances, military postures, trading arrangements, international organizations, etc.) facilitate or constrain international political leadership by Canada and the United States? When have elected political leaders in Ottawa and Washington deliberately sought to alter, even challenge, the scope and exercise of political power – and have these efforts been successful? Do such challenges fundamentally alter the dynamics of international governance moving forward? How does political leadership in the international community relate to the management of salient domestic issues or developments in international affairs? Are there substantive differences in the national experiences of Canada and the U.S.?
Invited participants, who think deeply about Canadian and/or American political leadership (i.e., prime ministers, presidents, premiers, governors and mayors) and the exercise of political power in the international system, have been selected to present their original, previously unpublished scholarly paper. The call for papers deadline was September 25, 2025; participants were notified of their selection in October 2025. Authors are requested to consider, address, and incorporate three interrelated areas of inquiry:
- how is political leadership in international affairs incentivized? In other words, what incentives – structural or otherwise – exist that provide sufficient flexibility, effectively encouraging or promoting individual political leaders in Canada and/or the United States to exercise power at the world level?;
- how is political leadership in international affairs constrained? In other words, what constraints can be identified that serve to counter or effectively restrain the exercise of powers by political leaders in Ottawa and/or Washington at the world level? Are constraints specific to a particular political official or domestic political institutions and culture, or are they structurally imbedded in the international political system?; and,
- recognizing the incentives and constraints that directly impact the exercise of political leadership in the international arena, how do/have these factors impact political outcomes? In other words, in what concrete ways have political leaders in Canada and/or the United States been strongly encouraged to exercise political power, or conversely how have political officials recognized and been restrained in their political engagement and as such been relatively unsuccessful in the pursuit of political leadership in the world? Identify how political outcomes can be directly linked to the incentives and constraints international political leadership confronts.
The Center for the Study of Canada and Institute on Québec Studies at SUNY Plattsburgh, the Jarislowsky Chair on Trust and Political Leadership at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR) in cooperation with École nationale d’administration publique (ÉNAP), Groupe d’études et de recherche sur l’international et le Québec (GERIQ), and Observatoire sur les États-Unis, Chaire Raoul-Dandurand, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) are co-organizing this two-day authors’ workshop on Canadian and American international political leadership, which will result in a scholarly book volume to be published by a leading university press. The co-organizers and co-editors of the workshop and book volume are Drs. Christopher Kirkey, Stéphane Paquin, and Frédérick Gagnon.