Conference program: Symbols and Identities in Canada
Symbols and Identities in Canada
A Conference Organized by
EÖTVÖS LORÁND UNIVERSITY
KÁROLI GÁSPÁR UNIVERSITY OF THE REFORMED CHURCH IN HUNGARY
and
PÁZMÁNY PÉTER CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY
Budapest, Hungary
November 27-28, 2025
PROGRAM
DAY 1 November 27 (Thursday)
Venue: Eötvös Loránd University, R5 Building (1088 Budapest, Rákóczy út 5.), Frank Tibor room (356)
12:45-13:30 Opening – welcome speeches
13:30- 14:15 Keynote Speech: Octavian More (CEACS President, Babes-Bolyai University, Romania): Northern Exposures: Reflections of Wilderness in the Canadian Poetic Imagination
14:15-14:30 Coffee Break
14:30-16:30 Session 1
Andrew DuBois: The Moose and The Goose: Canadian Creatures, Symbolic Migration
Albert Rau: “The Beaver is a Truly Proud and Noble Animal”
Dóra Bernhardt: “True North” As Philosophical and Artistic Representation of Canadian Identity
Krisztina Kodó: Terrains of Identity: The Canadian North in Carolyn Marie Souaid’s Fiction
16:30-16:45: Coffee Break
16:45-18:45 Session 2
János Kenyeres: Beyond the Headdress: Identities, Symbols, and Cultural Appropriation in Contemporary Canada
Andrea Szabó F.: Geologies of Guilt: Moral Disengagement in “Deep-Holes”
Vera Benczik: If you don’t like the story I could tell you a different one” – science fiction and post-apocalypse as narrative templates in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin
Raluca Popescu: Ideas of Canadianness in Larissa Lai and Hiromi Goto
DAY 2 November 28 (Friday)
Venue: Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, Benda Kálmán College of Excellence
(1085 Budapest, Horánszky u. 26., Karácsony Sándor room (413) and Psychology Workshop room (106 and 107))
9:00 -10:30 Session 3/ Session 4
Session 3 (room: 107)
Éva Pataki: “My Komagata Maru”: Collective and Personal Memories of a Symbol of Exclusion in South Asian Canadian Literature
Pooja Gopal: Sikh Diaspora and Canadian Multiculturalism
Britta Olinder: Janice Kulyk Keefer — crossing physical, ethnocultural and emotional borders
Session 4 (room: 106)
Katarina Labudova: Food and Fashion: Canadian Identity in The Testaments
Lili Zách: Cookery Books and Culinary Identity in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island before 1945
Zsuzsanna Lénárt-Muszka: Bodies in Crisis: Neoliberal Health and Embodied Precarity in Shashi Bhat’s short stories
Monika Leferman: Representations of the Canadian Space in Timothy Findley’s Headhunter (1993) and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014)
10:30-10:45 Coffee Break
10:45-12:00 Session 5/ Session 6
Session 5 (room: 106)
Mária Palla: Indigenous Knowledge for Surviving the Apocalypse
Laura Suszta: The Symbol of Bloody Fall Massacre (1771): Narrative Disruption and the Burden of Representation in Samuel Hearne’s Account
Attila Takács: Re-membering Inuit Identity: A Cultural Memory Analysis of Zacharias Kunuk’s Trilogy and Tanya Tagaq’s Split Tooth
Rita Nándori: Symbols and Identities: Inuit in Canada
Session 6 (room: 107)
Éva Forintos: How the correlation between code choice and fluid identity is formed on social media platforms in Hungarian diaspora communities of Canada
Andrea Bölcskei and Judit Nagy: Place Names and Hungarian Identity: Prairie Settlements founded by Hungarians
Gábor Farkas: Soldiers from Hungarian Settlements During the First World War
12:00-13:15 Lunch break
13:15-14:45 Session 7 / Session 8
Session 7 (room: 106)
Don Sparling: What, who and why is “the Crown”?
Susan Siggelakis: Pretendians: How American federalism undercuts a Canadian tribe’s identity
Szilárd Szentgyörgyi: Canadian identity and Canadian-speaking characters on the screen
Victor Kennedy: Cowboys and Truckers in Canadian Country & Western Music
Session 8 (room: 107)
Szonja Greilinger: Uniquely Canadian Settings: Themes and Scenes Connected to Nature in Carleigh Baker’s Short Stories
Rasha Deirani: Hybridity as Estrangement: Reimagining Belonging in Yasmeen Haddad Loves Joanasi Maqaittik
Tudor Muresan: The Construction of the Canadian North in The Long Dark (2017)
14:45-15:00 Coffee break
15:00-16:00 Book launch and round-table discussion: „A túlélés művészete. Tanulmányok Margaret Atwoodról” (The Art of Survival. Essays about Margaret Atwood) (Karácsony Sándor room (413))
Moderator: Octavian More
Participants: Ákos Tóth, Katalin Kürtösi, János Kenyeres, Krisztina Kodó, Fruzsina Kovács
16:00-16:15: Closing