The Lucy Maud Montgomery Institute (LMMI) at the University of Prince Edward Island is hosting its 12^th biennial international and interdisciplinary four-day conference June 23 to 26. Much Montgomery criticism of the past several decades has regarded her work from a feminist and gender studies perspectives: L. M. Montgomery and Gender will reconsider and build upon those readings, exploring how formative and deterministic gender roles seem, and yet how mutable they may be.

“This year’s conference theme, L.M. Montgomery and Gender, will look back over more than a century of change to reassess how Montgomery both reinforced and challenged gender roles of her day and ours,” said Dr. Laura Robinson, LMMI Visiting Scholar, conference co-chair, and dean of arts at Royal Military College. “Moreover, we will also invite conference-goers to digitize their testimonies of how Montgomery’s works have influenced their lives, a topic that novelist Jane Urquhart will also discuss in her keynote address. It promises to be a very international, interdisciplinary, and engaging conference.”

Canada is quickly approaching the centenary of women’s suffrage in Manitoba (1916) and nationally (1918). The presentations and events of this conference will reconsider the role of gender in L. M. Montgomery’s work: her fiction, poetry, life writing, letters, photographs, scrapbooks, and the many adaptations and spinoffs in film, television, theatre, tourism, and social media.

“The L.M. Montgomery Institute at UPEI promotes research into, and informed celebration of, the life, works, culture, and influence of Montgomery,” said Dr. Philip Smith, professor of psychology and Committee Chair of LMMI. “We have a rich network of local, national, and international Montgomery scholars and enthusiasts.  This conference features presenters from nine countries. The conference welcomes both academics and community members, and anyone with an interest in Montgomery is encouraged to register.”

Conference keynote speakers:

Elizabeth Epperly, professor emerita, was the first student to register at the “new” University of Prince Edward Island in 1969.  A Victorian scholar and English professor from 1976-2006, she taught at UPEI for 22 years where she also served as founding chair of the L.M. Montgomery Institute and UPEI's fourth (and only female to date) president (1995-1998).  Originally from Virginia, Epperly became a citizen of Canada because of her love for L.M. Montgomery’s writing.   Dr. Epperly’s The Fragrance of Sweet-Grass was the first full-length critical study to address all of Montgomery’s novels.

Mavis Reimer is professor in the Department of English, and dean of graduate studies at the University of Winnipeg, where she also was Canada Research Chair in the Culture of Childhood and founding director of the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures. She is co-author with Perry Nodelman of the third edition of The Pleasures of Children’s Literature and editor of a collection of essays on Anne of Green Gables, entitled Such a Simple Little Tale.

Jane Urquhart is the author of internationally acclaimed and award-winning novels, including: The Whirlpool; Changing Heaven; Away; The Underpainter, winner of the Governor General’s Award; The Stone Carvers, which was a finalist for The Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award, and longlisted for the Booker Prize; A Map of Glass, a finalist for a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book; Sanctuary Line, and, most recently, The Night Stages. She is also the author of a collection of short fiction and four books of poetry, and published a biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery as part of Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians series.

Full details, including instructions on how to register, can be found at the conference website