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International symposium on the season of winter in literature and visual arts
Co-organized by the University of Umeå and the Université du Québec à Montréal at the University of Umeå (Sweden)
Call: until July 15th, 2025
Conference: September 22nd and 23rd, 2025
Of all the characteristics of the images of the North, winter is one of the most decisive: it induces a cyclical temporality, a metamorphosis of landscapes, a retreat into the interior, but also, as sociologist Martin de la Soudière (1987) has shown, a differentiated sociality between those who experience it. According to historian François Walter (2014), the beginning and end of this season have for centuries served as historical, even spiritual, markers for defining time and relationships. For Louis-Edmond Hamelin (2006), ”seasonal nordicity” temporarily replicates Arctic conditions in a temperate zone: for a few months, a few weeks or even a few hours, Paris, New York or Tokyo are transformed by a whiteness that makes surfaces more slippery, reduces visibility, puts technical equipment to the test, transforms social discourse and brings about a slowdown of the world - as the poet Rina Lasnier (1966) aptly puts it.
Winter - the state of winter, or winterity, whose declinations to literature, culture and visual arts in the broadest sense are clear - links up with universal images: that of the interior and the exterior, of hardship and identity, of heat and cold. Winterity is thus central to all the cultures that live through the founding experience of the cold (which forces people to withdraw inside, isolate and insulate themselves) and that live through the cycle of the seasons. Social and cultural behaviours alternate between a warm season, often linked to abundance, social gatherings and, for young people, holidays, and a cold season, experienced as an ordeal, a famine, an internal struggle against the cold and the elements
The symposium will gather researchers interested in exploring the depiction and function of the season of winter in literature and the visual arts. Of interest is how the agency of winter is portrayed and/or negotiated, and what associations are put into play. Notions of cyclicality—or the time-component more broadly— and how this cyclicality is interrupted or undone by climate change are important components of contemporary works. Although the focus of the symposium is not limited to winter in northern areas, it is in these that material changes are the most noticeable: winter features explicitly disappear in the North. Local landscapes are important in discussions about solastalgia: the sense of loss and disorientation caused by environmental degradation.
Program
Monday September 22nd and Tuesday 23rd, 2025
University of Umeå (Sweden)
22 September
HumF.232
University of Umeå
12.00-13.00 Lunch
13.15-13.45 Heidi Hansson
Umeå University (Sweden)
“Feelgood Fiction and Winter as Hyper-Reality”
13.45-14.15 Malin Isaksson
Umeå University (Sweden)
“Winter as Character in Le dernier Lapon [Forty days without shadow] (2012) by
Olivier Truc”
14.15-14.45 Elena Lindholm
Umeå University (Sweden)
“Boreal Winter as Escapist Fantasy in Latin American Literature”
Coffee
15.15-15.45 Alexis Metzger
École de la nature et du paysage (France)
“Painting Winter (17th–19th Centuries): An Interpretation by a Geographer-Climatologist”
15.45-16.15 Lennart Pettersson
Umeå University (Sweden)
“Some Aspects of the Meanings of Snow in Visual Arts”
16.15-16.45 Eang-Nay Theam
Collège de Maisonneuve, Québec (Canada)
“Representations of Winter in Women's Stories of Immigration to Québec”
18.30 Dinner
23 September
HumF232
University of Umeå (Sweden)
9.15-9.45 Jan Borm
Université de Versailles—Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (France)
“To be Subject to the Winter in Labrador: Two Missionary Accounts from the 19th and early 20th Century in Comparison”
9.45-10.15 Maria Lindgren Leavenworth
Umeå University (Sweden)
“The Snow Child in Winter”
Coffee
10.45-11.15 Riikka Rossi
University of Helsinki (Finland)
“Winter Moods: Perspectives from Finnish Literature”
11.15-11.45 Claude Hauser
Université de Fribourg (Switzerland)
“Winterity and Verticality: Crossroads. From the Conquered and Sublime Peaks to the New Sensibilities of a Winter Mountain“
Followed by a collaboration meeting.
For full program and abstracts, see the document on the right of this page.
Call for papers
The exploratory symposium will lay the foundation for an anthology project with participating researchers.
The presentations, lasting 20 minutes, must be made in English. Proposals will be received until July 15th, 2025, by email to: imaginairedunord@uqam.ca. They should include the title of the presentation, a description of 10 to 20 lines, the name of the speaker, and his or her institutional affiliation and status. A response will be given before July 25th, 2025. Travel and accommodation costs must be covered by the participants. The symposium will open for online participation (Zoom).
Heidi Hansson (University of Umeå), Malin Isaksson (University of Umeå), Maria Lindgren Leavenworth (University of Umeå) and Daniel Chartier (Université du Québec à Montréal) form the symposium committee.
The conference is co-organized by the University of Umeå and the International Laboratory for Research on Images of the North, Winter and the Arctic at the Université du Québec à Montréal, in cooperation with the Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la littérature et la culture au Québec (the CRILCQ).
We thank the Nordic Council of Ministers, the Ministère québécois des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie, and the UArctic Chair on Images, Perceptions and Mediations of the Arctic for their support.
You can download the Call for papers on the right of this page.
You can download the Program with abstracts on the right of this page.