Relations internationales



C09(a) - Roundtable: International Relations in Canada: Understanding the Field

Date: Jun 13 | Heure: 08:30am to 10:00am | Salle: UQAM, Pavillon des sciences de la gestion (R), 315 Sainte-Catherine Street E., room/local R-3540

Chair/Président/Présidente : Michael Murphy (Queen's University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Michael Murphy (Queen's University)

Veronica Kitchen (University of Waterloo)
Stéfanie von Hlatky (Queen's University)
Marshall Beier (McMaster University)
David Mutimer (York University)
Anne-Marie D'Aoust (UQAM)
Jérémie Cornut (Simon Fraser University)

Abstract: 2025 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of THB Symons’ landmark report To Know Ourselves, which evaluated the status of “Canadian Studies” in institutions of higher learning across Canada. Symons wrote critically of the field of international relations as it existed in the early 1970s, summarizing it as a meagre field dominated by non-Canadian-trained scholars researching non-Canadian topics and teaching non-Canadian texts. In response to Symons at the report’s quarter-century, Kim Richard Nossal argues that the late twentieth century saw a rapid development of international relations in Canada. Significantly, while distinct from American international relations, this shift to a “home-grown IR” was too methodologically and theoretically diverse to uncritically accept Symons’ challenge. Especially given the large role of critical, postmodern, feminist, and international political economy approaches, Canada’s “home-grown IR” was not the nationalist project envisioned by To Know Ourselves. With the perspective of nearly a half-century, the purpose of this roundtable is to capture a range of perspectives on international relations in Canada, both in terms of what the field covers and what the field is.