2025-26 F. E. L. Priestley Memorial Lectures in the History of Ideas
Tomorrow Is a Dream: Nisga'a Futurity and Anti-Colonial Poetics
Tuesday, November 11, 4:30-6:00 p.m., In person and online
Wednesday, November 12, 4:30-6:00 p.m., In person (followed by a reception)
Thursday, November 13, 4:30-6:00 p.m., In person and online
Multiple Rooms
15 King’s College Circle, Toronto, ON
M5S 3H7
*Registration is required to view these lectures and seating is limited for in-person attendance. For in-person registrations, registering for one lecture will not grant a seat at the other lectures. Please submit an individual registration form for each guest who plans to attend, and be sure to register for every day/lecture of interest.
In the 2025-26 Priestley lectures, Nisga'a writer and University of Alberta Associate Professor Jordan Abel will explore the key idea of public domain as landform and address the question of Indigenous knowledge transmission in concrete poetry and nonfiction. In two separate lectures and a discussion with David Chariandy, the Avie Bennett Chair in Canadian Literature, he will draw upon the contents of his 2014 book Un/inhabited, his memoir NISHGA (2021; 2025) and his forthcoming book Dad Era to explore these themes.
Presented by
Jordan Abel
Associate Professor
English & Film Studies Department
University of Alberta
About the Speaker
Jordan Abel is a queer Nisga’a writer from Vancouver. He is the author of The Place of Scraps (winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Un/inhabited, and Injun (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize). NISHGA won both the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres award, and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction, and the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize. Abel’s latest work–a novel titled Empty Spaces– was published by McClelland & Stewart and Yale University Press, and was the winner of the Governor General’s Award for fiction as well as the winner of a Banff Mountain Book Award. Abel completed a Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University in 2019, and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta where he teaches Indigenous Literatures, Research-Creation, and Creative Writing.
Register for Virtual Attendance
To attend Day 1 and 3 of these lectures virtually, please click the link below. Day 2 is in-person only. A recurring webinar link will be sent to the email listed on the registration. Only one registration is needed to view the two lectures virtually. Please submit a different registration under the name of each person who plans to attend.
To attend these lectures in person, please scroll down to the specific sections you would like to attend.
Lecture 1: Red Research-Creation and the Textual Contours of Land
Tuesday, November 11, 4:30 - 6:00 p.m.
Paul Cadario Conference Centre
In person and online
In his 2014 book Un/inhabited, Jordan Abel asks how he might understand the public domain as a landform, how he might exist in relation to land/text, and how that land/text might be shaped and terraformed by poetic procedures. In 2023 he returned to the other side of those questions in Empty Spaces: how have texts shaped his understandings of land, how texts have informed his understandings of Nisga’a territory, and how he–as someone dispossessed from his home territory–writes towards understanding land that he doesn’t have a physical or geographical connection to? In this talk, he’ll attempt to trace the lineage of these questions and to draw these threads together through Red Research-Creation.
In-person registrations for Day 1 are now closed. A limited number of walk-in seats will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Lecture 2: Jordan Abel and David Chariandy in Conversation
Wednesday, November 12, 4:30 - 6:00 p.m.
Clark Reading Room (followed by a reception)
In person
In 2021, Jordan Abel published NISHGA (M&S 2021), an autobiographical mediation on contemporary Indigenous life and the ongoing legacies of the residential school system. In 2025 NISHGA was re-issued, as part of the Kanata Classics Edition (Penguin), with a new foreword by David Chariandy, the Avie Bennet Chair in Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. At this event, Jordan and David will join together in dialogue to discuss their works.
In-person registrations for Day 2 are now closed. A limited number of walk-in seats will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Professor David Chariandy is the Avie Bennett Chair in Canadian Literature and an award-winning author (Soucouyant: A Novel of Forgetting, 2007; Brother, 2017; and I've Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter, 2018). His books have been widely discussed, translated into a dozen languages, and awarded the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Toronto Book Prize, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. As a critic, he has contributed substantially to the field of Black Canadian literature through articles, book chapters, publishing initiatives, and co-edited special issues of journals. He is a member of the editorial board of Brick: A literary journal and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Division of Arts
Lecture 3: Indigenous Knowledge Transmission Through Concrete Poetry
Thursday, November 13, 4:30 - 6:00 p.m.
Paul Cadario Conference Centre
In person and online
In his forthcoming book Dad Era (Coach House 2026), Jordan Abel brings together concrete poetry and nonfiction to continue to address the questions of Indigenous knowledge transmission that he started in NISHGA (M&S 2021). Shortly after he became a father, he began to feel as though his relationship to his work–especially NISHGA–had changed substantively, and that his engagements with intergenerational trauma, urban Indigeneity, and the problematic aspects of nationalism had all taken on new dimensions since his daughter Phoenix was born. In this artist talk, Abel will share new work from Dad Era and will also attempt to address how this work expands on and returns to the concrete poetry in NISHGA.
In-person registrations for Day 3 are now closed. A limited number of walk-in seats will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.
The F.E.L. Priestley Lectures in the History of Ideas have been funded by a number of professor Priestley's former students. The F.E.L. Priestley Lectures reflect professor Priestley's broad interest in the history of ideas and his dedication to teaching and scholarship. Learn more about our Endowed Public Lectures.