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More than an ancient means of transportation and trade, the canoe has come to be a symbol of Canada itself. In Canoe Nation, Bruce Erickson argues that the canoe’s sentimental power has come about through a set of narratives that attempt to legitimize a particular vision of Canada that overvalues the nation’s connection to nature. From Alexander Mackenzie to Grey Owl to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the canoe authenticates Canada’s reputation as a tolerant, environmentalist nation, even when there is abundant evidence to the contrary. Ultimately, the stories we tell about the canoe need to be understood as moments in the ever-contested field of cultural politics.
The 1867 Canadian confederation brought with it expectations of a national literature, which a rising class of local printers hoped to supply. Reforming copyright law in the imperial context proved impossible, and Canada became a prime market for foreign publishers instead. The subsequent development of the agency system of exclusive publisher-importers became a defining feature of Canadian trade publishing for most of the twentieth century. In Dominion and Agency, Eli MacLaren analyses the struggle for copyright reform and the creation of a national literature using previously ignored archival sources such as the Board of Trade Papers at the National Archives of the United Kingdom. A groundbreaking study, Dominion and Agency is an important exploration of the legal and economic structures that were instrumental in the formation of today's Canadian literary culture.
Culture, Identity, Commodity is a pioneering work focused on diasporic Chinese literary production in English. It provides broad-ranging, critically-engaged textual analyses that address the dynamic area of diasporic Chinese literary studies from American, Australian, and Canadian perspectives. The innovative research in this collection comes from established and emerging scholars who draw on threads of transnational, postcolonial, globalization, and racialization theories to engage with a broad range of texts including novels, autobiographies, plays and Chinese cooking shows. In so doing, the authors examine issues of cultural and racial identity, the politics of Chinese-ness and the commod...
Bertram Brooker won the country's first Governor General's Award for literature in 1936 for his novel Think of the Earth, and his explosive, experimental paintings hang in every major gallery in the country. He was Canada's first multidisciplinary avantgardist, successfully experimenting in literature, visual arts, film, and theatre. Brooker brought all of his experimental ambitions to his short fiction and prose. The Wrong World presents a rich sampling of his prose work, much of it previously unpublished, which adds new insight into his aesthetic ambitions. Working during an incredible period of transition in Canadian society, Brooker's stories document Canada's evolution from a provincial...
Auto/biography in Canada: Critical Directions widens the field of auto/biography studies with its sophisticated multidisciplinary perspectives on the theory, criticism, and practice of self, community, and representation. Rather than considering autobiography and biography as discrete genres with definable properties, and rather than focusing on critical approaches, the essays explore auto/biography as a discourse about identity and representation in the context of numerous disciplinary shifts. Auto/biography in Canada looks at how life narratives are made in Canada . Originating from literary studies, history, and social work, the essays in this collection cover topics that range from queer...
This anthology brings together, for the first time, the complete published works of Jewish Canadian poet Miriam Waddington and features a rare selection of previously unpublished poems.
Canadian literature, and specifically the teaching of Canadian literature, has emerged from a colonial duty to a nationalist enterprise and into the current territory of postcolonialism. From practical discussions related to specific texts, to more theoretical discussions about pedagogical practice regarding issues of nationalism and identity, Home-Work constitutes a major investigation and reassessment of the influence of postcolonial theory on Canadian literary pedagogy from some of the top scholars in the field.
In this carefully curated collection of essays, editors Jamie Dopp and Angie Abdou go beyond their first collection, Writing the Body in Motion, to engage with the meaning of sport found in Canadian sport literature. How does “sport” differ from physically risky recreational activities that require strength and skill? Does sport demand that someone win? At what point does a sport become an art? With the aim of prompting reflections on and discussions of the boundaries of sport, contributors explore how literature engages with sport as a metaphor, as a language, and as bodily expression. Instead of a focus on what is often described as Canada’s national pastime, contributors examine sports in Canadian literature that are decidedly not hockey. From skateboarding and parkour to fly fishing and curling, these essays engage with Canadian histories and broader societal understandings through sports on the margin. Interspersed with original reflections by iconic Canadian literary figures such as Steven Heighton, Aritha Van Herk, Thomas Wharton, and Timothy Taylor, this volume is fresh and intriguing and offers new ways of reading the body.
Loney takes issue with popular attitudes toward race and gender, whereby to be born a woman or a member of a visible minority is to enter life at a disadvantage and therefore be entitled to compensatory provision. Arguing that social class not group membership determines life chances, he refutes the claims of those who detect systemic prejudice and discrimination and reap considerable public subsidy in return. From the release of the Abella report to the present, Loney sets the growth of federal involvement in preferential hiring in the context of a growing industry whose success depends on the constant affirmation of group grievance based on gender or race. He argues that preferential hirin...