Description
Book Synopsis Shifting the Ground of Canadian Literary Studies is a collection of interdisciplinary essays that examine the various contexts - political, social, and cultural - that have shaped the study of Canadian literature and the role it plays in our understanding of the Canadian nation-state. The essays are tied together as instances of critical practices that reveal the relations and exchanges that take place between the categories of the literary and the nation, as well as between the disciplinary sites of critical discourses and the porous boundaries of their methods. They are concerned with the material effects of the imperial and colonial logics that have fashioned Canada, as well as with the paradoxes, ironies, and contortions that abound in the general perception that Canada has progressed beyond its colonial construction.
Smaro Kamboureli's introduction demonstrates that these essays engage with the larger realm of human and social practices - throne speeches, book clubs, policies of accommodation of cultural and religious differences, Indigenous thought about justice and ethics - to show that literary and critical work is inextricably related to the Canadian polity in light of transnational and global forces.
Trade Review``Given the wide range of approaches and disciplines included in this volume, the index is particularly helpful in terms of orientation and contains not only major concepts and historical events related to Canadian studies, but also refers to important representatives of the Canadian literary scene. Moreover, each articles comes with an annotated section which, together with the overall bibliography, provides useful and interesting suggestions for further reading and discussion. The book's strengths certainly lie in the fact that it manages to emphasize the importance of the nation-state which, in spite of all cosmopolitan, global, and transnational developments at work, continues to serve as an important conceptual framework within the area of Canadian literary studies. Thus this volume is especially valuable for Canadian literary scholars and critics interested in the current debates centering on the nation with regard to (trans)national and global challenges.'' -- Felicitas Schweiker -- Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies, 25.2, September 2014
Table of Contents
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Shifting the Ground of Canadian Literary Studies, edited by Smaro Kamboureli and Robert Zacharias
- Preface Smaro Kamboureli and Robert Zacharias
- Introduction: Shifting the Ground of a Discipline: Emergence and Canadian Literary Studies in English Smaro Kamboureli
- National Literatures in the Shadow of Neoliberalism Jeff Derksen
- ""Beyond CanLit(e)"": Reading. Interdisciplinarity. Transatlantically. Danielle Fuller
- White Settlers and the Biopolitics of State Building in Canada Janine Brodie
- ""Some Great Crisis"": Vimy as Originary Violence Robert Zacharias
- Amplifying Threat: Reasonable Accommodations and Quebec's Bouchard-Taylor Commission Hearings (2007) Monika Kin Gagnon and Yasmin Jiwani
- The Time Has Come: Self and Community Articulations in Colour. An Issue and Awakening Thunder Larissa Lai
- Archivable Concepts: Talonbooks and Literary Translation Kathy Mezei
- Is CanLit Lost in Japanese Translation? Yoko Fujimoto
- The Cunning of Reconciliation: Reinventing White Civility in the ""Age of Apology"" Pauline Wakeham
- The Long March to ""Recognition"": Sákéj Henderson, First Nations Jurisprudence, and Sui Generis Solidarity Len Findlay
- bush/writing: embodied deconstruction, traces of community, and writing against the state in indigenous acts of inscription peter kulchyski
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Contributors
- Index
