Canada is situated geographically, historically, and culturally between old empires (Great Britain and France) and a more recent one (the United States), as well as on the terrain of First Nations communities. Poised between historical and metaphorical empires and operating within the conditions of incomplete modernity and economic and cultural dependency, Canada has generated a body of cultural criticism and theory, which offers unique insights into the dynamics of both center and periphery. The reader brings together for the first time in one volume recent writing in Canadian cultural studies and work by significant Canadian cultural analysts of the postwar era.
Including essays by anglophone, francophone, and First Nations writers, the reader is divided into three parts, the first of which features essays by scholars who helped set the agenda for cultural and social analysis in Canada and remain important to contemporary intellectual formations: Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, and Anthony Wilden in communications theory; Northrop Frye in literary studies; George Grant and Harold Innis in a left-nationalist tradition of critical political economy; Fernand Dumont and Paul-Émile Borduas in Quebecois national and political culture; and Harold Cardinal in native studies.
The volume’s second section showcases work in which contemporary authors address Canada’s problematic and incomplete nationalism; race, difference, and multiculturalism; and modernity and contemporary culture. The final section includes excerpts from federal policy documents that are especially important to Canadians’ conceptions of their social, political, and cultural circumstances. The reader opens with a foreword by Fredric Jameson and concludes with an afterword in which the Quebecois scholar Yves Laberge explores the differences between English-Canadian cultural studies and the prevailing forms of cultural analysis in francophone Canada.
Contributors. Ian Angus, Himani Bannerji, Jody Berland, Paul-Émile Borduas, Harold Cardinal, Maurice Charland, Stephen Crocker, Ioan Davies, Fernand Dumont, Kristina Fagan, Gail Faurschou, Len Findlay, Northrop Frye, George Grant, Rick Gruneau, Harold Innis, Fredric Jameson, Yves Laberge, Jocelyn Létourneau, Eva Mackey, Lee Maracle, Marshall McLuhan, Katharyne Mitchell, Sourayan Mookerjea, Kevin Pask, Rob Shields, Will Straw, Imre Szeman, Serra Tinic, David Whitson, Tony Wilden
Canadian Cultural Studies: A Reader
Sourayan Mookerjea, Imre Szeman, and Gail Faurschou
Foreword by Fredric Jameson
608 pages (May 2009)
Sourayan Mookerjea, Imre Szeman, and Gail Faurschou
Foreword by Fredric Jameson
608 pages (May 2009)
Cloth - $99.95 | 0-8223-4398-3 |
| [ISBN13 978-0-8223-4398-1] | |
Paperback - $32.95 | 0-8223-4416-5 |
| [ISBN13 978-0-8223-4416-2] | |
“Canadian Cultural Studies is a brilliant study and appropriation of some of the most important issues that have been central to the history of cultural studies. But there is more at work in this book than appropriation; Canadian Cultural Studies rewrites that legacy and establishes Canada as a society in which cultural studies as a theoretical discourse and practice is being played out in ways that make this book indispensable to understanding what cultural studies has become and where it might be going in the future. This is an extraordinary book for anyone interested in cultural studies and the importance of Canada in rewriting and applying some of its most fundamental assumptions.”—Henry A. Giroux, author of Youth in a Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability?“For those familiar with cultural studies in Canada, this reader offers a necessary and illuminating consolidation of key texts. For newer eyes, there is fresh inspiration. Expertly selected and organized, the material assembled here is a gilded invitation to explore this rich field of interdisciplinary and politically engaged cultural analysis. Canadian Cultural Studies: A Reader is a vital contribution to contemporary currents in the study of globalization, nationhood, and identity.”—Charles R. Acland, author of Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes, and Global Culture
Sourayan Mookerjea is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Alberta and the author of Crisis and Catachresis: Pedagogy at the Limits of Identity Politics. Imre Szeman is the Senator McMaster Chair of Globalization and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, and the author of Zones of Instability: Literature, Postcolonialism and the Nation. Gail Faurschou is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Alberta. Fredric Jameson is William A. Lane, Jr., Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University.
Related subjects:
Cultural Studies
American Studies
Postcolonial Studies