Canadian literature is replete with texts that depict the myriad cultural forms and traditions that shape the lives of individual Canadians and, by extension, the Canadian society they comprise. Indeed, representation of the contrasting cultural forces specific to Canadians as individuals, and their society as a whole, is a significant marker of the very “Canadianness” of Canadian literature. Depiction of the culture influences that determine individual and societal identity are central to the Canadian literary project. Canada’s is a literature of hybridity.
As a (post-) colonial society founded within previously inhabited aboriginal territory and subsequently marked by successive waves of immigration, the sources of cultural genealogy in Canada are many. Traditionally, these been conceived in collective categories of ethnicity, nationality, religion, language community and so on. More recently—partly as a result of literary probings into the very understanding of cultural identity—the categories of cultural belonging have been expanded to include the influences derived from personal choice and affiliation: these include gender/sexuality, education, economic status, political beliefs and so on. Canadian literature reveals that, in the lives of Canadians and their society, it is rarely one cultural association or affiliation that shapes identity, but a mixture, a crossing of influences. Canadian literature—like Canadian society—is transcultural.
In this HS, we will examine several recent literary expression of transculturality. The course will not provide a totalising review of transculturality; nonetheless, the texts for the course have been specifically chosen with a view to discussing prominent points of cultural contact within and across Canada. In studying several of the most influential sites of cultural intersection as they are depicted in the works under discussion, we will note the various ways that these texts both question and confirm—at the level of the individual and of society—the abiding relevance of categories of cultural identification and how they reveal transculturality as the inevitable condition of Canadians and Canadian society.
Examination of each of the 5 core texts (below) will be accompanied by discussion of supplementary material related to the particular expression of interculturality and hybridity raised by the text (bibliography of required supplementary reading to be provided at a later date).
The course will be arranged as a block seminar presented over the course of a month beginning in the second week of June 2013 (tentative schedule).
Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill (1996)
Ackerman, Marianne. Jump (2000)
Robinson, Eden. Monkey Beach (2000)
Grekul, Lisa. Kalyna’s Song (2003)
Brand, Dionne. What We All Long For (2005)
N.B. Course Requirements: Presentation on a text of their choice
Final paper |
