Retooling the Humanities: The Culture of Research in Canadian Universities

Edited by Daniel Coleman, and Smaro Kamboureli

Published by: The University of Alberta Press

Imprint: University of Alberta Press

Sales Date: 2011-02-08

Published: February 2011

Product Details

Imprint: University of Alberta Press

Page Count: 336 Pages

Dimensions: 6.00 x 9.00

336 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 x 0.80 in

Paperback

CA$54.99

ISBN: 9780888645418

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After finishing high school in Ethiopia, Daniel Coleman earned university degrees at the University of Regina and the University of Alberta. He now holds the Canada Research Chair in Critical Ethnicity and Race Study in the English department of McMaster University. Daniel Coleman is a leading researcher in the depiction of immigrant men in Canadian literature. He has won the John Charles Polanyi Prize for his study of how literary texts produce and reinforce categories of cultural identification such as gender, ethnicity and nationality. His critically acclaimed book, Masculine Migrations: Reading the Postcolonial Male in "New Canadian" Narratives, published in 1998 by University of Toronto Press, is considered the foundational Canadian work in the field. While being a bahir-zaff throughout his childhood brought Daniel Coleman the pain of never fully belonging, it also gave him the immeasurable benefits and insights of an intercultural life. Several of his essays on his missionary childhood have appeared in magazines and journals. "The Babies in the Colonial Washtub," included in a revised form in The Scent of the Eucalyptus, won a Silver Medal in the National Magazine Awards.

Smaro Kamboureli is a Professor and the Avie Bennett Chair in Canadian Literature in the Department of English at the University of Toronto. The author of On the Edge of Genre: The Contemporary Canadian Long Poem and Scandalous Bodies: Diasporic Literatures in English Canada, which won the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Canadian criticism, she is also the editor of the anthology Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Literature and Lee Maracle’s Memory Serves: Oratories, and the co-editor of many volumes, including (with Robert Zacharias) Shifting the Ground of Canadian Literary Studies and (with Christl Verduyn) Critical Collaborations: Indigeneity, Diaspora, and Ecology.

"Profit is a fine motivator, but it should never be the only motivator. Retooling the Humanities: The Culture of Research in Canadian Universities looks at what is propelling researches in Canadian universities today, hoping to bring Canada into the debate on the purpose of secondary education and its institution. An assortment of essays for those who want to see a better tomorrow for Canada's colleges and universities. Discussing everything ranging from bureaucracy to public relations and much more, "Retooling the Humanities" is a scholarly discussion on the future of Canada's research and education." Library Bookwatch, May 2011

"We've heard much about the modern corporate university....at stake are issues that extend beyond the quality of degrees to no less than intellectual freedom and the social valuation (and very definition) of knowledge itself. Enter Retooling the Humanities, in which 13 literary scholars reflect the 'the culture of research capitalism' currently directing the profession and study of the humanities.... As several contributors emphasize, basic science and any curiosity-driven field where knowledge can't be readily patented are at risk. But humanist research faces particular challenges. To this end, the book sets out not only to offer a critical analysis of the situation, 'but to explore the possibilities for "re-tooling" the humanities.... Retooling [the Humanities] seems geared to academics, administrators and policymakers...such in-house discussion is badly needed." Christine Wiesenthal, Alberta Views,

"Scholars of literature and other humanities from a number of Canadian universities explore how their professions are being impacted by the increasing pressure to attract external research funding from governments or corporations, and to produce knowledge that is directly applicable to the needs and priorities of the community at large - as identified chiefly by those very private and government funders. Chemists can make poison and biologists can make monsters, they say, but what does a poet have to sell? Their topics include taking it personally and politically, culture and knowledge as market commodities in humanities research, employing equity in post-secondary art institutes, re-imagining Roy Kiyooka's academic subjectivities, and whether the humanities need a new humanism." Book News Inc.

"Coleman's and Kamboureli's introduction gives a genealogy of changes in the university over the past century, stressing in particular the transformation of the implicit social contract that binds it to the nation-state and to other communities.. [T]he fact that the collection left this particular reader wanting more is surely a good thing: books like this encourage not simply passive consumption, but active participation, a making of new connections, and a renewed awareness of the problematics and possibilities in readers' own everyday academic practices of life." Philip Holden, Chimo

"[T]his collection will be of great interest to the academic community generally, especially to humanities scholars and indeed to all who believe that there are more ends to academic research, teaching and learning than the perpetuation of capitalism." Michael Cottrell, Topia, Oct. 19, 2012

"My own sense is that the value of humanities scholarship lies in the dialogue it engenders, and this provocative book will surely do just that. It puts a range of opinions into dialogue. It also gives voice both to the central question--Why study the humanities?--and to multiple variations of the inevitable answer: Because we must." Nathalie Cooke, Canadian Literatures 214, Autumn 2012