The dismantling of “Understanding Canada”—an international program eliminated by Canada’s Conservative government in 2012—posed a tremendous potential setback for Canadianists. Yet Canadian writers continue to be celebrated globally by popular and academic audiences alike. Twenty scholars speak to the government’s diplomatic and economic about-face and its implications for representations of Canadian writing within and outside Canada’s borders. The contributors to this volume remind us of the obstacles facing transnational intellectual exchange, but also salute scholars’ persistence despite these obstacles. Beyond “Understanding Canada” is a timely, trenchant volume for students and scholars of Canadian literature and anyone seeking to understand how Canadian literature circulates in a transnational world.
Contributors:
Michael A. Bucknor, Daniel Coleman, Anne Collett, Pilar Cuder-Domínguez, Ana María Fraile-Marcos, Jeremy Haynes, Cristina Ivanovici, Milena Kaličanin, Smaro Kamboureli, Katalin Kürtösi, Vesna Lopičić, Belén Martín-Lucas, Claire Omhovère, Lucia Otrísalová, Don Sparling, Melissa Tanti, Christl Verduyn, Elizabeth Yeoman, Lorraine York
Melissa Tanti is a PhD candidate in English at McMaster University. Her area of specialization is contemporary women’s literature and feminist critical theory.
Jeremy Haynes is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University where he studies Canadian, Indigenous, and diasporic literatures with an interest in Indigenous methodologies.
Lorraine York, Senator William McMaster Chair in Canadian Literature and Culture in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, specializes in Canadian literary culture and celebrity studies.
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction xi
Jeremy Haynes, Melissa Tanti, Daniel Coleman, Lorraine York
i Contexts, Provocations, and Knowledge Territories
1 Beyond Understanding Canada
Belatedness and Canadian Literary Studies // Smaro Kamboureli
2 The Understanding Canada Program and
International Canadian Literary Studies // Christl Verduyn
3 Indigenous Writing in Indigenous Languages
Reconfiguring Canadian Literary Studies and Beyond // Elizabeth Yeoman
ii Roots and Routes
4 Canada in Black Transnational Studies
Austin Clarke, Affective Affiliations, and the Cross-Border Poetics of Caribbean Canadian Writing // Michael A. Bucknor
5 “Why Don’t You Write about Canada?”
Olive Senior’s Poetry, Everybody’s History, and the “Condition of Resonance” // Anne Collett
6 Canada and the Black Atlantic
Epistemologies, Frameworks, Texts // Pilar Cuder-Domínguez
iii Mapping Bodies, Place, and Time
7 “Off the Highway”
Margins, Centres, Modernisms // Katalin Kürtösi
8 Canadian Photography and the Exhaustion of Landscape // Claire Omhovère
9 Posthuman Affect in the Global Empire
Queer Speculative Fictions of Canada // Belén Martín-Lucas
iv Border Zones
10 Unexpected Dialogical Space in David Albahari’s Immigrant Writing // Vesna Lopi_ci´c and Milena Kali _canin
11 The Politics of Art and Affect in Michael Helm’s
Cities of Refuge // Ana María Fraile-Marcos
v Reading Publics
12 Canada through the Lens of the Communist Censor
The Translation of CanLit under an Authoritarian Regime // Lucia Otrísalová
13 Economies of Export
Translating Laurence, Atwood, and Munro in Eastern Europe (1960–1989) // Cristina Ivanovici
14 Canadian Literature and Canadian Studies in the Czech Republic // Don Sparling
Works Cited
Contributors
Index
