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Canadian Literature and Cultural Memory
Critics argue that contemporary western societies are immersed in a "culture of memory," devoting resources to national histories and heritage, commemoration, public re-enactments, etc. We use these recollections of our national past to maintain a collective identity in the present, among other uses. These essays, edited by Cynthia Sugars and Eleanor Ty, explore how Canadian literature draws on aspects of cultural memory, past and future.

Exploring memory as a "vector of signification" involves a wide range of topics such concepts of as heritage, antiquity, nostalgia, elegy, ancestry, haunting, trauma, affect, aging, authenticity, commemoration, public history. Contributors to this collection consider literary treatments of both mainstream and alternative uses of cultural memory, past and contemporary, urban and rural. From well-known writers like Alice Munro, Al Purdy and Dionne Brand to recreations of Aboriginal pasts and less common topics like food and Mennonites, there is wide representation of Canada's literary diversity. And equally representative is the collection's historical spread, ranging across early explorer narratives to contemporary works. The collection digs into some of the darker moments in our past (immigrant experiences, recollections of interned Japanese-Canadians in World War 2, and memories of Native children in residential schools). The sheer ambition of this collection suggests the multifaceted ways that Canada's past is part of our collective cultural memory now. A four-page colour insert - including Seth cartoons as well as unique, little known photography - provides a compelling visual context for the collection's treatment of the complex, multifaceted character of cultural memory in Canada.

The collection is divided into five parts (amnesia, postmemory, recovery work, trauma, and globalization), all areas of research in the emerging field of cultural memory. These thought-provoking essays reflect the many ways the past infuses the present, and the present adapts the past. Students and scholars will find this rich collection useful in upper-level courses in Canadian literature as well as in cultural studies.
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Canadian Literature and Cultural Memory
Critics argue that contemporary western societies are immersed in a "culture of memory," devoting resources to national histories and heritage, commemoration, public re-enactments, etc. We use these recollections of our national past to maintain a collective identity in the present, among other uses. These essays, edited by Cynthia Sugars and Eleanor Ty, explore how Canadian literature draws on aspects of cultural memory, past and future.

Exploring memory as a "vector of signification" involves a wide range of topics such concepts of as heritage, antiquity, nostalgia, elegy, ancestry, haunting, trauma, affect, aging, authenticity, commemoration, public history. Contributors to this collection consider literary treatments of both mainstream and alternative uses of cultural memory, past and contemporary, urban and rural. From well-known writers like Alice Munro, Al Purdy and Dionne Brand to recreations of Aboriginal pasts and less common topics like food and Mennonites, there is wide representation of Canada's literary diversity. And equally representative is the collection's historical spread, ranging across early explorer narratives to contemporary works. The collection digs into some of the darker moments in our past (immigrant experiences, recollections of interned Japanese-Canadians in World War 2, and memories of Native children in residential schools). The sheer ambition of this collection suggests the multifaceted ways that Canada's past is part of our collective cultural memory now. A four-page colour insert - including Seth cartoons as well as unique, little known photography - provides a compelling visual context for the collection's treatment of the complex, multifaceted character of cultural memory in Canada.

The collection is divided into five parts (amnesia, postmemory, recovery work, trauma, and globalization), all areas of research in the emerging field of cultural memory. These thought-provoking essays reflect the many ways the past infuses the present, and the present adapts the past. Students and scholars will find this rich collection useful in upper-level courses in Canadian literature as well as in cultural studies.
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Canadian Literature and Cultural Memory

Canadian Literature and Cultural Memory

by Cynthia Sugars, Eleanor Ty
Canadian Literature and Cultural Memory

Canadian Literature and Cultural Memory

by Cynthia Sugars, Eleanor Ty

Overview

Critics argue that contemporary western societies are immersed in a "culture of memory," devoting resources to national histories and heritage, commemoration, public re-enactments, etc. We use these recollections of our national past to maintain a collective identity in the present, among other uses. These essays, edited by Cynthia Sugars and Eleanor Ty, explore how Canadian literature draws on aspects of cultural memory, past and future.

Exploring memory as a "vector of signification" involves a wide range of topics such concepts of as heritage, antiquity, nostalgia, elegy, ancestry, haunting, trauma, affect, aging, authenticity, commemoration, public history. Contributors to this collection consider literary treatments of both mainstream and alternative uses of cultural memory, past and contemporary, urban and rural. From well-known writers like Alice Munro, Al Purdy and Dionne Brand to recreations of Aboriginal pasts and less common topics like food and Mennonites, there is wide representation of Canada's literary diversity. And equally representative is the collection's historical spread, ranging across early explorer narratives to contemporary works. The collection digs into some of the darker moments in our past (immigrant experiences, recollections of interned Japanese-Canadians in World War 2, and memories of Native children in residential schools). The sheer ambition of this collection suggests the multifaceted ways that Canada's past is part of our collective cultural memory now. A four-page colour insert - including Seth cartoons as well as unique, little known photography - provides a compelling visual context for the collection's treatment of the complex, multifaceted character of cultural memory in Canada.

The collection is divided into five parts (amnesia, postmemory, recovery work, trauma, and globalization), all areas of research in the emerging field of cultural memory. These thought-provoking essays reflect the many ways the past infuses the present, and the present adapts the past. Students and scholars will find this rich collection useful in upper-level courses in Canadian literature as well as in cultural studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780199007592
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 09/14/2014
Series: Themes in Canadian Sociology
Pages: 512
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Cynthia Sugars is Professor in the Department of Literature, University of Ottawa. Her research and teaching focus on the links between national identities and cultural narratives, in the broad range of ways that Canadians, past and present, make sense of themselves as members of a national community that is shaped by a multiplicity of contending perspectives.

Eleanor Ty is Professor in the Department of English, Wilfrid Laurier University. She works on Asian North American Literature and Film and on Eighteenth Century British Literature.

Table of Contents

IntroductionThinking Beyond Nostalgia: Canadian Literature and Cultural Memory, Cynthia Sugars and Eleanor TyPART I: Sites of Memory: Cultural Amnesia and the Demands of PlaceGlobalization and Cultural Memory: Perspectives from the Periphery on the Post-National Disassembly of Place, Tony TremblayPutting Things in Their Place: The Syncrude Gallery of Aboriginal Culture and the Idiom of Majority History, Kimberly MairLieux d'oubli: The Forgotten North of Canadian Literature, Renee HulanDesign and Disappearance: Visual Nostalgias and the Canadian Company Town, Candida RifkindPreserving "the echoing rooms of yesterday": Al Purdy's A-frame and the Place of Writers' Houses in Canada, Brooke PrattPART II: Memory Transference: Postmemory, Re-Memory, and ForgettingLearning Sauerkraut: Ethnic Food, Cultural Memory, and Traces of Mennonite Identity in Alayna Munce's When I Was Young and In My Prime, Robert Zacharias"Their Dark Cells": Transference, Memory, and Postmemory in John Mighton's Half Life, Marlene GoldmanRemembering Poverty: Bannock, Beans, and Black Tea, a Tale of Two Lives, Linda WarleyPostmemory and Canadian Poetry of the 1970s, J.A. Weingarten"Exhibit me buckskinned": Indigenous Legacy and Rememory in Joan Crate's Pale as Real Ladies: Poems for Pauline Johnson, Tanis MacdonaldScrapbooking: Memory and Memorabilia in Gail Anderson-Dargatz's The Cure for Death by Lightning and Turtle Valley, Cynthia SugarsPart III: Re-Membering History: Memory Work as RecoveryEthnography, Law, and Aboriginal Memory: Collecting and Recollecting Gitxsan Histories in Canada, Marc FortinBetween Elegy and Taxidermy: Archibald Lampman's Golden Lady's Slippers, Peter HodginsUnder Other Skies: Personal and Cultural Memory in E. Pauline Johnson's Nature Lyrics and Memorial Odes, Jess Archibald-BarberIndigenous Diasporas and the Shape of Cultural Memory: Reframing Anahareo's Devil in Deerskins, Sophie McCallYours to Recover: Mound Burial in Alice Munro's "What Do You Want to Know For?", Shelley HulanRomancing Canada in Best-Sellerdom: The Case of Quebec's Disappearance, Dennis DuffyCollective Memory, Cultural Transmission, and the Occupation(s) of Quebec: Jean Provencher and Gilles Lachance's Quebec, Printemps 1918, Marissa McHughPART IV: The Compulsion to Remember: Trauma and WitnessingUnder Surveillance: Memory, Trauma and Genocide in Madeleine Thien's Dogs at the Perimeter, Robyn Morris"I didn't want to tell a story like this": Cultural Inheritance and the Second Generation in David Chariandy's Soucouyant, Farah MoosaConfronting the Legacy of Canada's Indian Residential School System: Cree Cultural Memory and the Warrior Spirit in David Alexander Robertson and Scott B. Henderson's 7 Generations Series, Doris WolfRecovering Pedagogical Space: Trauma, Education, and The Lesser Blessed, Robyn GreenPART V: Cultural Memory in a Globalized Age"I have nothing soothing to tell you": Dionne Brand's Inventory as Global Elegy, Alexis MotuzNow and Then: Dionne Brand's What We All Long For, the Desire to Forget, and the Urban Archive, Joel BaetzHaunted/Wanted in Jen Sookfong Lee's The End of East: Canada's Cultural Memory Beyond Nostalgia, Eva Darias-BeautellRethinking Postcolonialism and Canadian Literature through Diasporic Memory: Reading Helen Humphrey's Afterimage, Jennifer AndrewsTransnational Memory and Haunted Black Geographies: Esi Edugyan's The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, Pilar Cuder-Dominguez
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