CanLit 220: Tracking CanLit
Canadian Literature’s Issue 220 (Spring 2014), Tracking CanLit, is now available for order. Acting Editor Laura Moss opens the issue by investigating the applications, roles, and influences of numbers in contemporary literary cultures:
Why is the turn to numbers noteworthy? The diverse sets of data I mention here illustrate the paradox at the intersection of audit and literary cultures. On the one hand, as part of the increasing corporatization of everything in these neoliberal times, people turn to numbers for proof of productivity and the value that can be monitored and measured annually. … On the other hand, people have turned to statistics to strategically bolster support for issues of social justice and as ammunition for important cultural work. If information is power, there is a will to count.
—Laura Moss, Auditing, Counting, and Tracking CanLit
Tracking CanLit contains articles by Jody Mason; Michael Ross and Lorraine York; Roshaya Rodness; Petra Fachinger; Andrea Medovarski; and Rachel Bryant, and additional notes by Alexander Pettit and Dennis Duffy. This issue also features new work by Canadian poets Brian Cullen, Michael Prior, Cyril Dabydeen, Steve Noyes, and Alex Robichaud and a collection of book reviews.