Articles

Abstract: "Listening to the Readers of 'Canada Reads'" examines the reading practices promoted on-air by the CBC radio One series "Canada Reads,â? those adopted by readers participating through book group discussions and on-line bulletin boards, and those of academic commentators (in print, online, in/outside the classroom). Redefining "response"? as "use," this essay attempts to steer a course between the hermeneutic and affective definitions of reading favoured by reader-response theorists (e.g. Murray; Price). I argue that, on-air, "Canada Reads"? frequently favours interpretive practices shaped by canonical aesthetics and formalist hermeneutics. However, off-air readers exhibit both resistance to and conformity with the on-air reading practices, while negotiating with the codes of various media. Further, between the first and fourth series of "Canada Reads"? (2002-2005), there was a gradual shift on-air towards the vernacular reading practices and social dynamics common in many face-to-face book groups. If popular reading cultures and media formats are re-shaping the use of Canadian literature, literary scholars should be taking those cultural formations seriously. Therefore, this essay highlights some of the lessons to be learned from listening to non-professional readers engaging with the "game"? of "Canada Reads"? as a means of contributing towards a "re-thinking"? of Canadian literary studies and its possible futures.

Abstract: I once asked a Nova Scotian why his country was destitute of poets. “Poetsl” he exclaimed, laughingly, “don’t talk of ...

Abstract: ?lo AFICIONADOS it is no news that about twenty Little Maga- loi zines are now being published in Canada. Other ...

Abstract: SEVERAL YEARS AGO, the Unitarian Church of Vancouver invited me to participate in its Third Annual Dorothy Pascal Festival of ...

Abstract: THERE SEEM TO BE SO MANY happy jointures possible between literature and the ?m?a?ss media: style, content, modalities, audiences. The ...

Abstract: Part 2 of "Thinking Together: A Forum on Jo-Ann Episkenew’s Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing."

The original live forum on Jo-Ann Episkenew’s Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing brought together the author of only the second monograph by an Indigenous literary critic in Canada with three critics, who discussed her recently published work in front of members of the Canadian Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (CACLALS) and the Association of Bibliotherapy and Applied Literatures (IABAL). Following the live event, the panelists submitted written versions of their contributions to the convenors of the forum, allowing all centrally involved to reflect further on the thoughts of the other panelists and of those in the audience who offered further ideas.

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Abstract:

Cet article pose la question des rapports entre le modernisme et la « vieille gauche » au Québec au cours de la première moitié du XXe siècle en passant en revue un certain nombre d’écrivains considérés aujourd’hui comme des pionniers du modernisme : les « exotiques » (Paul Morin, René Chopin, Guillaume Lahaise et Marcel Dugas), Louis Dantin, quelques écrivains des années trente, les Automatistes et, finalement, Jacques Ferron. S’il reste beaucoup de recherches à faire dans ce domaine, car les renseignements manquent souvent à ce sujet – sans doute à cause de l’opprobre qui pesait sur la gauche –, il appert que, à un moment donné de leur vie, la plupart de ces auteurs témoignent d’un penchant vers la gauche. En outre, la défense d’une littérature moderniste, dans le contexte québécois de l’époque, constituait de facto un acte anti-traditionaliste et anti-Église, n’en déplaise à l’habitus de l’art pour l’art que Pierre Bourdieu identifie avec l’avant-garde moderniste européen.

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Abstract: LriTTLE PRESSES in Canada are rapidly expanding and be- coming noticeably more productive. As underground alternatives to the larger publishing ...

Abstract: IN ? Canada, Edmund Wilson confesses that Americans in the early nineteen hundreds tended to imagine Canada “as a kind ...