We are thrilled to announce the arrival of Canadian Literature Issue 248! This is a special issue, as it ushers in our new design updates!
Christine Kim writes in her editorial:
The five articles in this issue pose intriguing questions about archives, storytelling, ways of knowing, language, and metaphor as they examine Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen, David Chariandy’s Soucouyant, Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang, Jordan Scott’s poetry, and Don McKay’s The Book of Moonlight. As a general issue, there was no set of questions for these articles to respond to, and consequently no expectation that there would be a shared focus. The range of scholarship is demonstrated through the subjects, texts, critical approaches, genres, and themes with which the authors engage. And yet, there are still many rich overlaps and shared lines of inquiry that run through these articles—shared lines that are suggestive for reflecting on the field of Canadian literary studies and its connections to other scholarly fields. Reading these articles together reveals how scholars are thinking alongside each other (although not necessarily with each other) about shared interests that span transnational sites, genres, and critical approaches. It also offers a way of conceptualizing the field of Canadian literary studies at this moment.
Focusing on moments of critical coherence is a very different method for approaching the field than most of us have been trained to perform. Such a method compels us to question how we are to define the field of Canadian literature and, moreover, what constitutes the position of the Canadianist. Such an endeavour returns us to questions about how we are to understand the relationship between what we teach in the classroom, the material we research and produce scholarly writing about, our critical approaches (which often extend beyond national borders), and how we define the field of Canadian literary studies itself. Other issues include how we perceive our scholarly and pedagogical interests as being in dialogue with or different from other scholars (contemporary or otherwise) in the field.
—Christine Kim, Reconceptualizing Canadian Generalists
This issue also features:
- Articles by Melanie Braith, Walter Rafael Villanueva, Eric Schmaltz, Joon Ho Hwang, and Kevin Tunnicliffe
- Poetry by Chimwemwe Undi, Dave Margoshes, Owen Torrey, Sarain Frank Soonias, Amanda Fayant, and Sadie McCarney
- A forum on “Morder Then and Now: Richler the Quebec Writer” by Andre Furlani, Linda Morra, Adam Gopnik, Emma Richler, Lori Saint-Martin (find the English translation here), Judith Woodsworth, and Jason Camlot,
- Verse Forward poetry by Lillian Allen, Junie Désil, and Fiona Tinwei Lam
- Reviews by Jean Barman, Bidaye Prasad, Cornel Bogle, Ruth Bradley-St-Cyr, Stephanie Butler, Irene Gammel and Jaclyn Marcus, Robert G. May, and Heather Olaveson
The new issue can be ordered through our online store. Happy reading!