English 591: STUDIES IN CANADIAN LITERATURE
The Documentary Tradition in Canadian Fiction and Film

Section A1: R 1000-1250

Critics such as Dorothy Livesay, Stephn Scobie, Robert Kroetsch, Frank Dvey and more recently Manina Jones have read the documentary as "the quintessential Canadian form of representation" (Jones 1993). With reference to and some of John Grierson's writings on documentary, this course will create a context for reading documentary fiction and film in Canada. Through the juxtaposition of visual and literary documents the course will introduce students to the problematic of 'factuality' as constructed, fictional or 'made' through processes of selection and interpretation. Students will investigate the ideological ramifications of literary and filmic documentary forms that are dependent on the 'fictive' devices of editing and interpretation. A genealogy of documentary will be traced from early texts which represent themselves as telling 'true,' unmediated stories, to more recent works which problematize the notion of documentary as a transparent form reflecting reality. Theoretical texts will include readings from Roland Barthes, Frank Davey, Michel Foucault, John Grierson, Manina Jones, Robert Kroetsch, Dorothy Livesay, Bill Nichols, Michael Renov, and Slavoj Zizek.

TEXTS: This is a provisional list and subject to change.

• The Wars Timothy Findley
• Obasan Joy Kogawa
• Ana Historic Daphne Marlatt
• The Collected Works of Billy the Kid Michael Ondaatje
• Key Concepts in Cinema Studies Susan Hayward

• Nation Building in Saskatchewan: The Ukrainians (1921)
• Saving the Sagas (1927)
• Of Japanese Descent: An Interim Report (1945 NFB documentary on Japanese internment camps)
• By This Parting (1998, Mieko Ouchi)
• Our Marilyn (1987)
• Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992)

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