ENGL 373 B1: Canadian Literature and Culture: Writing and Colonization

K. Smitka

'Canadian Literature and Culture: Writing and Colonization' investigates the ways in which literature, and acts of representation more broadly, have contributed to the colonization of what is now Canada. The course is divided into two units: 1) ‘Open Space,’ which examines the prevalence of images of unoccupied land within Canadian visual arts and literature, and 2) ‘The Spine of Empire,’ which explores representations of the C.P.R. and other forms of technological nationalism. Throughout both units, we will also attend to various calls for decolonization by studying Indigenous and settler responses to Canada’s colonial history. Students can expect to encounter a wide variety of writers, which may include emigration and settler writers, such as Susanna Moodie, Mary Ann Shadd, and Catherine Parr Traill; Canadian modernists, such as Earle Birney, Emily Carr, A.M. Klein, E.J. Pratt, F.R. Scott, and A.J.M Smith; and Indigenous academics, artists, and poets, such as Jordan Abel (Nisga’a), Billy-Rae Belcourt (Cree), Marilyn Dumont (Cree/Métis), Kent Monkman (Cree), and Armand Garnet Ruffo (Ojibway).