ENGL 373 B1: Colonialism and Canadian Literature

K. Smitka

This course 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 three units: 1) ‘Open Space,’ which examines the prevalence of images of unoccupied land within Canadian literature, and 2) ‘The Spine of Empire,’ which explores representations of the C.P.R. and other forms of technological nationalism, and 3) ‘Calls for Decolonization’ which observes both 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 writers, such as Earle Birney, Emily Carr, A.M. Klein, E.J. Pratt, F.R. Scott, and A.J.M Smith; and Indigenous writers, such as Jordan Abel (Nisga’a), Cherie Dimaline (Métis), Marilyn Dumont (Cree/Métis), Janet Rogers (Mohawk/Tuscarora), and Armand Garnet Ruffo (Ojibway).