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Material Cultures in Canada

Edited by Thomas Allen & Jennifer Blair
Subjects Cultural Studies
Series Cultural Studies Hide Details
Paperback : 9781771120142, 358 pages, May 2015
Ebook (EPUB) : 9781771120166, 358 pages, June 2015

Table of contents

Table of Contents
Material Cultures in Canada, edited by Thomas Allen and Jennifer Blair

Introduction: Material Cultures in Canada, Material Cultures Now | Thomas Allen and Jennifer Blair

Part I Materialities

1. The Work of the Beaver | Jody Berland

2. Night in a Box: Anne Carson's Nox and the Materiality of Elegy | Tanis MacDonald

3. Maxims and Contraries: Notes from a Project in Process | Alison Calder

4. The Geranium in the Window: One Plant's Literary Hardiness in the Canadian Imagination | Shelley Boyd

Part II Immaterialities

5. Is It Still a Cinch? The Transformational Properties of Objects in Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Last Crossing | Susan Birkwood

6. Obama's Playlist: Materializing Transnational Desire at the CBC | Mark Simpson

7. Grinning Things: Object Lessons in Violent Labour | Michael Epp

8. Moses Cotsworth and the Authenticity of Time | Thomas Allen

9. Materializing Climate Change: Images of Exposure, States of Exception | Nicole Shukin

10. Waters as Potential Paths to Peace | Rita Wong

Part III Materials Of and For Spaces

11. The Biotopographies of Seth's George Sprott (1894-1975) | Candida Rifkind

12. Woodrow: Memory and Nostalgia at Play | Jessa Alston-O'Connor

13. Plaques and Persons: Commemorating Canada's Authors | Carole Gerson

14. Archaeological Detritus and the Bulging Archive: The Staging of He Named Her Amber at the Art Gallery of Ontario | May Chew

15. Poetry and Globalized Cities: A Material Poetics of Canadian Urban Space | Jeff Derksen

Afterword: Endless Material: The Future of Things in Canada | Thomas Allen and Jennifer Blair

Contributors

Index

Description

Material Cultures in Canada presents the vibrant and diverse field of material culture studies in Canadian literary, artistic, and political contexts today. The first of its kind, this collection features sixteen essays by leading scholars in Canada, each of whom examines a different object of study, including the beaver, geraniums, comics, water, a musical playlist, and the human body.

The book’s three sections focus, in turn, on objects that are persistently material, on things whose materiality blends into the immaterial, and on the materials of spaces. Contributors highlight some of the most exciting new developments in the field, such as the emergence of “new materialism,” affect theory, globalization studies, and environmental criticism. Although the book has a Canadian centre, the majority of its contributors consider objects that cross borders or otherwise resist national affiliation.

This collection will be valuable to readers within and outside of Canada who are interested in material culture studies and, in addition, will appeal to anyone interested in the central debates taking place in Canadian political and cultural life today, such as climate change, citizenship, shifts in urban and small-town life, and the persistence of imperialism.