|
Hinweise:
|
Though cultural studies has had a relatively belated institutional development in Canada (by comparison to its academic brethren in the US and UK), there is a long and unique tradition of critical cultural analysis in the country. This talk will offer an outline of the development of cultural studies in Canada and assess its contribution to the study of contemporary culture.
Imre Szeman will begin by offering an overview of some of the antecedents of contemporary cultural studies in Canada, focusing on the innovative contributions made to communications theory, political economy, and theories of nationalism by figures such as Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, George Grant, and Fernand Dumont. Though there is no unproblematic line of inheritance or influence (as elsewhere, Canadian scholars draw on an increasingly globalized pool of theoretical models, thinkers and concepts), these prescient social and cultural critics, often in remarkably idiosyncratic ways, set the stage for a whole ensemble of problems and questions that continue to occupy contemporary cultural theorists. The postcolonial remainders of Britain in Canada, questions about national and cultural sovereignty in the context of American hegemony, the tensions generated by uneven regional development and between urban centres and rural peripheries, issues pertaining to multiculturalism, national identity and the claims of indigeneity, and the cultural significance and contradictions of technological change in the Canadian context are just some of the issues which tasked this first generation of thinkers and which still echo loudly in contemporary conversations. Szeman will examine these resonances while at the same time devoting attention to the institutional structures, sites and histories that have played an important role in the study of Canadian culture (e.g., think tanks, programs of university study, journals, events and conferences, etc.).
Szeman will close with a consideration of the relationship between culture and power in Canada at the present moment by looking at the themes and issues addressed in the work of a new generation of Canadian scholars (such as Andrew Biro, Lily Cho, Zoë Druick, Erin Hurley, Kirsty Robertson, and others). One of the questions that she hopes to assess is the significance of shifts in research foci that have taken place during the period of globalization—a period that seems to have re-shaped or even eliminated (in often problematic ways) long-standing narratives of Canadian national-cultural belatedness and anxiety.
|
Basis-Infos
Contents
Gesamt
