Crosstalk: Canadian and Global Imaginaries in Dialogue

Diana Brydon · Marta Dvořák

Jul 2012 · Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

About this ebook

What are the fictions that shape Canadian engagements with the global? What frictions emerge from these encounters? In negotiating aesthetic and political approaches to Canadian cultural production within contexts of global circulation, this collection argues for the value of attending to narratorial, lyric, and theatrical conventions in dialogue with questions of epistemological and social justice. Using the twinned framing devices of crosstalk and cross-sighting, the contributing authors attend to how the interplay of the verbal and the visual maps public spheres of creative engagement today.

Individual chapters present a range of methodological approaches to understanding national culture and creative labour in global contexts. Through their collective enactment of methodological crosstalk, they demonstrate the productivity of scholarly debate across differences of outlook, culture, and training. In highlighting convergences and disagreements, the book sharpens our understanding of how literary and critical conventions and theories operate within and across cultures.

About the author

Diana Brydon is Canada Research Chair in Globalization and Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Globalization and Cultural Studies at the University of Manitoba. She has published books on Christina Stead and Timothy Findley, edited Postcolonialism: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies, and co-edited Shakespeare in Canada and Renegotiating Community: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Global Contexts

Marta Dvořák is professor of Canadian and postcolonial literatures in English at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, former associate editor of The International Journal of Canadian Studies, and editor of Commonwealth Essays and Studies. Focusing her research on (post)modernism and cross-culturalism, she has authored and edited books ranging from Ernest Buckler: Rediscovery and Reassessment (WLU Press, 2001) to Tropes and Territories: Short Fiction, Postcolonial Readings, and Canadian Writings in Context (co-ed. W.H. New) and The Faces of Carnival in Anita Desai’s In Custody.