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| Visiting Scholars |
2004-05 The
Centre for Canadian Studies’ first Visiting Scholar in the 2004-05
season was Jean Dryden who holds an MLS degree in library science and
is currently completing doctoral studies at the Faculty of Information
Studies. She is an archivist and expert on contemporary copyright issues
and offers workshops in Toronto and Ottawa entitled Copyright Demystified,
Copyright in Photograph, and Copyright in Moving Image Material.
Dr. Joan Sangster is Professor of History and Women's Studies at Trent University, Peterborough, where she is also Director of the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Native Studies. Her scholarly writing has covered topics relating to women and politics, the law, and labour; her books, articles and book chapters discuss themes ranging from wage work and union organization to women's participation in the Canadian Left and to women's involvement in the criminal justice system. Sangster’s work has won a number of awards, including the Harold Adams Innis prize for the best book in the Social Sciences, and the Canadian Historical Review and Hilda Neatby prizes for articles. Her latest books, Regulating Girls and Women: Women, Family and the Law in Ontario, and Girl Trouble: Female Delinquency in English Canada explore the history of women's and girls’ conflicts with the law. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Dr. Sangster is currently researching a book on women and paid labour after World War II. The title of her public talk was “The Beaver's History of Canada: Constructing Images of the Native and Inuit North in Post World War II Canada.”.
George Elliott Clarke, a revered poet and scholar, was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia in 1960, near the Black Loyalist community of Three Mile Plains. A graduate of the University of Waterloo, Dalhousie University, and Queen’s University, he is now the E. J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. He has worked as an editor, social worker, researcher, journalist, and parliamentary aide. His many honours include the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry (2001) for Execution Poems, a collection of poems about the murder trial and hanging of two African Canadian men in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in 1949.
During his visit on campus, Dr. Clarke gave a public poetry reading, visit several English and Canadian Studies courses, and met students and faculty informally to talk about his current research and writing projects. In his public lecture entitled “Sounding John Thompson’s White Noise,” he proposed a startling but compelling link between the work of Thompson, a poet and former English professor at Mount Allison, and Malcolm X. Clarke noted that both men were interested in decolonization, although in different ways, and argued that Thompson’s interest in a personal form of decolonization led him to evoke in his work an “atavistic Blackness” through which he could construct a new, more liberated subjectivity. Clarke also generously read from his poetry and played excerpts from his “jazz opera” Québécité during a poetry reading. Dr. Clarke’s visit was jointly sponsored with the Department of English and Dr. Clarke visited classes in American Literature, Canadian Culture and African Canadian Literature, and creative writing.
The final visiting scholar of the 04-05 season was Dr. Neil Nevitte, Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He did his undergraduate work at McMaster and has a Ph.D. from Duke University. Professor Nevitte previously taught at Harvard University and Leeds University, United Kingdom. He is a co-investigator of the Canadian Election Study and the principal investigator of the Canadian World Values Surveys. Professor Nevitte is an internationally recognized expert on Quick Counts. He has published fifteen books including most recently: The Democratic Audit of Canada: Citizens (2004), Anatomy of a Liberal Victory (2002), Value Change and Governance (2002), Unsteady State (2000), The Challenge of Direct Democracy (1996) and Decline of Deference (1996). His research on elections has also been published in such journals as: The Journal of Democracy, Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Methodology, Canadian Journal of Political Science and the European Journal of Political Research. Professor Nevitte has been a consultant to several international organizations on electoral matters. He is the Senior Advisor to the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) giving technical advice to domestic observer groups in a number of countries, including Albania, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Senegal and currently Venezuela. His public lecture entitled “Election Outcomes and Value Change” (could you provide a brief paragraph here as to what his message was?)
2003-04 The Centre’s third Visiting Scholar this year was Daniel Drache, Director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies and Professor of Political Economy at York University. For almost thirty years, Professor Drache has been a fixture within Canadian political economy circles and a pioneer of contemporary Canadian Studies. His early work rekindled intellectual interest in the contributions of Harold Innis. During the 1980s, Drache was at the forefront of the intellectual opposition to the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement as co-editor of The Other MacDonald Commission. With Wallace Clement, he assembled one of the most cited edited volumes on the emerging Canadian political economy, The New Practical Guide to Canadian Political Economy. During the 1990s, Professor Drache was one of the first Canadian scholars to examine systematically the phenomenon we now know as globalization, with widely read volumes co-edited with Mr Eric Gertler and Robert Boyer. Professor Drache has published widely on globalization, poverty eradication, and the WTO. In recent years, his research has focused on social inclusion, hemispheric integration, and the evolution of the public domain in Canada. His latest book is entitled In Search of North America: Do Borders Matter?
The subject of Drache’s public lecture extended his long-standing interest in international political economy. In particular, he was interested in explaining how the effects of the 9-11 terrorist attacks have altered Canada's relationship with the United States and the ways in which Americans think about their common border with Canada. Drache argued that Canadians have been slow to appreciate the fact that the United States has begun to look at its Canadian border in remarkably different ways than even a few years ago. Canadians have become used to a permeable border, one easily crossed by good, people, and ideas. Yet, Drache argued, this is no longer the case. The undefended border is now defended as the United States deploys a host of new measures to protect itself after 9-11. This includes new security measures and officials, making the border far less permeable than it had been. Canadians need to understand this shift in order to measure their response to it. One response is to accept the new security arrangements put in place by the United States and extend these northward, constructing a North American security frontier. For Canadians, this would ensure continued economic access to the American market, but it also comes at the price of domestic sovereignty and potentially subjects Canadians to infringements of civil rights. Alternatives are more difficult to determine. Canadians could "go it alone" in North America, working with the United States, where possible, to ensure mobility across the border but making domestic security arrangements. Or, Canadians could work internationally in an effort to establish a new and different global agenda that embraces security but also addresses a range of other problems, such as gross international income disparities. Whatever the choice Canadians make, however, it needs to be made with the knowledge that the old undefended border is now a thing of the past.
Dr. Carole Gerson of the Department of English at Simon Fraser University was the Centre’s first Visiting Scholar of the 2003-04 season. Dr. Gerson's research interests include Canadian women writers and Canadian literary history which have led to a collaboration with historian Veronica Strong-Boag to produce two books on Pauline Johnson. During her week at Mt. Allison, Dr. Gerson addressed Dr. Carrie MacMillan’s seminar, ENGL 4921 (Gender and Sexual Anxiety in the Literature of the Fin de Siecle) on the subject of "Wild Colonial Girls: New Women of the Empire." This was an illustrated talk that included cartoons of the New Woman from such periodicals as Punch. Several authors included in the course were discussed in the lecture, such as Sara Jeannette Duncan and Olive Schreiner. The presentation generated a lively discussion in a class of twelve fourth-year English and Women's Studies students. Later in the week Dr. Gerson presented her recent research into images of the "New Woman" of the 1890s to students in Dr. Dorothy Shosktak’s English 3651 class (Literature by Women to the Twentieth Century), and also visited Shostak’s English 2801 class (Introduction to Canadian Literature), where she discussed with students issues related to the canonicity of Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion, especially with respect to the role CBC Radio has played in popularizing the novel with its "Canada Reads" contest. Dr. Gerson discussed the place of Toronto in our imaginative geographies of Canada, and the role of women in the novel. Finally Dr. Gerson addressed an introductory English class on the relationship between the historical Susanna Moodie and Margaret Atwood’s fictional construction of the writer in The Journals of Susanna Moodie.
Among Dr. Gerson’s many publications are Paddling Her Own Canoe: Times and Texts of E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake (University of Toronto Press, 2000), and E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake): Collected Poems and Selected Prose (University of Toronto Press, 2002). Dr. Gerson is a member of the cross-Canada editorial team working on The History of the Book in Canada / Histoire du livre et du l'imprimé au Canada, for which she is co-editing Volume III (1918-80) with Jacques Michon.
Dr. Lisa Young, Professor of Political Science at the University of Calgary was the second Visiting Scholar to the Centre in late October. Dr. Young has published several books on Canadian politics including the widely acclaimed Feminists and Party Politics. During her stay she spoke with classes and colleagues and gave a public lecture entitled “Is One-Quarter Enough? Women’s Representation in Canadian Politics.”
The first reason for this decline relates to profound changes to the Canadian political party system which occurred in 1993. In the pre-1993 party system, the approach to women’s issues reflected the larger pattern of accommodation that prevailed during that period. All three parties actively tried to accommodate women within their party. The post-1993 party system has a number of characteristics that are of consequence for the representation of women. The most significant is the emergence of the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance as the dynamic element in the new party system. Not only has the party opted not to pursue any of the kinds of policies other parties employ to increase the number of women elected; it has also criticized the Liberal party vociferously for its decision to appoint female candidates in some ridings. The second reason for the declining rate of progress in the election of women is that Canadian women have, in large measure, abandoned the project. There are two dimensions to this. The first has to do with the contemporary Canadian women’s movement. Deprived of federal government funding from the early 1990s on, it has become a question of both resources and focus for organized feminism which has shifted its attention away from the electoral arena, emphasizing rather protest tactics and allying itself with the affluent union movement.. The second, and far more troubling, reason is that Canadian women have apparently decided in significant numbers that the world of electoral politics is of no interest to them. Dr. Young pointed to surveys that tell us that (a) women are less well informed about politics than are men; and (b) that women are less interested in politics than are men. In closing, Young emphasized that it is crucial for women to participate in the upper echelons of power in Canada. Governments decide whether women can have access to contraception, whether women can be paid less than men for doing similar jobs, whether child care will be regulated or left to the forces of the market, and whether health care is private or publicly funded. When women abdicate interest in politics, they risk having decisions made on their behalf that make their lives much more difficult. The diversity of women’s views should be represented when public policy is made. Dr. Young is also one of the contributing authors in the Canadian Democratic Audit Project which has produced 10 volumes on various aspects of democracy. Her volume is on the topic of Advocacy Groups. |
As
an internationally acclaimed poet and dramatist, Dr. Clarke has published
the popular Whylah Falls in several versions: as a “verse novel,”
radio play, and stage play; a film script, One Heart Broken into Song;
a feature film broadcast on CBC television (1999); the verse drama Beatrice
Chancy, a tragedy focusing on issues of slavery and gender in colonial
Nova Scotia; the libretto for the opera Beatrice Chancy; Québecité,
in both verse-drama and libretto versions, about multiculturalism in contemporary
Canada; and several collections of poetry. 
Professor
Drache is based on sabbatical as a Senior Resident at Massey College,
University of Toronto, where his current work examines the political economy
of North American borders in the context of the North American Free Trade
Agreement and 9/11. Professor Drache shared his knowledge on this topic
in a well-attended public lecture entitled "Borders Permeable and
Impermeable: Canada's Immediate North American Dilemma." and made
a series of class presentations to Canadian Studies, Political Science,
and International Relations students.
As
well as visiting classes and speaking with faculty, Dr. Gerson presented
a public lecture entitled “Pauline Johnson in Print”, in which
she discussed the Johnson’s publication history. Pauline Johnson,
daughter of a Mohawk father and an English-born mother, identified with
both sides of her parentage. Born in 1861 on the Six Nations Reserve near
Brantford, Ontario, she enjoyed a genteel upbringing that acquainted her
with both the mainstream of English literature and some traditional Mohawk
culture. By the late 1880's her poems and prose sketches were well known
in Toronto’s major cultural periodicals. She initiated stage performances
of her work performing alternately in traditional buckskin dresses and
those of a lady of the drawing-room. As she became more well known, she
used her Native identity strategically in representing the cause of Native
rights.
Young pointed out that over the past twenty-five years, the number of
women in the Canadian House of Commons has steadily increased. In recent
federal elections, however, the rate of increase has slowed; in the 2000
federal election there was no increase at all in the number of women elected.
Dr. Young examined in her lecture two of the reasons for this declining
rate of progress, and discussed its significance for Canadian democracy.