Research Catalog

Title

West/border/road : nation and genre in contemporary Canadian narrative / Katherine Ann Roberts.

Author

Roberts, Katherine Ann, 1968-

Publication

• Montreal and Kingston : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2018]
• ©2018

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

404 pages; 24 cm

Summary

"Understanding how Canadian culture negotiates its rapport with American genres has never been more timely given the continued vertical integration of the North American entertainment industry and new modes of technological delivery that challenge Canadian content regulations. West/Border/Road offers an interdisciplinary and cross-generic analysis of contemporary Canadian manifestations of three spatially-coded American genres: the western, the border and the road. It situates close readings of literary, film and television narratives from both English-Canada and Quebec within a larger context of Canadian generic borrowings and innovation. Using an approach of critical nation theory, Roberts calls upon canonical works in Canadian studies, theories of genre and a wide-range of scholarship from related fields (border studies, culture studies, film studies) to examine how genre is appropriated and reworked (or not) in recent representative texts and how these cultural narratives can be read critically for how they engage with discourses of contemporary Canadian nationness. In readings that elucidate Guy Vanderhaeghe's re-writing of the codes of the historical western to include the trauma of Aboriginal peoples, Aritha van Herk's playfully spoof of American western iconography, the politics and perils of the representation of the Canada-U.S. border in CBC-produced crime television and how the road genre inspires and constrains the Québécois and Canadian road movie, Roberts provides a nuanced perspective on Canadian engagement with American cultural forms that are imported but never foreign. A reminder of the power and limitations of American genres, West/Border/Road is a compelling account of how the asymmetrical embeddedness of the Canadian-American cultural relationship is negotiated in today's texts."--

Alternative Title

West border road

Subject

• Popular culture > Canada
• Television plays, Canadian > History and criticism
• Motion pictures > Canada
• Roads in literature
• Western stories, Canadian
• Boundaries in literature
• Canada > Civilization > American influences

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 369-394) and index.

Contents

West 1. Courage and restraint in Guy Vanderhaeghe's Western trilogy -- West 2. Stampeding together, Sundance style, in Aritha van Herk's (new) west -- Border 1. Post-9/11 anxiety on the small screen in CBC's Intelligence and The border -- Border 2. The edge of America in border songs, frozen river, and Canada -- Road 1. Where the river meets the sea : the politics of memory in Quebec road narrative -- Road 2. Updating the Canadian road movie with Hollywood Canucks.

Call Number

JFE 18-5768

ISBN

• 9780773553224
• 0773553223

OCLC

1013530633

Author

Roberts, Katherine Ann, 1968- author.

Title

West/border/road : nation and genre in contemporary Canadian narrative / Katherine Ann Roberts.

Publisher

Montreal and Kingston : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2018]

Copyright Date

©2018

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 369-394) and index.

Other Form:

Roberts, Katherine, 1968-, author. West/border/road.: Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018. (CaOONL)20179074644

Research Call Number

JFE 18-5768