American Review of Canadian Studies articles from December 2003

American Review of Canadian Studies archives from December 2003

Preface: sharing the West(s).
December 22, 2003... In perhaps the most quoted passage in his oft-quoted Wolf Willow (1962), Wallace Stegner wrote that "The 49th parallel ran directly through my childhood, dividing me in two" (81). As one of us has occasion to say, below, and David Williams...

Introduction: no Catlin without Kane; or, really understanding the "American" West.
December 22, 2003... Let me begin by invoking three moments from the history of the North American West. The first occurred in late 1801; the second, in 1842 or early 1843; the third took place in 1881. Together, these three moments set the stage for this volume of...

Turner versus Innis: bridging the gap.
December 22, 2003... One of the challenges to comparative Canadian/American studies of the West is to understand the differences. Although the word "compare" means recognizing both similarities and differences, the tendency often is to see the similarities only: to...

Leading the parade.
December 22, 2003... The mythologies embedded in the West exert their own ironies and displacements, their own refusals and contingencies. In the short story that follows, I have set out to play with the master narrative of the much-mythologized Calgary Stampede,...

Whose West is it anyway? Or, what's myth got to do with it? The role of "America" in the creation of the myth of the West.
December 22, 2003... Little more than a year ago, I was sitting in a darkened cineplex on a Saturday afternoon with four small boys (two of them mine) munching popcorn and drinking cherry slushes, waiting to see Shrek for the third time. Suddenly, on the screen...

One West, one myth: transborder continuity in Western art.
December 22, 2003... In American and Canadian literature, the notion of one West, two myths seems plausible. The large "W" Western--formula fiction in which violence resolves a conflict between good and evil--expresses distinctly American cultural values, the...

A northern vision: frontiers and the West in the Canadian and American imagination.
December 22, 2003... An Englishman-become-Canadian named Robert Service was the favorite poet of Ronald Reagan, notes Daniel Francis in his book on myth, memory, and Canadian history. (1) Service, who was a ranch hand and later a bank teller, moved to the Yukon in...

Transnational Perspectives on the history of Great Plains women: Gender, Race, Nations, and the forty-ninth parallel.
December 22, 2003... "History is sadly truncated if national historians travel without passports and stop investigating when the subject reaches the 49th parallel," writes Jan Noel in her introduction to a recent collection of articles that focus on race and gender...

Myths and realities in American-Canadian studies: challenges to comparing Native peoples' experiences.
December 22, 2003... From the start it is clear that several myths surround the comparative study of historical issues in America and Canada. First, the assumption is that such work will be welcomed with enthusiasm. Certainly in the U.S. many historians speak...

Prairies and Plains: the levelling of difference in Stegner's Wolf Willow.
December 22, 2003... If there is any place where citizens of Canada and the United States should come close to being one people, that place would be the unbroken reaches of the plains states and prairie provinces. For these prairies and plains were settled at...