Master of Arts Integrated Studies (MAIS) 752

Overview

Contemporary Canadian poetry and drama of the Canadian prairies and the North is an extraordinary oeuvre of exciting, challenging, inspiring, beautiful, diverse works by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal writers.  In this course we will be reading several such texts and developing critical reading strategies that reflect both indigenous and intercultural engagements in the work of these talented and visionary writers.  We will address a range of subjects in this process, including gender, sexuality, colonization, the land, relevant historical events and intertexts, work, humour, love, spirituality, healing, and hope.  Students will have a chance to develop both creative and critical responses to these works.  

Reading List

POETRY SELECTIONS

PLAYS

ESSAYS

Lynn Whidden, “Songs and Ceremony,” Essential Song: Three Decades of Northern Cree Music, 13-30

John Ralston Saul, from “A Métis Civilization,” A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada

Diana Relke, “Introduction: A Literary History of Nature,” Greenwor(l)ds: Ecocritical Readings of Canadian Women’s Poetry

Di Brandt, “A New Genealogy of Canadian Literary Modernism,” Wider Boundaries of Daring:  The Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women’s Poetry, ed. Di Brandt and Barbara Godard

Lee Maracle, “Indigenous Poetry and the Oral,” Indigenous Poetics in Canada, ed. Neil McLeod

Joanne Arnott, “Small Birds/Songs Out of Silence,” Indigenous Poetics

Tomson Highway, "Why Cree is the Funniest of All Languages," Me Funny

Alan Filewood, “Receiving Aboriginality: Tomson Highway and the Crisis of Cultural Authenticity,” Aboriginal Drama and Theatre: Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English, Vol 1, ed. Rob Appleford

Renate Eigenbrod, “Not Just a Text: ‘Indigenizing’ the Study of Indigenous Literature,” Creating Community: a Round Table on Canadian Aboriginal Literature, ed. Renate Eigenbrod and Jo-Ann Episkenew

Student Evaluation

Participation in weekly seminar discussion

There will be weekly online forums for class discussions, which will include one live “chat” hour per week, and opportunities for responding to the discussion questions posted by the instructor each week.  Students are expected to read the assigned text before participating in the online discussions, and to be prepared for lively, intelligent, curious, appreciative and inspiring discussion, dialogue and debate.

Seminar presentation

Each student will prepare a short 2-3 page introduction to one of the writers featured in the course.  The introduction should include a short biography of the writer, a comprehensive bibliography of his/her literary works, and a list of reviews, profile features and interviews and critical works about the writer and his/her writing, to be shared with the class on the day we begin to discuss that writer’s text.

Creative assignment

This is a chance to design your own assignment:  it could be a painting or suite of poems or songs created in response to writing read in this course, an adaptation of one of these texts in another genre or medium, a performance of a scene from one of the plays, a written report or mixed media profile about a historical event relevant to the course or something else.

Critical Essay

Essays should include quotations from at least three different critical sources, as well as from the text being discussed.

Textbooks

Louise Halfe, Blue Marrow (ebook)

Katherine Koller, "The Early Worm Club," in Voices of the Land (ebook)

Naomi McIlwraith, Kiyam (ebook)

Darrell Racine and Dale Lakevold, Stretching Hide (course package)

Cree Hunters of Mistassini (NFB online film)