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ÒCanada.net:
Teaching American Students about Canada Using the InternetÓ Sammy Basu PhD Associate Professor of Politics, Willamette University
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20th Biennial ACSUS Conference, San Diego, California, November 18-22, 2009. EDUC
2 Education Along Several Dimensions
(Santa Fe Room) Thursday, November 19 10:30am—12:00pm |
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Abstract A multifaceted and
immersive educational experience is an invaluable one. In setting out to teach American
undergraduates about Canada, information technology and the world wide web,
offers a plethora of worthwhile opportunities for such immersion
virtually. In my presentation I
identify and show (using a laptop and projector) representative samples of
the vast range of readily available online resources, from first-rate official
and secondary informational sites, and free background documents covering
various aspects of Canadian politics and society, to artistic and cultural
resources, and some welcome and entertaining entrees into comparative
similarities and differences. Drawing
on my own recent experiences in doing so, in effect, I model how a course or
program on Canada and Canadian studies might be enriched and made Ôvirtually
immersiveÕ through the internet and course web-pages. |
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Introduction If effective teaching,
like good rhetoric, requires that one begin from the shared experiences and
knowledge bases of oneÕs audience, then in teaching otherwise bright American
undergraduates about Canada, one has to start from scratch. Whereas Canadian undergraduates will
know a fair amount, together with many misperceptions to be sure, about
America, their American counterparts will tend to know little and that little
will likely be larded with stereotypes about Canada.[1] One can either bemoan and ignore this
knowledge deficit, and the attendant unsuitability if not incomprehensibility
for young Americans of much Canadian writing about Canada, or embrace it as a
curricular and pedagogical matter.
A different way of putting this is that one must be aware of both the
superficial and deep cultural and scholarly habits of American
exceptionalism, and not only because Michael Ignatieff says so.[2] Likewise, given the Canadian
proclivities towards either self-doubt or preciousness, and some might invoke
Ignatieff with regards to the latter here too, the study of Canada, and
perhaps Canadian politics in particular, can only benefit from taking a
comparative turn.[3] Studying Canada comparatively with
the United Studies, and optimally, also Australia, as a cohort of Anglo-Celt
Ôsettler societiesÕ encompassing relatively vast territory with dispersed and
rapidly marginalized native or aboriginal populations, and subsequently
managing increasingly multicultural waves of migration, is salutary and ought
to be obligatory.[4] I
might note, as an aside, that the desperate need for a suitable text for
Americans to learn about Canada has recently been met by the volume Canadian
Studies in the new millennium, edited by Patrick James (the present
President of ACSUS, and also Chair of the Canadian Studies section of the
American Political Science Association) and Mark Kasoff (former Director of a
Canadian Studies Program at Bowling Green, and former editor of the American Review
of Canadian Studies).[5] I am aware of no better core text. Mention of ARCS, also prompts me to highlight its
ongoing usefulness as a source of timely, sophisticated yet accessible
research for the teaching of Canada in the US. I come to teaching about
Canada (as a Canadian academic working in the US), aware of at least three
factors: (1) That otherwise well-educated Americans can lack basic
information about Canada, its history and politics, and that as a result,
anything that they may come to know will invariably be comparative to the US;
(2) That there are significant regional identities within Canada (for
example, that Alberta really is a profound outlier in many ways) and also
between urban and rural areas, arguably with complementary connections to
regions in America; and (3) That the multifaceted and immersive study
experience is invaluable. In
setting out to develop a course for incoming first-year American
undergraduates at my institution, I wanted to ensure that it would be,
consequently, comparative, sensitive to regions, and recurringly
immersive. To those ends, I
turned to the world wide web along with accessibility to new media in a wired
classroom context.[6] I also sought to organize the course around
themes that are fundamental to the social sciences and humanities (I am a
political theorist first and foremost) and afford comparative analyses
without risking privileging either the US or Canadian experiences. The four themes I settled upon are:
temporality,[7]
spatiality,[8]
performativity,[9] and
identity/otherness.[10] I trust that you will recognize the currency
of these terms. Briefly put,
ÔtemporalityÕ encompasses historical approaches to tradition, the timeless
past, or specific origins, to origin or creation stories, to the present
– now and future – new, as well as the relative
weights of radicalism and conservatism.
ÔSpatialityÕ encompasses physical space, place, embodiment, land, environment, geography, regionalism, localism,
cartographic and scalar analyses.
ÔPerformativityÕ is predicated on the view that identity is performed,
that we
are what we do through ritual, ceremony,
and standard operating procedures, bounded by what is predictable and
recognizable; as a metaphor it reminds of the presence of a stage, audience,
scripts, roles and also a back stage with perhaps greater authenticity. Finally, ÔIdentity and OthernessÕ
suggest a universal dynamic according to which identity be it our conception
of self or our collective identity is articulated in relation to something
else, i.e., us-them, inclusion-exclusion,
resulting in patterns of response to immigration,
multiculturalism, non-traditional forms of intimacy and family and so on. These themes arguably
also capture a good deal of the classic and contemporary scholarship about
Canada in both its intrinsic and comparative forms. To wit, for example,
ÔtemporalityÕ from Lipset to Kaufman,[11]
ÔspatialityÕ on everything from the cartographic construction of Canada,[12]
and dismantling of social services,[13]
ÔperformativityÕ on the enactment of Canada equally in beer commercials[14]
and on canvases,[15] and Ôidentity/othernessÕ,
that Canada and Canadians are variously European, Utopian, aboriginal and
unfinished.[16] In what follows I would
like to identify and show some representative samples of the vast range of
readily available online resources, beginning with some welcome and
entertaining entrees into comparative cultural similarities and differences,
before turning to some first-rate official and secondary informational sites,
and free background documents covering various aspects of Canadian politics
and society, and artistic and cultural resources. At this point, at the
risk of self-indulgence, I would like to turn to the web-page for my Canadian
Studies course, a course intended for first semester incoming first-year
liberal arts undergraduates. http://www.willamette.edu/~sbasu/IDS101/ Oh Canada!
Where is it? What is it?
How and why is it different from America? What can we learn about ourselves by getting to know our
northern neighbor? To what
extent do we define ourselves in relation to an ÔOtherÕ? This course begins with a beer
commercial and ends by reflecting on competing visions of the future of North
America. Along the way, we will
look at Canadian history, geography, politics, and culture, consider the
place of First Nations and QuŽbec, as well as explore public policies towards
health-care, welfare, religion, gender and sexuality, crime, the environment,
multiculturalism, and war and peace.
We will visit the web a great deal in class, host a guest speaker or
two, try to imitate the great Canadian thespian William Shatner, and might É
even É manage É a field-trip to É Victoria B.C. (but no promises, eh). http://www.willamette.edu/~sbasu/IDS101/OhCanadaF09.htm |