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INTERNATIONAL CANADIAN STUDIES INSTITUTE (ICSI) Conference & Reunion 'ICSI
IMPACTS' 15-16 October 2009 Seattle Washington Panel Presentation
CREATING NEW
UNIVERSITY COURSES ON CANADA |
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Associate Professor of Politics, Willamette University |
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Abstract Participation in the ICSI program (in 2007) gave me the impetus for a
new undergraduate liberal arts course on Canada, and also, crucially, enabled
me to identify content and curricular goals. More specifically, the ICSI program made at least three
issues clear to me: 1. That otherwise well-educated
Americans can lack basic information about Canada, its history and politics;
2. That there are significant regional identities
within Canada and also between urban and rural areas, with complementary
connections in America; and 3. That the multifaceted and immersive
study experience is invaluable.
In setting out to develop a course that could address these three
issues, for incoming first-year American undergraduates at my institution, I
turned to information technology and the world wide web. 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 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. It was participation in the ICSI program (in 2007) that gave me the
final impetus to develop a new undergraduate liberal arts course on Canada,
and also, crucially, enabled me to identify content and curricular
goals. More specifically, the
ICSI program made at least three realities clear to me (as a Canadian
academic working in the US): (1) That otherwise well-educated Americans (in
this case my co-participants) 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 |