Publication
Canadian Literature publishes both general and special issues. The general issues deal with a range of periods and topics, while the special issues focus on more specific topics, including issues on themes such as travel, ethnicity, women's writing, multiculturalism, and Indigenous literature; particular genres such as Canadian poetry, historical novels; life writing, and speculative fiction; or the work of prominent authors of Canadian literature such as Thomas King, P.K. Page, or Leonard Cohen. [3] [4] [5]
The journal's average length is 208 pages. Canadian Literature reaches a global readership and is distributed in print in Canada, US, and twenty-five other countries. [6] Institutions make up the majority of its print subscription base, which is largely made up of university and college libraries. In 2007, Canadian Literature's subscriber base was 45% Canadian, 36% American and 19% international. [7] The journal's back catalogue of issues is openly accessible through its website, which also houses original resources such as the CanLit Guides educational project, the CanLit Poets database, interviews, opinions, and other content. In 2013-14, the journal's website had 452,237 visitors and its articles were downloaded 193,506 times. [8]
History
Founding and Early History
Canadian Literature was established in the autumn of 1958 by Roy Daniells and George Woodcock at the University of British Columbia. The first issue appeared in summer 1959 [9] to skeptical reception because of a general belief that Canada had no national literature; some critics predicted that the journal would run out of material after only a few issues. [7] Initially, editor George Woodcock intended that Canadian Literature would be fully bilingual in French and English, but due to the lack of French submissions, after ten years of publication French-language material never rose above 10% of an issue's content. [7] At the time of its foundation, Canadian Literature was the first and only quarterly entirely devoted to the discussion and criticism of Canadian writing and literature. [10]
Although the position of editor eventually went to George Woodcock, the university's first choice was a bibliographer, UBC's only specialist in Canadian literature, Reginald Watters; the position was offered to Woodcock after Watters decided to accept a fellowship in Australia. [11] As editor, Woodcock strove to keep the journal from being purely academic, [12] instead adopting a tone "serious but not academic, popular but not journalistic, contextual more than textual" (Fetherling). [13] As the first journal dedicated to the study of Canadian writers and writing, Canadian Literature supported the "newly institutionalized field of Canadian literature" during a period of increasing cultural nationalism in Canada. [14] Woodcock later attributed Canadian Literature's success to having arrived "at the right moment in the development of a Canadian literary tradition, and created its own ground swell of critical activity." [15]
Peer Review and Expanded Focus
Woodcock resigned from the editorship in 1977, having edited 73 issues of the journal. [16] After Woodcock's retirement, the University of British Columbia invited William H. New, who had been an assistant editor since 1965, to act as editor. Under New's editorship, the journal "often placed the Canadian within the broader Commonwealth field" of postcolonial criticism. [17] New chose to give priority to First Nations, Asian Canadian, Caribbean Canadian and other minority literatures, which previously had been under-represented in Canadian literary criticism. For example, in 1985 New had Joseph Pivato co-edit an issue devoted to Italian-Canadian writers (number 106), and in 1990 he edited the first special issue on Indigenous literatures in Canada, titled Native Writers & Canadian Writing (no. 124-125, published the same year as a book by University of British Columbia Press). [18] New's work as the journal's editor has been described as "pioneer[ing] in changing preconceptions about Canadian writing throughout the 1980s" and the Canadian literary canon. [19] New also set up a peer review process for the journal, with the goal of drawing readership from both general and scholarly audiences. [7] New retired as editor in 1995, having edited 72 issues. [7]
Editorial Board and Academic Presence
Between 1995 and 2003, Eva-Marie Kröller was the editor. [20] In addition to producing thirty-four issues, Kröller raised the journal's reputation worldwide by establishing an international editorial board made up of Canadian and international scholars. She refined the peer-review process for article submissions: currently, articles are assessed by two expert readers who are at arm's length from the author, whose name they do not know. In turn, their names are not revealed to the author (double-blind peer review). During Kröller's editorship, Canadian Literature fortified its commitment to Canadian francophone writers by appointing its first Associate Editor specifically for francophone writing, Michel Rocheleau. Under Associate Editor Réjean Beaudoin's guidance, Canadian Literature published several special issues featuring a majority of French content, such as "Littérature Francophone hors-Québec / Francophone Writing Outside Quebec." [7]
Design Changes and Resources
In 1995, the journal underwent major design changes: it moved from plain beige covers to coloured, changed to a narrower trim, and added more pages to each issue in order to accommodate an expanded focus on themes such as postcolonialism, poetics, cultural history, and multiculturalism. [20] The journal also continued publishing original poems by Canadian writers. [10]
In 2003, Laurie Ricou, an ecocritic and specialist in the literature of the Pacific Northwest who had been either an associate or acting editor of Canadian Literature since 1983, became the journal's editor. In addition to publishing a range of special issues, Ricou oversaw the relaunch of Canadian Literature's website and the creation of the CanLit Poets resource. Ricou's term ended in 2007.
Online Presence and Contemporary History
In 2007, Margery Fee, a specialist in Indigenous literatures and Canadian literature and language, became the journal's fifth editor. [21] During Fee's editorship, Canadian Literature made its back catalogue of issues openly accessible through the journal's website, and in 2012 launched the CanLit Guides open-access online educational resource, which uses archival material from the journal to teach students of Canadian literature about academic writing and reading.
Laura Moss is the journal's sixth and most recent editor, having taken over from Fee in 2015. In recent years, Canadian Literature has published special issues on topics such as Indigenous literature, Asian Canadian critique, the literature of Vancouver, global perspectives on Canadian literature, as well as issues supporting the work of emerging scholarship and graduate students. [22] Moss's work as editor has sought "to ensure that the journal continues to be vital to a wide readership," keeping in Canadian Literature's tradition of critical eclecticism while emphasizing the "social utility" of Canadian literary criticism and the "journal as a space to speak freely, debate passionately, think safely, question vigorously, argue vehemently, and express contentious opinion." [23]
Anniversary Celebrations
Canadian Literature celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2009 by holding a four-day gala from September 30 to October 3, 2009. [24] It included a two-day conference entitled "The Future of Canadian literature / Canadian Literature" featuring talks by Canadian writers and scholars Thomas King, Roch Carrier, Steven Galloway and Aritha Van Herk, along with presentations and short talks by Canadian and international academics and graduate students.
The conference was followed by the launches of Sherrill Grace's book On the Art of Being Canadian, published by UBC Press and From A Speaking Place: Writings from the First Fifty Years of Canadian Literature, edited by W. H. New, and published by Ronsdale Press. [24] A silent art auction to support undergraduate students interning at Canadian Literature included pieces donated by Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Dennis Lee, Thomas King, Patrick Lane, Joni Mitchell, and Fred Wah.
Canadian Literature's 60th anniversary was celebrated in 2019 with a reading emceed by the poetry editor, Phinder Dulai, featuring Jordan Abel, Sonnet L’Abbé, Daphne Marlatt, Cecily Nicholson, and Shazia Hafiz Ramji, followed by the awarding of the 60th Anniversary Graduate Student Essay Prize. [25]
CanLit Guides
CanLit Guides is an online, open-access, and flexible educational resource created and maintained by Canadian Literature. [26] The project is designed to supplement classroom learning and assist students and educators to critically engage with Canadian writing while promoting independent study. The website offers a variety of content composed of textbook-style modular “Chapters” that are organized into larger thematic “Guides” and available for users to curate into customized reading lists. [27] The Chapters and Guides cover topics of importance to studying, reading, contextualizing, and writing about Canadian literature, including on literary theory; literary, cultural, and political history; specific authors and works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama; and skills-based research and composition topics. The CanLit Guides draws from Canadian Literature’s journal archives of articles, editorials, reviews, and poetry in its content. The chapters and activities are freely accessible to the public and published to support learning in undergraduate and advanced high school levels.
In 2018, CanLit Guides expanded by launching new peer-reviewed Chapters written by external specialists from across Canada and internationally. [28] The CanLit Guides website serves a wide international user base that has gradually expanded from ~18,000 users in its inaugural year to now receiving roughly a quarter of a million visits annually from 75,000 users in 184 countries. [29]
Awards
In 1988, Canadian Literature became the only journal to win the Gabrielle Roy Prize for best English book-length studies in Canadian and Québec literary criticism. [30] The US-based Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) presented Eva-Marie Kröller with a Distinguished Editor award in 2004 in recognition of her work with Canadian Literature. [31] In 2004, William H. New was awarded the Governor General's International Award for Canadian Studies. [32] In 2006, Eva-Marie Kröller and Laurie Ricou joined W. H. New, who was elected in 1986, as Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, [33] [34] and Margery Fee became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2017. [35] In 2007, the Governor General named New an Officer of the Order of Canada. [36] In 2009, Canadian Literature won a Canadian Online Publishing Award for Best Cross Platform for their poetry archive CanLit Poets. [37] In 2019, the Canadian Association of Learned Journals awarded the journal the Scholarly and Research Communication Innovation Award for its CanLit Guides project. [38]
The publication of Canadian Literature is assisted by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council [39] the UBC Faculty of Arts, and acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Magazine Fund towards web enhancement. [40]
George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, a philosopher, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet and published several volumes of travel writing. In 1959 he was the founding editor of the journal Canadian Literature which was the first academic journal specifically dedicated to Canadian writing. He is most commonly known outside Canada for his book Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962).
Frankland Wilmot Davey, FRSC is a Canadian poet and scholar.
Daphne Marlatt, born Buckle, CM, is a Canadian poet and novelist who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Joanne Arnott is a Canadian writer.
Stuart Ross is a Canadian fiction writer, poet, editor, and creative-writing instructor.
Douglas George Fetherling is a Canadian poet, novelist, and cultural commentator. One of the most prolific figures in Canadian letters, he has written or edited more than fifty books, including a dozen volumes of poetry, five book-length fictions, and a memoir. He lives in Vancouver. He has been the weekly literary columnist at five metropolitan newspapers and several national magazines. He has been writer-in-residence at Queen's University, the University of Toronto and the University of New Brunswick. He published under the name Douglas Fetherling until 1999, and thereafter under the name George Fetherling, switching to his middle name to honour his father George after recovering from life-saving surgery for the same medical condition that had killed his father.
William Herbert New is a Canadian poet and literary critic. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, he was educated at John Oliver Secondary School, where he received one of the top matriculation exam scores in British Columbia in 1956, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Leeds. He taught English literature at the University of British Columbia from 1965 to 2003, where he was also the Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies from 1975–1977, and an acting head of the English Department. He also was an associate in 1971 at Cambridge University's Clare Hall. On October 5, 2006, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada and was invested October 26, 2007.
Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature is a survey of Canadian literature by Margaret Atwood, one of the best-known Canadian authors. It was first published by House of Anansi in 1972.
The Tamarack Review was a Canadian literary magazine, published from 1956 to 1982. Established and edited by Robert Weaver, other figures associated with the magazine's editorial staff included Anne Wilkinson, William Toye and John Robert Colombo. In addition, Ivon Maclean Owen was among the founding editors. During the early years of the magazine, there was also an editorial advisory board made up of F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith, James Reaney, Alan Crawley, and George Woodcock. The magazine was published on a quarterly basis and had its headquarters in Toronto.
Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature, exploring art, expression and politics inside Cambodia and China, as well as within diasporic East Asian communities. Thien's critically acclaimed novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Rathbones Folio Prize. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.
Keith Maillard is a Canadian-American novelist, poet, and professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia. He moved to Canada in 1970 and became a Canadian citizen in 1976.
Jean Rae Baxter is a Canadian author.
Canadian Notes & Queries is a literary magazine published in Canada on a triannual basis.
Phil Hall is a Canadian poet.
Angela "Angie" Abdou is a Canadian writer of fiction and nonfiction.
Sandra Djwa is a Canadian writer, critic and cultural biographer. Originally from Newfoundland, she moved to British Columbia where she obtained her PhD from the University of British Columbia in 1968. In 1999, she was honored to deliver the Garnett Sedgewick Memorial Lecture in honor of the department's 80th anniversary. She taught Canadian literature in the English department at Simon Fraser University from 1968 to 2005 when she retired as J.S. Woodsworth Resident Scholar, Humanities. She was part of a seventies movement to establish the study of Canadian literature and, in 1973, cofounded the Association for Canadian and Québec Literatures (ACQL). She was Chair of the inaugural meeting of ACQL. She initiated textual studies of the poems of E. J. Pratt in the eighties, was editor of Poetry, "Letters in Canada" for the University of Toronto Quarterly (1980-4), and Chair of Canadian Heads and Chairs of English (1989).
Books in Canada was a monthly magazine that reviewed Canadian literature, published in print form between 1971 and 2008. In its heyday it was the most influential literary magazine in Canada.
Connie Fife was a Canadian Cree poet and editor. She published three books of poetry, and edited several anthologies of First Nations women's writing. Her work appeared in numerous other anthologies and literary magazines.
Gillian Jerome is a Canadian poet, essayist, editor and instructor. She won the City of Vancouver Book Award in 2009 and the ReLit Award for Poetry in 2010. Jerome is a co-founder of Canadian Women In Literary Arts (CWILA), and also serves as the poetry editor for Geist. She is a lecturer in literature at the University of British Columbia and also runs writing workshops at the Post 750 in downtown Vancouver.
Margery Fee is a professor emeritus of English at the University of British Columbia (UBC). From 2015 to 2017, Fee was the Brenda and David McLean Chair In Canadian Studies at UBC. She publishes in the fields of Canadian, postcolonial and Indigenous studies and Canadian English usage and lexicography.
