Spring 2008: Being Canadian: Explorations in Citizenship and Identity

Full-time, 15 credits (DIAL 390W, 391W, 392W).

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Being Canadian is more than holding a valid passport, sewing our country’s flag on a backpack, or believing in peacekeeping. But what does citizenship mean in a country like ours, with its immense cultural, social, geographic, and economic diversity? This course will actively explore the nature of identity and the tensions surrounding diverse loyalties that arise under the multicultural Canadian mosaic; constitutional and policy challenges posed in defining who is a legal citizen; responsibilities of citizenship and the nature of democratic engagement; and appropriate political, economic, and cultural roles for Canada internationally.

We will use film, music, and writing to probe how and why issues associated with citizenship policy, cultural identity, and democracy form, grow, change and disperse, and explore who we are as Canadians and what we might become as the collective Canada.

FACULTY

Siobhan Ashe is visiting faculty in the Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue at Simon Fraser University.

Mediator and negotiator Tony Penikett is the author of Reconciliation: First Nation treaty Making in British Columbia, Douglas & McIntyre, 2006.