Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Explores the social, political, economic, cultural, and intellectual environments in which the region of Atlantic Canada has been created and re-imagined over time. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

Within the “family” of Canadian Confederation, Atlantic Canada has long been seen as the “poor cousin.” Traditional historiography has treated the area as a distinct, homogenous region, characterized by economic underdevelopment, high unemployment, over-reliance on transfer payments, and relentless out-migration. Many Canadian media have portrayed the area as a welfare ghetto, peopled predominantly by feckless characters—friendly and beguiling, but constantly requiring handouts from the federal government.

More recent scholarship has begun to challenge this meta-narrative of regional disparity and dependence—moving into new categories of analysis and suggesting new ways to conceptualize the history of Atlantic Canada. Indeed, the idea of a coherent “Atlantic Canada” has itself been challenged as a colonialist concept.  The histories of the various peoples and entities that comprise that “region” have been marked as much by diversity as similarity, with multiple experiences, based on gender, class, race, sexuality, ethnicity, and religion. Yet in the past 150 years, there has often been a shared sense of identity and grievance, emerging from unequal power relationships with central Canada.  So, what is Atlantic Canada: a coherent socio-economic-politico region? an imagined cultural or political landscape? or a bureaucratic invention within which myriad identities have been shaped and re-imagined? Following a thematic approach, this course will interrogate the meaning of “Atlantic Canada” from the mid-19^th century to the early 21^st century.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

As a student of this course, you will:

1. Develop a deep understanding of the conceptualization of Atlantic Canada within the framework of Canada since the mid-nineteenth century.
2. Engage with various theoretical perspectives on regional disparity, political and cultural identities, cultural memory, gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and marginalization.
3. Interrogate the utility of “region” as a concept in assessing shifting power relations in Canada over time and place.
4. Find, interpret, and analyze a variety of sources to examine the complexity of disparities in Atlantic Canada.
5. Develop extensive reading, writing, research, critical thinking, and oral communication skills through independent and collaborative projects.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: