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This teaching note considers the benefits of including very short stories or "flash fiction" in the (Canadian) literature classroom. Because the genre is relatively new and favors brevity, it can be attractive to students. Teachers can be sure the students will have read the story, or even find the time to have them read entire stories in class. As well, choosing very short works lets us introduce a variety of Canadian authors to our students. We begin by questioning the dominance of context-hunting and theme-searching among young readers, and point out that this mode of reading comes at the expense of an appreciation or serious consideration of form and language. While historical context and themes are of course important to understanding any story, students often privilege the extra-textual over the literary merits of fiction; they are not necessarily reading literature as literature. The latter part of the note zeroes in on classroom experiences we have had while teaching stories by John Gould, Carin Makuz and Douglas Glover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

M.J. Toswell and Anna Czarnowus, eds. Medievalism in English Canadian Literature: From Richardson to Atwood. D.S. Brewer, 2020. 218 pp. Cased. 60 [pounds sterling]/$105. This is an eclectic collection of [...]

An introduction is presented in which editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including Identity Construction in Francophone Canadian literature; work of French-Canadian poets and poetry's effort to resist memory.

There have been increased calls to address the growing mental health concerns of postsecondary students in Canada. Health promotion focuses on prevention and is needed as part of a comprehensive approach to student mental health support, with an emphasis on not just the individual but also the sociocultural environment of postsecondary institutions. The aim was to conduct a scoping review of the literature pertaining to the associations between postsecondary institutional factors and student wellbeing. The review included a comprehensive search strategy, relevance screening and confirmation, and data charting. Overall, 33 relevant studies were identified. Major findings provide evidence that institutional attitudes, institutional (in)action, perceived campus safety, and campus climate are associated with mental wellbeing, suggesting that campus-wide interventions can benefit from continued monitoring and targeting these measures among student populations. Due to the large variability in reporting and measurement of outcomes, the development of standardized measures for measuring institutional-level factors are needed. Furthermore, institutional participation and scaling up established population-level assessments in Canada that can help systematically collect, evaluate, and compare findings across institutions and detect changes in relevant mental health outcomes through time.

The article discusses a recent issue of the journal Canadian Literature, which focuses on the past, present, and future of Canadian comics. The issue, guest edited by Candida Rifkind and Zachary J.A. Rondinelli, features articles by both veteran and new scholars and is based on a virtual symposium on Canadian comics. The articles cover a range of topics, including the representation of Asian Canadian creators, the writing back of Indigenous, Black, and Jewish comics, and the exploration of Indigenous comic book art. The issue also includes historical and material approaches, such as an examination of Martin Vaughn-James's work and an exploration of censorship in Cold War-era Alberta. The volume concludes with a section on the highlights of the virtual symposium, including a roundtable on the preservation of Canadian comics and interviews with notable Canadian comic book artists. Overall, the issue provides valuable perspectives on the history of Canadian comics and offers new insights for re-envisioning the field. [Extracted from the article]

Following upon the spurs of Sara Humphreys's I Manifest Destiny 2.0 i (2021) and Christopher Conway and Antoinette Sol's I The Comic Book Western i (2022), both published in the University of Nebraska Press's "Postwestern Horizons" series and both examining global manifestations of the Western in a specific nonliterary medium (video games and comic books, respectively), Joel Deshaye's I The American Western in Canadian Literature i , the latest addition to the University of Calgary Press's "The West" series, moves the critical debate on the Western genre back to literature and takes a "nationalist" approach - in a way. Chapter 4, "From Law to Outlaw: The Second World War, Westerns, and the '40s Pulps", constitutes another highlight of I The American Western in Canadian Literature i . At the same time, Deshaye seeks to trace the development of the Canadian Western, from the fiction of Ralph Connor and H.A. Cody at the beginning of the 20 SP th sp century via 1940s pulp Westerns, postmodern Westerns from the late 1960s through the early 1990s, and First Nations perspectives on the genre from the 1990s through the early 2000s, to the contemporary "resurgence" (347) of the (post-)Western in Canada in the wake of Robert Kroetsch's I The Man from the Creeks i (1998). [Extracted from the article]

This paper addresses the noticeably low presence of Canadian literature in hemispheric American literary research. The fact that hemispheric literary studies focuses on a comparison of the United States and Spanish America is partly because of Canada's marginal position in the Americas, its lack of identification with the continent, and Canadian scholars' reluctance to engage in hemispheric studies due to their insecurity concerning cultural identity and the discipline's potential imperialistic impulses. By examining a representative history of Canadian literature and several literary studies for intersections and tangencies between Canadian literature and other literatures of the Americas, this paper will demonstrate that there are natural links between them, which make a transnational comparative approach to Canadian literature both legitimate and desirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medievalism in English Canadian Literature from Richardson to Atwood. By M. J. Toswell and Anna Czamowus. D.S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 210. Reviewed by Agnieszka Rzepa (Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz [...]

The CBC operates on a mandate that defines it as a company of content whose vision is to connect Canadians through attractive Canadian content and whose values include serving the Canadian public. This article responds to the questions of how the CBC uses social media to disseminate national literatures, taking a Facebook wall, Canada Reads, as a case study, based on the small stories method (Georgakoupoulou) to analyze narrative activities that are important for recognizing the identity-forging work of their narrator as well as the social fabric of practices that people become involved in, with the objective of discovering if it has created a virtual community of practice (as conceived by Robert V. Kozinets) and if it has achieved, at the same time, the ultimate goal of discussing contemporary Canadian identities and if it has fulfilled its aim to disseminated contemporary regional and national quality content. Methodology: Small Stories, Virtual Communities, and Communities of Practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The American Western in Canadian Literature" by Joel Deshaye is a comprehensive study that explores the presence and significance of the American Western genre in Canadian literature. The book delves into the historical and cultural factors that have shaped the development of the Western genre in Canada, highlighting the lack of a corresponding frontier mythos in the country. Deshaye's research is extensive, providing a valuable resource for those interested in the topic. While the Western genre has shallow roots in Canada, the book offers insights into the few Canadian Western works that exist and their unique perspectives. Despite initial reservations, the reviewer highly recommends the book for its originality and scholarly value. [Extracted from the article]

The article explores the unexamined poetic association between Canadian poet Earle Birney and American poet William Stafford. Birney, a prominent figure in Canadian literature, had a complex relationship with Stafford, as evidenced by inscriptions in their works and possible encounters. The article highlights the importance of investigating biographical and textual connections between writers from different national backgrounds, emphasizing the cross-border exchange that enriches literary studies beyond national boundaries. [Extracted from the article]

There have been increased calls to address the growing mental health concerns of postsecondary students in Canada. Health promotion focuses on prevention and is needed as part of a comprehensive approach to student mental health support, with an emphasis on not just the individual but also the sociocultural environment of postsecondary institutions. The aim was to conduct a scoping review of the literature pertaining to the associations between postsecondary institutional factors and student wellbeing. The review included a comprehensive search strategy, relevance screening and confirmation, and data charting. Overall, 33 relevant studies were identified. Major findings provide evidence that institutional attitudes, institutional (in)action, perceived campus safety, and campus climate are associated with mental wellbeing, suggesting that campus-wide interventions can benefit from continued monitoring and targeting these measures among student populations. Due to the large variability in reporting and measurement of outcomes, the development of standardized measures for measuring institutional-level factors are needed. Furthermore, institutional participation and scaling up established population-level assessments in Canada that can help systematically collect, evaluate, and compare findings across institutions and detect changes in relevant mental health outcomes through time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the processes of integration in Canadian society as represented by three different contemporary ethnic authors – Sharon Bala (The Boat People), Tea Mutonji (Shut up You’re Pretty) and Souvankham Thammavongsa (How to Pronounce Knife), all somewhat translating their transgenerational experiences as immigrants into their works. The negotiation of identities, in their respective works, happens at the margins of the Canadian society – the integral position of the immigrant individual whose marginalized status prescribes the performatives pertaining to class, race and gender. The commodification of this status underscores the shifting nature of Canadianness – as perceived by the margins and the center. The problematics of immigrant identity, its otherness and conditions of integration are represented in a highly ironic and postmodern manner, highlighting the issue of hypocritical enforcement of liberal policies in western societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joel Deshaye, The American Western in Canadian Literature, University of Calgary Press, 2022, 414 pages, ISBN 1773852671, $34.99 (softcover) In England, in the early 1850s, the story circulated in literary [...]