CDST 350 (Canadian Studies) “LANDSCAPE, MYTH AND MEMORY”
CDST 350 provides a unique view of topics relating to Canada not covered elsewhere in the Faculty of Arts. This year’s course examines landscape, myth and memory in Canada. Drawing from an interdisciplinary scholarship, the course offers both a broad introduction to the study of Canada and a focused exploration of important problems in Canadian history, society and culture. The approach is neither celebratory nor condemnatory; our aim is rather to understand how Canada has been imagined and criticized, commemorated and constructed. By thinking hard about some of the places and stories that are said to typify Canada, we will come to a greater understanding of the profound limits of the national idea in Canada and of the remarkable ties that nevertheless bind a complex state and society.
CDST 450 (Senior Seminar in Canadian Studies)
“mIGRATION: Movement, Memory and Myth in the Development of Canada”
CDST 450 is taught by Graeme Wynn, the McLean Chair in Canadian Studies, to all fourth-year Majors, and to other students with permission. The course has a seminar format, and brings together the knowledge of Canada which students have gained by involving them in research topics. In 2011-12, the course focuses on migration.
Migration is a crucial theme of Canadian development. Migrations by sea or land (across the Bering Land Bridge) brought the first people to the continent, and the Norse voyaged to Newfoundland and Labrador a thousand years ago. Since the turn of the fifteenth century, enormous numbers of people (to say nothing of the animals, birds and plants, the diseases and insects that accompanied them) have crossed oceans and borders to enter this territory. Leaving former abodes (and in most cases friends, families and familiarity) behind, millions have come, alone or in groups of one sort or another, from diverse places and circumstances, to stay awhile, often forever, in “America”. Migrants have recorded, and novelists and poets have imagined, the migrant experience. Descendents of migrants have traced their genealogies back to the distant places of their ancestral origins. Statisticians, economists, demographers, historians, geographers, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and others have probed, pondered, charted and mythologized dimensions of the migrations. All of this only confirms that there are few simple things about the profoundly human and infinitely complex saga constituted by the peopling of Canada. Members of this seminar will explore facets of this marvelous movement, collectively and individually, in ways that respond to personal interests and class needs to develop multidisciplinary perspectives on this fascinating topic.
