Canadian Multicultural Literature
| Course Code | ENGL-235 |
|---|---|
| Lecture hours per week | 3 |
| Lab hours per week | |
| Course Availability | Open |
| Description | ENG 235: Multicultural Literature offers an introduction to anglophone Canadian literature and its productive yet vexed relationship to Canadian multiculturalism. Based on a close analysis of the evolution of multiculturalism in the early formulations by Pierre Trudeau’s government, and on the subsequent Multiculturalism Act passed by Brian Mulroney’s government in 1988, this course will provide a chronological cross section of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and drama written by diasporic, Canadian, and indigenous Canadian authors from the early 1970s to the present. Course texts will also provide a variety of scholarly and theoretical critiques of multiculturalism, and will thematically explore the following topics: The tensions between defining national unity while maintaining cultural diversity; the ghettoization of minority groups within Canada and their resistance to discrimination; the erasure of indigenous issues within the rhetoric of multiculturalism; the emergence of intersectional feminisms in diasporic women writers. |