Canadian Literature at the Crossroads of Language and Culture

Canadian Literature at the Crossroads of Language and Culture is the first book to gather together essays by Barbara Godard, one of the leading and most prolific figures in the field of Canadian studies.

Godard has long been one of the most influential readers of Canadian literature. Much of the force of her work comes from her meticulous and relentless attention to the networks that produce both the texts and events we study and the methods through which we read them. Whether she writes about feminist theory, orality and Native women writers, or the exigencies of the cultural field, she has been instrumental in interrogating, time and time again, the normative ways in which we think about Canadian culture. From the function of literature to the materiality of institutions and periodicals, from the theory and practice of translation to the interrelations between English and French Canadian literatures, her critical interventions have drastically reconceptualized our inherited understandings of Canadian culture as it relates to the world at large.

Edited by Smaro Kamboureli, and with an interview published here for the first time that offers a detailed look at the trajectories of Barbara Godard’s writing and teaching career, Canadian Literature at the Crossroads of Language and Culture is a groundbreaking collection of essays, spanning the period 1987-2003, that will continue to be necessary reading for years to come.