Canadian Literature
DisciplineLiterature
LanguageEnglish, French
Edited byLaura Moss
Publication details
History1959–present
Publisher
University of British Columbia (Canada)
FrequencyQuarterly
Standard abbreviations
ISO 4Can. Lit.
Indexing
ISSN0008-4360
Links

Canadian Literature is a quarterly peer-reviewed journal of criticism and review, founded in 1959 and owned by the University of British Columbia. The journal publishes articles of criticism and reviews about Canadian literature in English and French by Canadian and international scholars. It also publishes around 24 original poems a year and occasional interviews with writers. Each issue contains an extensive book reviews section. Rather than focusing on a single theoretical approach, Canadian Literature contains articles on all subjects relating to writers and writing in Canada.[1] Each issue contains content from a range of contributors, and the journal has been described as "critically eclectic".[2]

Publication

Canadian Literature publishes both general and special issues. The general issues deal with a range of periods and topics, while the special issues focus on more specific topics, including issues on themes such as travel, ethnicity, women's writing, multiculturalism, and Indigenous literature; particular genres such as Canadian poetry, historical novels; life writing, and speculative fiction; or the work of prominent authors of Canadian literature such as Thomas King, P.K. Page, or Leonard Cohen.[3][4][5]

The journal's average length is 208 pages. Canadian Literature reaches a global readership and is distributed in print in Canada, US, and twenty-five other countries.[6] Institutions make up the majority of its print subscription base, which is largely made up of university and college libraries. In 2007, Canadian Literature's subscriber base was 45% Canadian, 36% American and 19% international.[7] The journal's back catalogue of issues is openly accessible through its website, which also houses original resources such as the CanLit Guides educational project, the CanLit Poets database, interviews, opinions, and other content. In 2013-14, the journal's website had 452,237 visitors and its articles were downloaded 193,506 times.[8]

History

Founding and Early History

Canadian Literature was established in the autumn of 1958 by Roy Daniells and George Woodcock at the University of British Columbia. The first issue appeared in summer 1959[9] to skeptical reception because of a general belief that Canada had no national literature; some critics predicted that the journal would run out of material after only a few issues.[7] Initially, editor George Woodcock intended that Canadian Literature would be fully bilingual in French and English, but due to the lack of French submissions, after ten years of publication French-language material never rose above 10% of an issue's content.[7] At the time of its foundation, Canadian Literature was the first and only quarterly entirely devoted to the discussion and criticism of Canadian writing and literature.[10]

Although the position of editor eventually went to George Woodcock, the university's first choice was a bibliographer, UBC's only specialist in Canadian literature, Reginald Watters; the position was offered to Woodcock after Watters decided to accept a fellowship in Australia.[11] As editor, Woodcock strove to keep the journal from being purely academic,[12] instead adopting a tone "serious but not academic, popular but not journalistic, contextual more than textual" (Fetherling).[13] As the first journal dedicated to the study of Canadian writers and writing, Canadian Literature supported the "newly institutionalized field of Canadian literature" during a period of increasing cultural nationalism in Canada.[14] Woodcock later attributed Canadian Literature's success to having arrived "at the right moment in the development of a Canadian literary tradition, and created its own ground swell of critical activity."[15]

Peer Review and Expanded Focus

Woodcock resigned from the editorship in 1977, having edited 73 issues of the journal.[16] After Woodcock's retirement, the University of British Columbia invited William H. New, who had been an assistant editor since 1965, to act as editor. Under New's editorship, the journal "often placed the Canadian within the broader Commonwealth field" of postcolonial criticism.[17] New chose to give priority to First Nations, Asian Canadian, Caribbean Canadian and other minority literatures, which previously had been under-represented in Canadian literary criticism. For example, in 1985 New had Joseph Pivato co-edit an issue devoted to Italian-Canadian writers (number 106), and in 1990 he edited the first special issue on Indigenous literatures in Canada, titled Native Writers & Canadian Writing (no. 124-125, published the same year as a book by University of British Columbia Press).[18] New's work as the journal's editor has been described as "pioneer[ing] in changing preconceptions about Canadian writing throughout the 1980s" and the Canadian literary canon.[19] New also set up a peer review process for the journal, with the goal of drawing readership from both general and scholarly audiences.[7] New retired as editor in 1995, having edited 72 issues.[7]

Editorial Board and Academic Presence

Between 1995 and 2003, Eva-Marie Kröller was the editor.[20] In addition to producing thirty-four issues, Kröller raised the journal's reputation worldwide by establishing an international editorial board made up of Canadian and international scholars. She refined the peer-review process for article submissions: currently, articles are assessed by two expert readers who are at arm's length from the author, whose name they do not know. In turn, their names are not revealed to the author (double-blind peer review). During Kröller's editorship, Canadian Literature fortified its commitment to Canadian francophone writers by appointing its first Associate Editor specifically for francophone writing, Michel Rocheleau. Under Associate Editor Réjean Beaudoin's guidance, Canadian Literature published several special issues featuring a majority of French content, such as "Littérature Francophone hors-Québec / Francophone Writing Outside Quebec."[7]

Design Changes and Resources

In 1995, the journal underwent major design changes: it moved from plain beige covers to coloured, changed to a narrower trim, and added more pages to each issue in order to accommodate an expanded focus on themes such as postcolonialism, poetics, cultural history, and multiculturalism.[20] The journal also continued publishing original poems by Canadian writers.[10]

In 2003, Laurie Ricou, an ecocritic and specialist in the literature of the Pacific Northwest who had been either an associate or acting editor of Canadian Literature since 1983, became the journal's editor. In addition to publishing a range of special issues, Ricou oversaw the relaunch of Canadian Literature's website and the creation of the CanLit Poets resource. Ricou's term ended in 2007.

Online Presence and Contemporary History

In 2007, Margery Fee, a specialist in Indigenous literatures and Canadian literature and language, became the journal's fifth editor.[21] During Fee's editorship, Canadian Literature made its back catalogue of issues openly accessible through the journal's website, and in 2012 launched the CanLit Guides open-access online educational resource, which uses archival material from the journal to teach students of Canadian literature about academic writing and reading.

Laura Moss is the journal's sixth and most recent editor, having taken over from Fee in 2015. In recent years, Canadian Literature has published special issues on topics such as Indigenous literature, Asian Canadian critique, the literature of Vancouver, global perspectives on Canadian literature, as well as issues supporting the work of emerging scholarship and graduate students.[22] Moss's work as editor has sought "to ensure that the journal continues to be vital to a wide readership," keeping in Canadian Literature's tradition of critical eclecticism while emphasizing the "social utility" of Canadian literary criticism and the "journal as a space to speak freely, debate passionately, think safely, question vigorously, argue vehemently, and express contentious opinion."[23]

Anniversary Celebrations

Canadian Literature celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2009 by holding a four-day gala from September 30 to October 3, 2009.[24] It included a two-day conference entitled "The Future of Canadian literature / Canadian Literature" featuring talks by Canadian writers and scholars Thomas King, Roch Carrier, Steven Galloway and Aritha Van Herk, along with presentations and short talks by Canadian and international academics and graduate students.

The conference was followed by the launches of Sherrill Grace's book On the Art of Being Canadian, published by UBC Press and From A Speaking Place: Writings from the First Fifty Years of Canadian Literature, edited by W. H. New, and published by Ronsdale Press.[24] A silent art auction to support undergraduate students interning at Canadian Literature included pieces donated by Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Dennis Lee, Thomas King, Patrick Lane, Joni Mitchell, and Fred Wah.

Canadian Literature's 60th anniversary was celebrated in 2019 with a reading emceed by the poetry editor, Phinder Dulai, featuring Jordan Abel, Sonnet L’Abbé, Daphne Marlatt, Cecily Nicholson, and Shazia Hafiz Ramji, followed by the awarding of the 60th Anniversary Graduate Student Essay Prize.[25]

Editors

CanLit Guides

CanLit Guides is an online, open-access, and flexible educational resource created and maintained by Canadian Literature.[26] The project is designed to supplement classroom learning and assist students and educators to critically engage with Canadian writing while promoting independent study. The website offers a variety of content composed of textbook-style modular “Chapters” that are organized into larger thematic “Guides” and available for users to curate into customized reading lists.[27] The Chapters and Guides cover topics of importance to studying, reading, contextualizing, and writing about Canadian literature, including on literary theory; literary, cultural, and political history; specific authors and works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama; and skills-based research and composition topics. The CanLit Guides draws from Canadian Literature’s journal archives of articles, editorials, reviews, and poetry in its content. The chapters and activities are freely accessible to the public and published to support learning in undergraduate and advanced high school levels.

In 2018, CanLit Guides expanded by launching new peer-reviewed Chapters written by external specialists from across Canada and internationally.[28] The CanLit Guides website serves a wide international user base that has gradually expanded from ~18,000 users in its inaugural year to now receiving roughly a quarter of a million visits annually from 75,000 users in 184 countries.[29]

Awards

In 1988, Canadian Literature became the only journal to win the Gabrielle Roy Prize for best English book-length studies in Canadian and Québec literary criticism.[30] The US-based Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) presented Eva-Marie Kröller with a Distinguished Editor award in 2004 in recognition of her work with Canadian Literature.[31] In 2004, William H. New was awarded the Governor General's International Award for Canadian Studies.[32] In 2006, Eva-Marie Kröller and Laurie Ricou joined W. H. New, who was elected in 1986, as Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada,[33][34] and Margery Fee became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2017.[35] In 2007, the Governor General named New an Officer of the Order of Canada.[36] In 2009, Canadian Literature won a Canadian Online Publishing Award for Best Cross Platform for their poetry archive CanLit Poets.[37] In 2019, the Canadian Association of Learned Journals awarded the journal the Scholarly and Research Communication Innovation Award for its CanLit Guides project.[38]

The publication of Canadian Literature is assisted by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council[39] the UBC Faculty of Arts, and acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Magazine Fund towards web enhancement.[40]

Abstracting and Indexing

The journal is indexed by, among others, Canadian Magazine Index, Canadian Periodical Index, European Reference Index for the Humanities, Humanities International Complete, and the MLA International Bibliography. It is indexed and abstracted by EBSCO, PROQUEST, and ABES.[41]

Notes

  1. ↑ Woodcock, George. Editorial Archived 2011-07-06 at the Wayback Machine, Canadian Literature 1. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
  2. ↑ "Canadian Literature / Litterature Canadienne." Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. Ed. W.H. New. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. Print.
  3. ↑ "161-162 On Thomas King (1999)". Canadian Literature. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  4. ↑ "50 Poetry of P. K. Page (1971)". Canadian Literature. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  5. ↑ "34 Views of Leonard Cohen (1967)". Canadian Literature. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  6. ↑ Canadian Literature Archived 2011-09-05 at the Wayback Machine, Magazine Association of BC website. Retrieved 2011-03-09.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Potter, Laura. "A Short History of Canadian Literature." From A Speaking Place: Writings from the First Fifty Years of Canadian Literature. Eds. W.H. New et al. Vancouver: Ronsdale, 2009.
  8. ↑ Moss, Laura (2014). "Auditing, Counting, and Tracking CanLit". Canadian Literature. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  9. ↑ Wynne Francis. "The Expanding Spectrum" (Book Chapter). Canadian Literature. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
  10. 1 2 "Canadian Literature." The Concise Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Ed. William Toye. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2001.
  11. ↑ Klinck, Carl F. Giving Canada a Literary History. Ed. Sandra Djwa. Ottawa: Carleton UP for U of Western Ontario. Cited in Fetherling, Douglas. The Gentle Anarchist: a Life of George Woodcock. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1998.
  12. ↑ Doyle, Mike. "Working with George Woodcock." Making Waves: Reading BC and Pacific Northwest Literature. Ed. Trevor Carolan. Vancouver: Anvil / University of the Fraser Valley P, 2010.
  13. ↑ Fetherling, Douglas. The Gentle Anarchist: a Life of George Woodcock. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1998.
  14. ↑ Sugars, Cynthia Conchita (2016). The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature. Oxford UP. p. 762.
  15. ↑ Woodcock, George. Beyond the Blue Mountains: An Autobiography. Markham, ON: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1987. cited in Potter, Laura. "A Short History of Canadian Literature." From A Speaking Place: Writings from the First Fifty Years of Canadian Literature. Eds. W.H. New et al. Vancouver: Ronsdale, 2009.
  16. ↑ "Canadian Literature (periodical)". The Canadian Encyclopedia,
  17. ↑ Brydon, Diana, and Bruno Cornellier. (2016). The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature. New York: Oxford UP. p. 762.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  18. ↑ Hulan, Renee, and Linda Warley. (2012). "Is This the Indian You Had in Mind?" Thomas King: Works and Impact. Edited by Eva Gruber. Rochester: Camden House. p. 115.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  19. ↑ Howells, Coral Ann (2012). "Rewriting Tradition: Literature, History, and Changing Narratives of English Canada since the 1970s." Unruly Penelopes and the Ghosts: Narratives of English Canada. Edited by Eva Darias-Beautell. Wilfrid Laurier UP.
  20. 1 2 William Toye (1 January 2001). The Concise Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Oxford University Press. p. 65. ISBN 978-0-19-541523-0.
  21. ↑ Canadian Literature: About Archived 2010-12-07 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
  22. ↑ ""Back Issues: 2010-Present." Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review". Canadian Literature. Retrieved 2019-10-29.
  23. ↑ Moss, Laura (2015). "Canadian Literature 6.0".
  24. 1 2 "Journal that has helped define Canadian literature turns 50". Vancouver Sun, October 3, 2009. Rebecca Wigold
  25. ↑ "Canadian Literature at 60: How CanLit Works | •La littérature canadienne à 60 ans : Réception " comment fonctionne CanLit ? " | Congress 2019". www.congress2019.ca. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  26. ↑ "CanLit Guides - University of the Fraser Valley (UFV)". www.ufv.ca. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  27. ↑ Fladd, Nadine (2016-06-30). "From the CanLit Guides Workshop to the Writing Centre: Using the Think-Aloud Protocol as a Tool for Peer Review". Writing and Communication Centre. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  28. ↑ "CanLit Guides at Congress: Launch Event and Roundtable". Canadian Literature. 24 May 2018. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  29. ↑ McCormack, Brendan (September 9, 2019). "Statistically Speaking… Tracking CanLit Guides Traffic | CanLit Guides". canlitguides.ca. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  30. ↑ The Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures: The ACQL Literary Prize recipients.. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
  31. ↑ Council of Editors of Learned Journals: Distinguished Editor Award Winners. Archived 2012-01-03 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
  32. ↑ Governor General's International Award for Canadian Studies Award Winners Archived 2011-05-18 at the Wayback Machine, International Council for Canadian Studies. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
  33. ↑ All Fellows Archived 2011-07-06 at the Wayback Machine, Royal Society of Canada. Retrieved 2011-03-09.
  34. ↑ History Archived 2010-12-07 at the Wayback Machine, Canadian Literature. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
  35. ↑ Barn, Allison. "Eight faculty members named Royal Society of Canada fellows". The Ubyssey. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  36. ↑ Governor General Announces New Appointments to the Order of Canada, Order of Canada Archives, 20 February 2007. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
  37. ↑ 2009 Finalists Archived 2011-07-08 at the Wayback Machine, Canadian Online Publishing Awards. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
  38. ↑ "The winner of the 2019 Scholarly and Research Communication Award | Canadian Association of Learned Journals". www.calj-acrs.ca. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  39. ↑ 2008 SSCRC grant results Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine,
  40. ↑ Publications Assistance Program 2009-2010 Funding, Canadian Heritage.
  41. ↑ "About". Canadian Literature. Retrieved 24 October 2019.
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