The frontier reality of confronting new conditions, adapting cultural inclinations, and dealing with a volatile environment in an effort to establish and nurture new communities is central to the western Canadian experience. It has shaped many aspects of our heritage, and it is within that context the essays assembled here strive to identify and c …

In the past decade, Jane Ash Poitras, an Indigenous woman from northern Alberta, has emerged as one of the most important Canadian artists of her generation. Raised by a German widow who powdered her dark skin and tried to make her straight hair curl, Poitras did not begin to fully explore her Indigenous roots until adulthood. Seeking out her exten …

Alequiers is the story of a one–hundred–year–old log house on the banks of the Highwood River in Southern Alberta, with particular emphasis on the time that author Mike Schintz and his family spent there. The book details what little is known about Alexander McQueen Weir, the original settler on the site and goes on to describe the changes in …

This book is about the experience of reading–what reading feels like, how it makes people feel, how people read and under what conditions, what drives people to read, and, conversely, what halts the individual in the pursuit of the pleasures of reading. The authors consider reading in all of its richness as they explore readers' relationships wi …

As playwright, actor, director, teacher, mentor, theatre administrator, and critic, Sharon Pollock has played an integral role in the shaping of Canada's national theatre tradition, and she continues to produce new works and to contribute to Canadian theatre as passionately as she has done over the past fifty years. Pollock is nationally and intern …

In Canadian universities in the early 1960s, no courses were offered on Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam. Only the study of Christianity was available, usually in a theology program in a church college or seminary. Today almost every university in North America has a religious studies department that offers courses on Western and Eastern religions as …

This collection of essays provides a historical and contemporary context for Indigenous new media arts practice in Canada. The writers are established artists, scholars, and curators who cover thematic concepts and underlying approaches to new media from a distinctly Indigenous perspective. Through discourse and narrative analysis, the writers disc …

J. B. (Jack) Taylor (1917-1970) was an important figure in the history of Banff and western Canada’s artistic community. Inspired by the locale, Taylor spent his career striving to depict the idea of the mountain, moving over time from traditional representations of nature to an intuitive perception of the essential elements of landscape - rock, …

Marion Nicoll (1909-1985) is a widely acknowledged and important founder of Alberta art and certainly one of a dedicated few that brought abstraction into practice in the province. Her life and career is a story of determination, of dedication to her vision regardless of professional or personal challenges. Nicoll became the first woman instructor …

Architectural practice in post-World War II Canada brought substantial change to the face of the Canadian built environment, led by the contribution of John C. Parkin. As senior partner at the Toronto-based architectural firm John B. Parkin Associates (no relation) from 1947 to the 1970s, Parkin oversaw the creation of a large number of modernist p …

Traditions and Transitions: Curricula for German Studies is a collection of essays by Canadian and international scholars on the topic of why and how the curriculum for post-secondary German studies should evolve. Its twenty chapters, written by international experts in the field of German as a foreign or second language, explore new perspectives …

Eric Cameron is a major contemporary Canadian artist. Born in 1935 in Leicester, England, he arrived in Canada in the 1970s and has taught at the University of Guelph, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and at the University of Calgary. Over the years Cameron has also continued to work in his primary medium, painting, but moved from traditi …

Revisioning Europe :The Films of John Berger and Alain Tanner, is among the few existing English-language discussions of the films made by British novelist John Berger and Swiss film director Alain Tanner. It brings to light a political cinema that was unsentimental about the possibilities of revolutionary struggle and unsparing in its critique of …

Sustainability, environmental impact, green design, urban sprawl - all terms that have, in recent years, become part of the collective consciousness in the ongoing dialogue about climate change and global warming. Enabling Solutions for Sustainable Living presents student work that explores these issues and exemplifies the application of "enabling …

Music education in Canada is a vast enterprise that encompasses teaching and learning in thousands of public and private schools, community groups, and colleges and universities. It involves participants from infancy to the elderly in formal and informal settings. Nevertheless, as post-secondary faculties of music and programs are growing significa …

This study marks a major step in making collaboration between seniors, academic researchers, and community researchers a reality. Many aging adults are motivated to undertake research projects in later life or even return to university after retirement. Grey Matters is the result of a pilot project developed to study the effectiveness of collaborat …

I Remember Laurier is the story—actually, thirty-seven stories—of the little university that could, told by some of those who devoted themselves to transforming the school from its modest beginnings into a superb small liberal arts college, and in turn to the university whose growth, diversification, research, and partnerships characterize it t …

"Not Drowning but Waving...gestures both at the difficulties faced by feminists in the humanities in Canada and at the possibilities of hope, of new 'waves' of feminism."

Twenty-two essays explore topics such as feminism in the liberal arts disciplines; the relationship of the liberal arts to the larger university; the costs and rewards for women in …

The eight papers in this volume were originally presented at the centennial conference on Franz Kafka held at the University of Calgary in October 1983. As diverse in approach and methodology as these papers are “the general drift of the volume is away from Germanistik towards ‘state-of-the-art’ methods.”

The opening articles by Charles Bern …

Through the ages, coins have been more than a common standard or a means of exchange between peoples for goods and services. The development of coinage gave men freedom to move beyond their communities, served as a propaganda tool for advancing armies and visually showed people the source of politics which governed their lives. Today, these same bi …

The Young, the Restless, and the Dead captures the spirit of Canadian filmmakers through interviews with the most accomplished and dynamic of yesterday’s, today’s, and tomorrow’s film greats. Funny, provocative, and enlightening, the filmmakers reflect on their careers and explore with the interviewers the issues that challenge them.
This b …

This is an exciting new collection sure to create ripples throughout Canadian film studies … an important new addition to the literature on Canadian screen culture. - Zoë Druick, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University

Rain/Drizzle/Fog : Film and Television in Atlantic Canada is the first scholarly study of film and television in Atlanti …

More than any other book that I can think of, Bronze Inside and Out puts a human face on Western art - indeed, all art. It invites us to ponder the very nature of the creative process.
From the foreword by Brian W. Dippie, University of Victoria

Bronze Inside and Out is a literary biography of sculptor Bob Scriver, written by his wife, Mary Strach …

Shortlisted for the 2008 Pat Lowther Award, the 2008 Lampman Scott Award and the 2008 ReLit Awards

Imagining the lives of nineteenth-century women asylum patients, Nadine McInnis charts her descent into, and recovery from, depression.

In the afterword to Two Hemispheres, McInnis describes her first encounter with the remarkable photographs that illus …

The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) was created in 1939 to produce, distribute, and promote Canadian cinema both domestically and abroad. During the early years of the NFB, its creative output was largely informed by the turbulent political and social climate the world was facing. World War II, Communism, unemployment, the role of labour unions …

What comes to mind when we think of the Old West? Often, our conceptions are accompanied by as much mythology and mystique as fact or truth. What are the differences in how the Canadian and American Wests are perceived? Did they develop differently or are they just perceived differently? How do our conceptions influence our perceptions?

A companion …

The French Play is a step-by-step guide to the challenging process of producing and directing a foreign-language play with English-speaking student actors. Using his own student productions of French-language plays as models, Les Essif leads readers through the process of exploring drama and building a successful play with an eye toward applying re …

The application of computing technology to the arts and humanities has been a topic of increased focus in the post-secondary environment. With growing understanding of how these applications can serve the ongoing mission of humanities research, teaching, and training, technology is playing a larger role than ever before in these disciplines.

Arisin …

With Home/Bodies, Wendy Schissel brings together a diverse range of voices which explore the concepts of home, gender, and identity. The metaphorical geographies of bodies, places, and spaces are the backdrop for such topics as: transgendered identities; young people and sexual health; kinetic art and disability; adolescent girls and consumer socie …

Canadian writer and journalist Lily Lewis is not a household name. In fact, she never was. The work Lewis is best known for - "Montreal Letter," a popular column which appeared in the Toronto newspaper The Week in the late 1880s - was written under the pseudonym Louis Lloyd. In 1888, Lewis and fellow writer Sara Jeannette Duncan embarked on a journ …

The Eloquence of Mary Astell makes an important contribution to the knowledge and understanding of the important role that women, and one woman in particular, played in the history of rhetoric. Mary Astell (1666-1731) was an unusually perceptive thinker and writer during the time of the Enlightenment. Here, author Christine Sutherland explores her …

This collection of addresses presented at the Official Inauguration of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Calgary, in February 1978, is edited by the Dean and the Associate Dean of the Faculty. As well as the essays, the collection includes biographies and photographs of the contributors and a comprehensive index. Robertson Davies, in the ina …

What is “Religious Studies” and what is its future in Atlantic Canada? How have universities founded by Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations, and public universities, differed as they approached the study of religious life and traditions?

Religious Studies in Atlantic Canada surveys the history and place of the study of religion within C …

How do we define "culture?" To what uses should such a concept be put? What costs and benefits do these uses entail? In this volume, Adam Muller brings together contributions from a diverse group of established and emerging scholars each of whom probes the nature of the culture concept while shedding light on its many different applications and con …

Calgary was a boomtown of 50,000 people in 1912, the year the Lougheed Building and the adjacent Grand Theatre were built. The fanfare and anticipation surrounding their opening marked the beginning of a golden era in the city's history. The Lougheed quickly became Calgary's premier corporate address, and the state-of-the-art Grand Theatre the hub …

Elegant, surreal, erotic, ecological, autobiographical, perpetual, populist, comic! These are the words that describe the work of noted Regina sculptor Victor Cicansky. The book celebrates the voice, life, and art of this prolific prairie-based artist. Nature, tamed or wild, informs everything he makes; worlds we recognize with pleasure, where cabb …

Building/Art discusses changing ideas about the nature and function of the city as an essential cultural network, one that each of its inhabitants participates in, whether consciously or unconsciously. The city acts as a backdrop to everyday life and influences the ways in which individuals interact with a greater cultural community. How would life …

Magic Off Main chronicles the life and art of Esther Warkov, a visual artist of Jewish heritage who lives in Winnipeg and paints in a surrealistic and postmodern style. It considers Warkov's art through an understanding of her life and the palpable effect her life as a Jewish woman growing up on the Canadian prairies has had on her art.

By tracing t …

Ancestral Portraits is a retrospective of the art and life of Frederick R. McDonald, one of Alberta's most exciting Alberta First Nations artists working today, and a celebration of a rich Cree heritage. With one foot in the world of his ancestral peoples and the other in the realm of contemporary Canadian society, McDonald paints from a unique per …

Few books on Canadian art provide an in-depth look at more than one art form from a variety of practical critical perspectives. Sights of Resistance offers both breadth and depth in an innovative but accessible introduction to Canadian visual culture.

Robert Belton has an impossibly ambitious goal -- to create a single-volume introduction to both vi …

Surrealism was ostensibly directed at the emancipation of the human spirit, but it represented only male aspirations and fantasies until a number of women artists began to redefine its agenda in the later 1930s.The Beribboned Bomb: The Image of Woman in Male Surrealist Art addresses the former, using a "thick description" of the historically specif …

This is the first comprehensive grammar of a non-Indo-European language from the Northwest Caucasian family in a language other than Russian. Kabardian is complex at every level. The language treated is not the literary standard, but Kabardian as it was found in texts and in the mouths of Kabardians. This study is an advance over grammatical sketch …

The book begins with a description of the impression Canada made on Gissing upon his arrival in this country in 1913 at the age of 18. Gissing wanted to be a cowboy. He travelled from Alberta to California and back on horseback, sketching and painting as he went. Examples of this early work appear in the book. Gissing began selling his work and sup …