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This seminar aims at looking at a variety of literary coverage of the border and frontier in American and Canadian literature. Many narratives have been closely linked to war, survival, identity crises, slavery, immigration as well as exile and have (re-)gained the interest of many Canadian and U.S.-American writers. In this class we will cover how narratives of border crossings from the eighteenth century to today demonstrate the border is an ambivalent site. For some it appears to be a gateway to freedom and a "promised land" whereas others see the border in terms of Anglo-Canadian nationalism and the suppression of Indigenous people. By looking at a diverse variety of individual encounters with and understandings of the border, students will see that conceptions of the border vary greatly: there is no singular Anglo-Canadian, Indigenous, or Black Canadian conception of the border. The border between Canada is a transforming and transformative space which has shaped U.S.-American and Canadian literature up to the present day. |
