Jutta Ernst Book order

Geological in origin, 'Pacific Rim' refers to a zone of high tectonic stresses along the margins of the Pacific Ocean, thus conceptually tying together the Americas, the islands of the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand as well as Southeast and Northeast Asia. The term gained wider currency in the 1970s, when the political and economic situation of the United States necessitated a strategic reorientation in terms of spatial imaginaries and, concomitantly, the coinage of a new transnational discourse. While the notion of the Pacific Rim has seeped from the realms of politics, business, and trade into cultural studies, scholars increasingly challenge its logic of linkage along borders and develop alternative conceptions favouring, for instance, an archipelagic approach. The volume contributes to the current debate by offering expert geohistorical and theoretical discussions plus in-depth analyses of cultural products including photography, film, TV, music, and literature.

The present volume responds to the paradoxical situation that, in recent decades, U. S. realism and naturalism have been treated as “a stepchild of American literary history” (Fluck), but have also generated an enormous body of innovative scholarship. In keeping with the collection’s title, the contributors both react and add to the revisionist endeavor of this new and exciting material. Modes of inquiry include meta-analyses, readings of little-known texts, revaluations of canonical authors, alternative takes on naturalism’s relationship to genre, and transdisciplinary perspectives. Subjects covered range from William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Henry James, Jack London, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser to Robert Frost, Richard Wright, and Edward Steichen.

Canada's ideological concept of the mosaic has considerably changed over the years. Whereas, until the 1980s, it was predominantly white and European in origin, it has since become much more colourful with Asian, African, Caribbean, First Nations, and other facets being added. Moreover, there is the at times seemingly contradictory tendency towards border crossings and the dissolution of boundaries. Many recent Canadian cultural products are by artists who work from a sense of belonging to more than one location, space, or culture. This collection of essays brings together scholars from various disciplines who investigate the geographical, sociological, political, economic, literary, and cultural implications attached to the concept of the Canadian mosaic in an age of mobility and globalization. Cutting across nationally framed area studies, the contributors address both theoretical questions and practical examples that range from the applicability of the terms 'postcolonial' and 'imperial' to Canada over ethnic and post-ethnic forms of literary expression to Canadian popular culture.