SoSe 2021 HS Canadian Literature of the North

Canada, a continent-spanning country occupying the northern half of North America, has an intriguing relationship with the north – as a space and as an idea. The north is central to the perception of Canada – both by Canadians and by non-Canadians – and yet the precise contours of an idea that is at once geographical and cultural remains fraught.
In the following course, we will undertake a review of central texts about the Canadian north. We will consider the fascinating ways in which the north exercises a powerful, and at times contradictory, pull on the Canadian imagination as a place of concrete historical and geo-physical reality, but also of mythic power.
Tentative List of Required Reading:
Samuel Hearne, A Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort, in Hudson Bay, to the Northern Ocean (excerpts provided by course instructor), 1795
Robert Service ”The Cremation of Sam McGee,” 1907
Rudy Wiebe, A Discovery of Strangers, 1994
Tomson Highway, The Kiss of the Fur Queen, 1998
Keith Ross Leckie, Coppermine, 2010
Possible work of secondary literature:
Margaret Atwood, Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature, 1995

N.B. Course Requirements:               Course readings
                                                      Presentation on a relevant topic of the student’s choice
                                                      Final essay of approximately 15 - 20 pp.