[book cover] The West and Beyond

The West and Beyond New Perspectives on an Imagined Region

edited by Alvin Finkel, Sarah Carter, and Peter Fortna

The West and Beyond explores the state of Western Canadian history, showcasing the research interests of a new generation of scholars while charting new directions for the future and stimulating further interrogation of our past. This dynamic collection encourages dialogue among generations of historians of the West, and among practitioners of diverse approaches to the past. It also reflects a broad range of disciplinary and professional boundaries, offering new ways to understand the West.

Awards

2010, Short-listed, Margaret McWilliams Award in Scholarly History

About the Editors

Alvin Finkel has taught Canadian history at Athabasca University since 1978. His main areas of research and teaching are the history of social policy, labour history, and Western Canadian history. Best known for his co-authorship with Margaret Conrad of the two-volume History of the Canadian Peoples, his other publications include The Social Credit Phenomenon in Alberta and Our Lives: Canada After 1945. His latest book is Social Policy and Practice in Canada: A History. Sarah Carter is professor and Henry Marshall Tory Chair in both the Department of History and Classics and the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. Recent books include The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada and Montana Women Homesteaders: A Field of One’s Own. Peter Fortna is a historical and traditional land use consultant in the Fort McMurray area. His research interests include Aboriginal history, traditional environmental knowledge, and public history. He was also the co-organizer for “The West and Beyond: Historians Past, Present and Future” conference, on which The West and Beyond is based.

Reviews

The essays in this volume are a fascinating snapshot of current scholarship about western Canada and reveal a crop of emerging historians who have expanded the reach of Western Canadian Studies beyond its earlier regional and analytical confines.

Labour/Le Travail

The depth and breadth of the essay in The West and Beyond indicate a renewed vitality in Western Canadian history, reconstituted as a field rooted in a particular geographic space, but at the same time attuned to broader sets of processes and other spaces.

Great Plains Quarterly

Table of Contents

  1. Acknowledgements
  2. Introduction
  3. Part I. Frameworks for Western Canadian History
    1. 1. Critical History in Western Canada 1900-2000 / Gerald Friesen
    2. 2. Vernacular Currents in Western Canadian Historiography: The Passion and Prose of Katherine Hughes, F.G. Roe, and Roy Ito / Lyle Dick
    3. 3. Cree Intellectual Traditions in History / Winona Wheeler
  4. Part II. The Aboriginal West
    1. 4.Visualizing Space, Race, and History in the North: Photographic Narratives of the Athabasca-Mackenzie River Basin / Matt Dyce and James Opp
    2. 5. The Kaleidoscope of Madness: Perceptions of Insanity in British Columbia Aboriginal Populations, 1872-1950 / Kathryn McKay
    3. 6. Space, Temporality, History: Encountering Hauntings in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside / Amber Dean
    4. 7. The Expectations of a Queen: Identity and Race Politics in the Calgary Stampede / Susan L. Joudrey
  5. Part III. The Workers’ West
    1. 8. Capitalist Development, Forms of Labour, and Class Formation in Prairie Canada / Jeffery Taylor
    2. 9. Two Wests, One-and-a-Half Paradigms, and, Perhaps, Beyond / Elizabeth Jameson
    3. 10. Disease as Embodied Praxis: Epidemics, Public Health, and Working-Class Resistance in Winnipeg, 1906-19 / Esyllt W. Jones
    4. 11. Winnipeg’s Moment: The Winnipeg Postal Strike of 1919 / John Willis
  6. Part IV. Viewing the West from the Margins
    1. 12. “Our Negro Citizens”: An Example of Everyday Citizenship Practices / Dan Cui and Jennifer R. Kelly
    2. 13. A Queer-Eye View of the Prairies: Reorienting Western Canadian Histories / Valerie j. Korinek
    3. 14. Human Rights Law and Sexual Discrimination in British Columbia, 1953-84 / Dominique Clément
  7. Part V. Cultural Portrayals of the West
    1. 15. W.L. Morton, Margaret Laurence, and the Writing of Manitoba / Robert Wardhaugh
    2. 16. The Banff Photographic Exchange: Albums, Youth, Skiing, and Memory Making in the 1920s / Lauren Wheeler
    3. 17. Eric Harvie: Without and Within Robert Kroetsch’s Alibi / Robyn Read
    4. 18. “It’s a Landmark in the Community”: The Conservation of Historic Places in Saskatchewan, 1911-2009 / Bruce Dawson
  8. Contributors / Index