120024 SE Literature Seminar - American/North American Lit./Studies: Transnational Perspectives (2008W)

The parallels and differences in the collective experience of the settlement and cultivation of the prairies in the USA and in Canada will be examined through the study of several books of fiction. Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Englishman's Boy (1996) will offer a perspective on some historical events and their consequences for the different modes of settlement north and south of the 49th parallel. The seminar will also consider the roles of ethnic groups taking possession of the land and will also address the question of the interaction between them and indigenous people. In addition to excerpts from longer texts and some short fiction (by O. E. Rölvaag, Hamlin Garland and Frederick Philip Grove) provided in a Reader the seminar participants will also study Margaret Laurence's A Bird in the House (1970) and Willa Cather's O Pioneers ! (1913).