When Canadians think of Saskatchewan--if they think of it at all--they think: flat and boring; a place to drive through, fly-over, or overlook; a mindless gap between the burgeoning cities to the east and to the west.
Yet thanks to its damn-the-critics spirit, Saskatchewan is the birthplace of Canadian socialism, Medicare, and public funding for the arts, creating the foundations of Canada's national identity. It is impossible to imagine Canada without these things and equally as impossible to imagine another part of the country filling Saskatchewan's singular role in the development of the nation.
But within the country's narrative, Saskatchewan continues to be on the margins. In "Overlooking Saskatchewan," twenty-two writers articulate the power and the frustrations of this image, while revealing how the citizens of Saskatchewan continue to lead the way in the creation of culture and the nation's sense of self.

"Making It Like a Man: Canadian Masculinities in Practice" is a collection of essays on the practice of masculinities in Canadian arts and cultures, where to "make it like a man" is to participate in the cultural, sociological, and historical fluidity of ways of being a man in Canada, from the country's origins in nineteenth-century Victorian values to its immersion in the contemporary post-modern landscape.

The book focuses on the ways Canadian masculinities have been performed and represented through five broad themes: colonialism, nationalism, and transnationalism; emotion and affect; ethnic and minority identities; capitalist and domestic politics; and the question of men's relationships with themselves and others. Chapters include studies of well-known and more obscure figures in the Canadian arts and culture scenes, such as visual artist Attila Richard Lukacs; writers Douglas Coupland, Barbara Gowdy, Simon Chaput, Thomas King, and James De Mille; filmmakers Clement Virgo, Norma Bailey, John N. Smith, and Frank Cole; as well as familiar and not-so-familiar tokens of Canadian masculinity such as the hockey hero, the gangsta rapper, the immigrant farmer, and the drag king.

"Making It Like a Man" is the first book of its kind to explore and critique historical and contemporary masculinities in Canada with a special focus on artistic and cultural production and representation. It is concerned with mapping some of the uniquely Canadian places and spaces in the international field of masculinity studies, and will be of interest to academic and culturally informed audiences.