This book is the first major study of Canadian women filmmakers since the groundbreaking "Gendering the Nation" (1999). "The Gendered Screen" updates the subject with discussions of important filmmakers such as Deepa Mehta, Anne Wheeler, Mina Shum, Lynne Stopkewich, Lea Pool, and Patricia Rozema, whose careers have produced major bodies of work. It also introduces critical studies of newer filmmakers such as Andrea Dorfman and Sylvia Hamilton and new media video artists.

Feminist scholars are re-examining the ways in which authorship, nationality, and gender interconnect. Contributors to this volume emphasize a diverse feminist study of film that is open, inclusive, and self-critical. Issues of hybridity and transnationality as well as race and sexual orientation challenge older forms of discourse on national cinema. Essays address the transnational filmmaker, the queer filmmaker, the feminist filmmaker, the documentarist, and the video artist--just some of the diverse identities of Canadian women filmmakers working in both commercial and art cinema today.

In this, the companion to the landmark volume The Literary History of Alberta, Volume One: From Writing-on-Stone to World War Two, George Melnyk examines Alberta literature in the second half of the twentieth century. At last, Melnyk argues, Alberta writers have found their voice--and their accomplishments have been remarkable. The contradictory landscape, the stereotypes of the Indian, the Mountie, and the Cowboy, and the language of the Other, speaking from the margins--these elements all left their impressions on the consciousness of early Alberta. But writers in the last few decades have turned this inheritance to their advantage, to create compelling stories about this place and its people. Today, Melnyk discovers, Alberta writers can appreciate not only this achievement, but also its essential source: the symbolic communication of Writing-on-Stone. The Literary History of Alberta, Volume Two extends the study of Alberta's cultural history to the present day. It is a vital text for anyone interested in Alberta's vibrant literary culture.

In this, the companion to the landmark volume The Literary History of Alberta, Volume One: From Writing-on-Stone to WorldWar Two, George Melnyk examines Alberta literature in the second half of the twentieth century. At last, Melnyk argues, Alberta writers have found their voice--and their accomplishments have been remarkable. The contradictory landscape, the stereotypes of the Indian, the Mountie, and the Cowboy, and the language of the Other, speaking from the margins--these elements all left their impressions on the consciousness of early Alberta. But writers in the last few decades have turned this inheritance to their advantage, to create compelling stories about this place and its people. Today, Melnyk discovers, Alberta writers can appreciate not only this achievement, but also its essential source: the symbolic communication of Writing-on-Stone. The Literary History of Alberta, Volume Two extends the study of Alberta's cultural history to the present day. It is a vital text for anyone interested in Alberta's vibrant literary culture.

Alberta's contradictory landscape has fired the imaginative energies of writers for centuries. The sweep of the plains, the thrust of the Rockies, and the long roll of the woodlands have left vivid impressions on all of Alberta's writers -- both those who passed through Alberta in search of other horizons and those who made it their home. The Literary History of Alberta surveys writing in and about Alberta from prehistory to the middle of the twentieth century. It includes profiles of dozens of writers (from the earnestly intended to the truly gifted) and their texts (from the commercial to the arcane). It reminds us of long-forgotten names and faces, figures who quietly -- or not so quietly -- wrote the books that underpin Alberta's thriving literary culture today. Melnyk also discusses the institutions that have shaped Alberta's literary culture. The Literary History of Alberta is an essential text for any reader interested in the cultural history of western Canada, and a landmark achievement in Alberta's continuing literary history.

Alberta's contradictory landscape has fired the imaginative energies of writers for centuries. The sweep of the plains, the thrust of the Rockies, and the long roll of the woodlands have left vivid impressions on all of Alberta's writers--both those who passed through Alberta in search of other horizons and those who made it their home. The Literary History of Alberta surveys writing in and about Alberta from prehistory to the middle of the twentieth century. It includes profiles of dozens of writers (from the earnestly intended to the truly gifted) and their texts (from the commercial to the arcane). It reminds us of long-forgotten names and faces, figures who quietly--or not so quietly--wrote the books that underpin Alberta's thriving literary culture today. Melnyk also discusses the institutions that have shaped Alberta's literary culture. The Literary History of Alberta is an essential text for any reader interested in the cultural history of western Canada, and a landmark achievement in Alberta's continuing literary history.

Alberta writing has a long tradition. Beginning with the pictographs of Writing-on-Stone, followed by Euro-Canadian exploration texts, the post-treaty writing of the agrarian colonization period, and into the present era, Alberta writing has come to be seen as a distinct literature. In this volume Melnyk and Coates continue the project of scholarly analysis of Alberta literature that they began with Wild Words: Essays on Alberta Literature (2009). They argue that the essays in their new book confirm that Alberta's literary identity is historically contingent with a diverse, changing content, that makes its definition a work-in-progress. The essays in this volume provide contemporary perspectives on major figures in poetry and fiction, such as Robert Kroetsch, Sheila Watson, Alice Major, and Fred Stenson. Other essays bring to light relatively unknown figures such as the Serbian Canadian writer David Albahari and the pioneer clergyman Nestor Dmytrow. Writing Alberta: Building on a Literary Identity offers a detailed discussion of contemporary Indigenous writers, an overview of Alberta historiography of the past century, and the fascinating autobiographical reflections of the novelist Katherine Govier on her literary career and its Alberta influences. This Collection demonstrates that Alberta writers, especially in the contemporary period, are not afraid to uncover, re-think, and re-imagine parts of Alberta history, thereby exposing what had been lain to rest as an unfinished business needing serious re-consideration.

So the emblem of the West Our bright Maple Leaf is bless'd To its children of the goodly open hand; All the nations of the earth Are now learning of its worth And are flocking to this wealthy, promised land. - The Sugar Maple Tree Song, 1906 In 1906, the Sugar Maple Tree Song was just one example of the rhapsodic pieces that touted the Prairie West as the "promised land." In the formative years of agricultural settlement from the late nineteenth century to the First World War, the Canadian government, along with the railways and other Prairie boosters, further developed and propagated this image within the widely distributed promotional literature that was used to attract millions of immigrants to the Canadian West from all corners of the world. Some saw the Prairies as an ideal place to create a Utopian society; others seized the chance to take control of their own destinies in a new and exciting place. The image of the West as a place of unbridled prosperity and opportunity became the dominant perception of the region at that time. During the interwar and post-World War II eras, this image was questioned and challenged, although not entirely replaced, thus showing its pervasive influence.The Prairie West as Promised Land is group of essays, which includes contributions from some of the best-known Prairie historians as well as some of the most promising new scholars in the field, explores this persistent theme in Prairie history and makes an important contribution to the historiography of the Canadian West. With Contributions By: Sarah Carter Catherine A. Cavanaugh Brett Fairbairn Michael Fedyk R. Douglas Francis David Hall SteveHewitt Laurence Kitzan Chris Kitzan George Melnyk Doug Owram Anthony W. Rasporich Bradford J. Rennie Bill Waiser Matthew Wangler Randi Warne

Co-ops in capitalist and communist nations are assessed for strengths and drawbacks. A fascinating look at co-operative forms as diverse as the kibbutz in Israel, the Kolkhoz of the former Soviet Union, the Basque co-ops in Spain, and the Hutterite communities of Western Canada. "A fascinating social history of co-operatives, from monastery to commune."--"Choice"

Alejandro Jodorowsky is a theatre director, writer of graphic novels and comics, novelist, poet, and an expert in the Tarot. He is also an auteur filmmaker who garnered attention with his breakthrough film El Topo in 1970. He has been called a "cult" filmmaker, whose films are surreal, hallucinatory, and provocative. The Transformative Cinema of Alejandro Jodorowsky explores the ways in which Jodorowsky's films are transformative in a psychologically therapeutic way. It also examines his signature style, which includes the symbolic meaning of various colors in which he clothes his actors, the use of his own family members in the films, and his casting of himself in leading roles. This total involvement of himself and his family in his auteur films led to his psycho-therapeutic theories and practices: metagenealogy and psychomagic. This book is the only the second book in the English language in print that deals with all of Jodorowsky's films, beginning with his earliest mime film in 1957 and ending with his 2019 film on psychomagic. It also connects his work as a writer and therapist to his films, which themselves attempt to obliterate the line between fantasy and reality.

Winnipeg's North End has informed the Canadian mythology and influenced the national psyche. The North End also divides and defines the city of Winnipeg, shaping its politics and sense of identity. It is here where First Nations and Old and New World immigrants cross the boundaries of ethnicity, class, and culture, creating a complex multicultural community. There is joy here, and pride, and poverty, and richness, and beauty. John Paskievich grew up in the North End. In these photographs, taken between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s, he set out to explore the North End he knew in his youth. What he found were traces of it, captured in the stillness in which the past still lingers and in the dignity and singularity of its inhabitants.

Most Canadians are city dwellers, a fact often unacknowledged by
twentieth-century Canadian films, with their preference for themes of
wilderness survival or rural life. Modernist Canadian films tend to
support what film scholar Jim Leach calls "the
nationalist-realist project," a documentary style that emphasizes
the exoticism and mythos of the land. Over the past several decades,
however, the hegemony of Anglo-centrism has been challenged by
francophone and First Nations perspectives and the character of cities
altered by a continued influx of immigrants and the development of
cities as economic and technological centers. No longer primarily
defined through the lens of rural nostalgia, Canadian urban identity is
instead polyphonic, diverse, constructed through multiple discourses
and mediums, an exchange rather than a strict orientation. Taking on
the urban as setting and subject, filmmakers are ideally poised to
create and reflect multiple versions of a single city.

Examining fourteen Canadian films produced from 1989 to 2007,
including Denys Arcand's "Jesus de Montreal" (1989),
Jean-Claude Lauzon's "Leolo" (1992), Mina Shum's
"Double Happiness" (1994), Clement Virgo's "Rude"
(1995), and Guy Maddin's "My Winnipeg" (2007), "Film
and the City" is the first comprehensive study of Canadian film and
"urbanity"-the totality of urban culture and life.
Drawing on film and urban studies and building upon issues of identity
formation in Canadian studies, Melnyk considers how filmmakers, films,
and urban audiences experience, represent, and interpret urban
spatiality, visuality, and orality. In this way, "Film and the
City" argues that Canadian narrative film of the postmodern period
has aided in articulating a new national identity.

George Melnyk is associate professor in the Department
of Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary. He has
published a number of books on Canadian cinema, including "One
Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema" (2004), "Great Canadian Film
Directors" (2007), "The Young, the Restless, and the Dead:
Interviews with Canadian Filmmakers" (2008), and "The Gendered
Screen: Canadian Women Filmmakers" (2010)."

As the first collection of literary criticism focusing on Albertawriters, Wild Words establishes a basis for identifyingAlberta fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction as valid subjects ofstudy in their own right. By critically situating and assessingspecific Alberta authors according to genre, this volume continues thework begun with Melnyk's Literary History of Alberta.

Great Canadian Film Directors is the first major study that reflects the cultural and linguistic diversity of Canada's most dynamic film directors. The 19 essays in this collection focus on each filmmaker's ability to create a vision that both reveals and redefines our national cultures. Together, these essays, by established and emerging scholars, highlight the diversity, imaginative power, and talent of Canadian filmmakers. This collection's value is in its contemporary analysis of major figures as well as critical discussions of the work of women directors and young filmmakers. Filmographies and selected bibliographies for each director provide film students and the movie-going public with an unrivalled study of a cinema that now garners world attention.