University of Calgary Press Open Access Books

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Open Access
The African diaspora in Canada: negotiating identity and belonging
(University of Calgary Press, 2005)
What does it mean to be African-Canadian? The African Diaspora in Canada addresses the conceptual difficulties and political contestations surrounding the term “African-Canadian.” In the midst of this fraught terrain, it focuses on first-generation, black continental Africans who have immigrated in the past four decades. In highlighting their experiences, this book addresses the empirical, conceptual, and methodological gaps that homogenize all black people and their experiences. Rooted in the specific experiences of continental Africans in Canada, this book examines the social constructions of African-Canadians, their experiences within the political and education systems, and with the labour market. It explores the forms of cooperation and tension that characterize African-Canadian communities, and how multiple transnational spaces are negotiated and occupied. The book also explores the circumstances of children, as they try to define their identities vis-à-vis their parents and the larger Canadian society.
Open Access
After appropriation: explorations in intercultural philosophy and religion
(University of Calgary Press, 2011)
While there have been a number of specialized books in the field of comparative philosophy, and many in the field of comparative religion, there are few scholars who can address both disciplines. Furthermore, when these disciplines are virtually mutually exclusive, as in Western academia, a full appreciation of non-Western approaches to either religion or philosophy is not easily attained, and distortions, such as appropriation, often occur. Within the last ten years, there has been a concerted effort on the part of a number of Western scholars to try to address these deficiencies. A unique workshop held at the University of Calgary in 2007 marked the beginning of an interdisciplinary project to bring together scholars from both fields for discussion on a regular basis. After Appropriation consists of thirteen essays stemming from the workshop, each of which addresses an issue or illustrates a problem in the interdisciplinary field of comparative religion and philosophy as it is presently conceived. Many misappropriations and exclusions have arisen from the Western tendency to reduce and manipulate the ideas and values of non-Western religions and philosophies to fit within Western concepts and categories. How might comparative philosophy and religion change if the concepts and categories of non-Western philosophies and religions were taken as primary? This book explores this question through analytic and phenomenological Western approaches, infused with fresh strategies and modalities derived from or inspired by non-Western traditions. In a world of increasing pluralism and continuing globalization, there is a growing need to elevate discussion of these issues to a more sophisticated level. A truly groundbreaking collection, After Appropriation inaugurates an entirely new integrative discipline of comparative religion and philosophy, and the exceptional calibre and wide spectrum of the book's scholarship will stimulate and propel further interest in this pivotal and fruitful direction.
Open Access
Always an Adventure: An Autobiography
(University of Calgary Press, 2011) Dempsey, Hugh A.
Hugh Dempsey has for decades been one of Alberta's most prolific and influential public historians. Author of more than twenty books, he has also been "in on the ground floor" of the development of many key Alberta institutions, including the Indian Association of Alberta, the Historical Society of Alberta, and most importantly, the Glenbow Museum. Now, in his own words, he recounts his interesting and varied careers as journalist, government publicity writer, popular historian, archivist and museum administrator, speaker, and lecturer. Beginning with a compelling account of his childhood in Edmonton in the 1930s - when his family was for a time on relief during the Depression - and his 1940s teenage escapades hitchhiking across the continent, Dempsey's narrative moves into the frenetic world of post-war urban journalism. A fateful chance assignment as a reporter for the Edmonton Bulletin in February 1950 led to his involvement with the fledgling Indian Association of Alberta, its secretary John Laurie, president James Gladstone, and Gladstone's daughter Pauline, whom Dempsey would eventually marry. This in turn led to a strong interest in First Nations culture and biography through which Dempsey was able to combine oral history with scholarly records to produce historical writing with a broad popular appeal. During the 1950s, Dempsey helped design early provincial historical recognition programs and began his lifelong involvement with the Historical Society of Alberta. In 1956 he joined the Glenbow Foundation (later Glenbow Museum), where for the next thirty-five years he would play a crucial part in its growth and reputation for excellence, designing and managing the Glenbow Archives and eventually serving as Acting Director of the Museum before retiring in 1991. Written with the trademark Hugh Dempsey eye for detail and lively anecdote, this memoir will be essential and enjoyable reading for anyone interested in western and First Nations history and the growth of key Alberta cultural institutions.
Open Access
The American Western in Canadian Literature
(University of Calgary Press, 2022-06) Deshaye, Joel
The first historically broad and in-depth study of the Canadian Western, its relationship to the American genre, and its shifting place within Canada’s national and regional literary traditions. The Western, with its stoic cowboys and quickhanded gunslingers, is an instantly recognizable American genre that has achieved worldwide success. Cultures around the world have embraced but also adapted and critiqued the Western as part of their own national literatures, reinterpreting and expanding the genre in curious ways. Canadian Westerns are almost always in conversation with their American cousins, influenced by their tropes and traditions, responding to their politics, and repurposing their structures to create a national literary phenomenon. The American Western in Canadian Literature examines over a century of the development of the Canadian Western as it responds to the American Western, to evolving literary trends, and to regional, national, and international change. Beginning with Indigenous perspectives on the genre, it moves from early manifestations of the Western in Christian narratives of personal and national growth, and its controversial pulp-fictional popularity in the 1940s, to its postmodern and contemporary critiques, pushing the boundary of the Western to include Northerns, Northwesterns, and post-Westerns in literature, film, and wider cultural imagery. The American Western in Canadian Literature is more than a simple history. It uses genre theory to comment on historical perspectives on nation and region. It includes overviews of Indigenous and settler-colonial critiques of the Western, challenging persistent attitudes to Indigenous people and their traditional territories that are endemic to the genre. It illuminates the way that the Canadian Western enshrines, hagiographies, and ultimately desacralizes aspects of Canadian life, from car culture to extractive industries to assumptions about a Canadian moral high ground. This is a comprehensive, highly readable, and fascinating study of an underexamined genre.
Open Access
Animal Metropolis: Histories of Human-Animal Relations in Urban Canada
(University of Calgary Press, 2017-02) Dean, Joanna; Ingram, Darcy; Sethna, Christabelle
Animal Metropolis brings a Canadian perspective to the growing field of animal history, ranging across species and cities, from the beavers who engineered Stanley Park to the carthorses who shaped the city of Montreal. Some essays consider animals as spectacle: orca captivity in Vancouver, polar bear tourism in Churchill, Manitoba, fish on display in the Dominion Fisheries Museum, and the racialized memory of Jumbo the elephant in St. Thomas, Ontario. Others examine the bodily intimacies of shared urban spaces: the regulation of rabid dogs in Banff, the maternal politics of pure milk in Hamilton and the circulation of tetanus bacilli from horse to human in Toronto. Another considers the marginalization of women in Canada’s animal welfare movement. The authors collectively push forward from a historiography that features nonhuman animals as objects within human-centered inquiries to a historiography that considers the eclectic contacts, exchanges, and cohabitation of human and nonhuman animals.
Open Access
Ask now of the days that are past
(University of Calgary Press, 2005) Segal, Eliezer
Written for a general audience, the essays collected here present refreshing and often humorous glimpses of various topics in Jewish history and traditional religious literature. Inspired by the diversity of Jewish thought, author and scholar Eliezer Segal sheds light on the social and political forces that have brought the Jewish community together in the past and still speak with familiarity to a modern western culture. Enlightening and entertaining, Professor Segal's writing is a rare blend of scholarship and wit, highlighting contemporary experiences that bring the rich heritage of Jewish civilization to life for the everyday reader. With an extensive and broad knowledge of ancient and medieval Jewish social and religious traditions, Segal deftly crafts anecdotes and explanations that address the tribulations of contemporary life. From topics as diverse as panhandling, tennis, vampires, and the history of the tomato to themes as universal as weddings, charity, and taxation, the essays presented here, some for the first time in English, all include detailed notes on sources for further reading. Equally suited to those after a light-hearted romp or those on a serious quest for knowledge, Ask Now of the Days that Are Past is sure to satisfy anyone who has ever wondered how the past still influences us today.
Open Access
Baffin Island: Field Research and High Arctic Adventure, 1961-1967
(University of Calgary Press, 2016-02) Ives, Jack D.
A geographer with extensive research experience in the Canadian North, Jack D. Ives has written a lively and informative account of several expeditions to Baffin Island during the "golden age" of federal research. In the 1960s, scientists from the Geographical Branch of Canada's Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources travelled to Baffin to study glacial geomorphology and glaciology. Their fieldwork resulted in vastly increased knowledge of the Far North-from its ice caps and glaciers to its lichens and microfossils. Drawing from the recollections of his Baffin colleagues as well as from his own memories, Ives takes readers on a remarkable adventure, describing the day-to-day experiences of the field teams in the context of both contemporary Arctic research and bureaucratic decision making. Along the way, his narrative illustrates the role played by the Cold War-era Distant Early Warning Line and other northern infrastructure, the crucial importance of his pioneering aerial photography, the unpredictable nature of planes, helicopters, and radios in Arctic regions, and of course, the vast and breathtaking scenery of the North. Baffin Island encompasses both field research and High Arctic adventure. The research trips to Baffin between 1961 and 1967 also served as a vital training ground in polar studies for university students; further, they represented a breakthrough in gender equality in government-sponsored science, thanks to the author's persistence in having women permitted on the teams. The book contains a special section detailing the subsequent professional achievements of the many researchers involved (in addition to the later career moves of Ives himself) and a chapter that delves deeper into the science behind their fieldwork in the North. Readers need not be versed in glaciology, however. Ives has produced a highly readable book that seamlessly combines research and adventure.
Open Access
Bedside and Community: 50 Years of Contributions to the Health of Albertans by the University of Calgary
(University of Calgary Press, 2020-02) Mansell, Diana; Stahnisch, Frank; Larsson, Paula
Bedside and Community is the inside story of fifty years of health care and health research at the University of Calgary. Drawing on the first-person accounts of researchers, administrators, faculty, and students along with archival research, and faculty histories, this collection celebrates the many significant contributions the University of Calgary has made to the health of Albertans. With contributions from the Cummings School of Medicine, the Faculty of Nursing, Faculty of Kinesiology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Environmental Design, Department of Psychology, and Indigenous Health Initiatives Bedside and Community is a truly collaborative history. Addressing the links between departments, the relationship between the university and the community, and evolving research and teaching methods, this book places the University of Calgary within a wider national context and shows how it has addressed the unique health needs of Southern Alberta. With a pioneering focus on primary care and commitment to interdisciplinary connections, the University of Calgary has made strides in health research, health education, and community outreach. Bedside and Community tells the story of a tradition of excellence that will light the way to future outreach and discovery.
Open Access
Belonging Beyond Borders: Cosmopolitan Affiliations in Contemporary Spanish American Literature
(University of Calgary Press, 2021-01) Bilodeau, Annik
The first book to trace the evolution of political cosmopolitanism in Latin American literature through a generational lens, presenting a new blended theoretical framework. Belonging Beyond Borders maps the evolution of cosmopolitanism in Spanish American narrative literature through a generational lens. Drawing on a new theoretical framework that blends intellectual studies and literary history with integrated approaches to Spanish American narrative, this book traces the evolution from aesthetic cosmopolitanism through anti-colonial nationalism to modern political cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism in Latin America has historically been associated with colonialism. In the mid-twentieth-century, authors who presented cosmopolitan narratives were harshly criticized by their nationalist peers. However, with the intensification of cultural globalization Spanish American authors have redefined cosmopolitanism, rejecting a worldview that relies on the creation of an other for the definition of the self. Instead, this new generation has both embraced and challenged global citizenship, redefining concepts to address human rights, identity, migration, belonging, and more. Taking the work of Elena Poniatowka, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Jorge Volpi as examples, this book presents innovative scholarship across literary traditions. It shows how Spanish-American authors offer nuanced understandings of national and global affiliations, and identities and untangles the strings of cosmopolitan thought and activism from those of nationalist criticism.
Open Access
Biocultural diversity and indigenous ways of knowing : human ecology in the Arctic
(University of Calgary Press, 2009) Kassam, Karim-Aly S.
Dramatic challenges face human civilization everywhere. Relations between human beings and their environment are in peril, with mounting threats to both biological diversity of life on earth and cultural diversity of human communities. The peoples of the Circumpolar Arctic are at the forefront of these challenges and lead the way in seeking meaningful responses. In Biocultural Diversity and Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Karim-Aly Kassam positions the Arctic and sub-Arctic as a homeland rather than simply as a frontier for resource exploitation. Kassam aims to empirically and theoretically illustrate the synthesis between the cultural and the biological, using human ecology as a conceptual and analytical lens. Drawing on research carried out in partnership with indigenous northern communities, three case studies illustrate that subsistence hunting and gathering are not relics of an earlier era but rather remain essential to both cultural diversity and to human survival. This book deals with contemporary issues such as climate change, indigenous knowledge, and the impact of natural resource extraction. It is a narrative of community-based research, in the service of the communities for the benefit of the communities. It provides resource-based industry, policy makers, and students with an alternative way of engaging indigenous communities and transforming our perspective on conservation of ecological and cultural diversity.
Open Access
Blackfoot ways of knowing: the worldview of the Siksikaitsitapi
(University of Calgary Press, 2004) Bastien, Betty
Declining access to fresh water is one of the twenty-first century’s most pressing environmental and human rights challenges, yet the struggle for water is not a new cause. The 8,800-kilometer border dividing Canada and the United States contains more than 20 percent of the world’s total freshwater resources, and Border Flows traces the century-long effort by Canada and the United States to manage and care for their ecologically and economically shared rivers and lakes. Ranging across the continent, from the Great Lakes to the Northwest Passage to the Salish Sea, the histories in Border Flows offer critical insights into the historical struggle to care for these vital waters. From multiple perspectives, the book reveals alternative paradigms in water history, law, and policy at scales from the local to the transnational. Students, concerned citizens, and policymakers alike will benefit from the lessons to be found along this critical international border.
Open Access
Blue Storm
(University of Calgary Press, 2023-02-15) Bratt, Duane; Sutherland, Richard; Taras, David
In 2019, the United Conservative Party, under the leadership of Jason Kenney, unseated the New Democratic Party to form the provincial government of Alberta. A restoration of conservative power in a province that had seen the Progressive Conservatives win every election from 1971-2015, UCP quickly began to make political waves. This is the first scholarly analysis of the 2019 election and the first years of the UCP government, with special focus on the path of Jason Kenney’s rise to, and fall from, provincial political power. It opens with an examination of the election from a number of vantage points, including the campaign, polling, and online politics. It provides fascinating insight into internal UCP politics with chapters on the divisions within the party, gender and the UCP, and the symbolism of Kenney’s famous blue pickup truck. Explorations of oil and gas policy, the Energy War Room, Alberta’s budgets, health care, education, the public sector, Alberta’s cultural industries, and more provide unprecedented insight into the actions, motivations, and impacts of Kenney’s UCP Government in power. Contributions from top political watchers, journalists, and academics provide a wide range of methods and perspectives. Concluding with a survey of the impacts of COVID-19 in Alberta and a comparison between Jason Kenney and Doug Ford, Blue Storm is essential reading for everyone interested in Alberta politics and the tumultuous first years of the UCP government. Providing key insights from perspectives across the political spectrum, this book is a captivating deep-dive into an unprecedented party, its often controversial politics, and its unforgettable leader.
Open Access
Border Flows: A Century of the Canadian-American Water Relationship
(University of Calgary Press, 2016-11) Heasley, Lynne; Macfarlane, Daniel
Declining access to fresh water is one of the twenty-first century's most pressing environmental and human rights challenges, yet the struggle for water is not a new cause. The 8,800-kilometer border dividing Canada and the United States contains more than 20 percent of the world's total freshwater resources, and Border Flows traces the century-long effort by Canada and the United States to manage and care for their ecologically and economically shared rivers and lakes. Ranging across the continent, from the Great Lakes to the Northwest Passage to the Salish Sea, the histories in Border Flows offer critical insights into the historical struggle to care for these vital waters. From multiple perspectives, the book reveals alternative paradigms in water history, law, and policy at scales from the local to the transnational. Students, concerned citizens, and policymakers alike will benefit from the lessons to be found along this critical international border.
Open Access
Borderblur Poetics: Intermedia and Avant-Gardism in Canada, 1963-1988
(University of Calgary Press, 2023-08-15) Schmaltz, Eric
Beginning in 1963 and continuing through the late 1980s, a loose coterie of like-minded Canadian poets challenged the conventions of writing and poetic meaning by fusing their practice with strategies from visual art, sound art, sculpture, installation, and performance. They called it “borderblur.” Borderblur Poetics traces the emergence and proliferation of this node of poetic activity, an avant-garde movement comprising concrete poetry, sound poetry, and kinetic poetry, practiced by poets and artists like bpNichol, bill bissett, Judith Copithorne, Steve McCaffery, Penn Kemp, Ann Rosenberg, Gerry Shikatani, Shaunt Basmajian, among others. Author Eric Schmaltz demonstrates how these poets formed an alternative tradition, one that embraced intermediality to challenge the hegemony of Canadian literature established during the heydays of cultural nationalism. He shows the importance of intermediality as a driving cultural force and how its proliferation significantly altered Canadian cultural expression. Drawing on a combination of archival research, historical analysis, and literary criticism, Borderblur Poetics adds significant nuance to theories and criticisms of Canadian literature.
Open Access
Calgary: City of Animals
(University of Calgary Press, 2017-05) Jim, Ellis
How have our interactions with animals shaped Calgary? What can we do to ensure that humans and animals in the city continue to co-exist, and even flourish together? This wide-ranging book explores the ways that animals inhabit our city, our lives and our imaginations. Essays from animal historians, wildlife specialists, artists and writers address key issues such as human-wildlife interactions, livestock in the city, and animal performers at the Calgary Stampede. Contributions from some of Calgary's iconic arts institutions, including One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, and the Glenbow Museum, demonstrate how animals continue to be a source of inspiration and exploration for fashion, art, dance, and theatre. The full-colour volume is beautifully illustrated throughout with archival images, wildlife photography, documentary and production stills, and original artwork.
Open Access
Canada and the new American empire: war and anti-war
(University of Calgary Press, 2004)
Noted academics, politicians, and activists examine Canada's decision not to support the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Each contributor opposes the U.S. action and discusses how Canada's non-involvement might affect the future of Canadian-American relations. Included in this collection are never before published essays from high-profile contributors such as: Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector; Douglas Roche, Liberal senator; and Rev. William Phipps, former moderator of the United Church of Canada.
Open Access
Canada’s Legal Pasts: Looking Forward, Looking Back
(University of Calgary Press, 2020-05) Campbell, Lyndsay; McCoy, Ted; Méthot, Mélanie
Canada’s Legal Pasts presents new essays on a range of topics and episodes in Canadian legal history, provides an introduction to legal methodologies, shows researchers new to the field how to locate and use a variety of sources, and includes a combined bibliography arranged to demonstrate best practices in gathering and listing primary sources. It is an essential welcome for scholars who wish to learn about Canada’s legal pasts—and why we study them. Telling new stories—about a fishing vessel that became the subject of an extraordinarily long diplomatic dispute, young Northwest Mounted Police constables subject to an odd mixture of police discipline and criminal procedure, and more—this book presents the vibrant evolution of Canada’s legal tradition. Explorations of primary sources, including provincial archival records that suggest how Quebec courts have been used in interfamilial conflict, newspaper records that disclose the details of bigamy cases, and penitentiary records that reveal the details of the lives and legal entanglements of Canada’s most marginalized people, show the many different ways of researching and understanding legal history. This is Canadian legal history as you’ve never seen it before. Canada’s Legal Pasts dives into new topics in Canada’s fascinating history and presents practical approaches to legal scholarship, bringing together established and emerging scholars in collection essential for researchers at all levels.
Open Access
Canadian Countercultures and the Environment
(University of Calgary Press, 2016-02) Coates, Colin M.
Studies of the radical environmental politics of the 1960s have tended to downplay the extent to which much of that countercultural intellectual and social ferment continued into the 1970s and 1980s. Canadian Countercultures and the Environment adds to our knowledge of this understudied period. This collection contributes a sustained analysis of the beginning of major environmental debates in this era and examines a range of issues related to broad environmental concerns, topics which emerged as key concerns in the context of Cold War military investments and experiments, the oil crisis of the 1970s, debates over gendered roles, and the increasing attention to urban pollution and pesticide use. No other publication dealing with this period covers the wide range of environmental topics (among others, activism, midwifery, organic farming, recycling, urban cycling, and communal living) or geographic locales, from Yukon to Atlantic Canada. Together, they demonstrate how this period influenced and informed environmental action and issues in ways that have had a long-term impact on Canadian society. With contributions by: Matt Cavers Megan Davies Nancy Janovicek Alan MacEachern David Neufeld Ryan O'Connor Daniel Ross Henry Trim Sharon Weaver
Open Access
Canadian Television Today
(University of Calgary Press, 2006) Beaty, Bart; Sullivan, Rebecca
What's on TV? Canadian Television Today explores the current challenges and issues facing the English-language television industry in Canada. Television in Canada has long been one of the principal conduits of national identity. But has it kept pace with the rapidly changing landscape of Canadian culture? After presenting an overview of the main issues and debates surrounding the Canadian small screen, Beaty and Sullivan offer their suggestions for the future of the medium. They argue that in today's globalized world, Canadian television should be a more fitting reflection of Canada's multicultural society, embracing a broader range of languages, cultures, and viewing strategies. Visualizing the potential reach of a revitalized industry, Beaty and Sullivan illustrate the promise and possibility of Canadian television that serves the cultural needs of all its citizens.
Open Access
Catch the Gleam: Mount Royal, From College to University, 1910-2009
(University of Calgary Press, 2011-05-20) Baker, Donald N.
Former Mount Royal president Donald N. Baker draws on his skills and insight as both an historian and veteran administrator to tell the lively history of Mount Royal University from 1910 to today. Mount Royal College began in Calgary in 1910 as a small, private residential Methodist institution offering advanced elementary and secondary schooling to students from both the city and the rural hinterland. Today, it has become a degree-granting university with over 10,000 students in credit programs and some 40,000 more in continuing education courses. A former president of Mount Royal, Baker brings to this project his skills and insight as both historian and veteran administrator, examining the challenging process of inserting new degree programs and universities into the framework of academic credibility in Canada and continually adapting to a changing social, economic, and political environment. This lively and sensitive history draws on an impressive body of archival sources, oral histories, and interviews as well as sound and current scholarship on the history and theory of post-secondary education.