Reclaiming Canadian Bodies

The central focus of Reclaiming Canadian Bodies is the relationship between visual media, the construction of Canadian national identity, and notions of embodiment. It asks how particular representations of bodies are constructed and performed within the context of visual and discursive mediated content. The book emphasizes the ways individuals destabilize national mainstream visual tropes, which in turn have the potential to destabilize nationalist messages. Drawing upon rich empirical research and relevant theory, the contributors ask how and why particular bodies (of Estonian immigrants, sports stars, First Nations peoples, self-identified homosexuals, and women) are either promoted and upheld as “Canadian” bodies while others are marginalized in or excluded from media representations. Essays are grouped into three sections: Embodied Ideals, The Embodiment of “Others,” and Embodied Activism and Advocacy. Written in an accessible style for a broad audience of scholars and students, this volume is original within the field of visual media, affect theory, and embodiment due to its emphasis on detailed empirical and, in some cases, ethnographic research within a Canadian context.

The central focus of Reclaiming Canadian Bodies is the relationship between visual media, the construction of Canadian national identity, and notions of embodiment. It asks how particular representations of bodies are constructed and performed within the context of visual and discursive mediated content. The book emphasizes the ways individuals destabilize national mainstream visual tropes, which in turn have the potential to destabilize nationalist messages. Drawing upon rich empirical research and relevant theory, the contributors ask how and why particular bodies (of Estonian immigrants, sports stars, First Nations peoples, self-identified homosexuals, and women) are either promoted and upheld as “Canadian” bodies while others are marginalized in or excluded from media representations. Essays are grouped into three sections: Embodied Ideals, The Embodiment of “Others,” and Embodied Activism and Advocacy. Written in an accessible style for a broad audience of scholars and students, this volume is original within the field of visual media, affect theory, and embodiment due to its emphasis on detailed empirical and, in some cases, ethnographic research within a Canadian context.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays, by both Natives and non-Natives, explores presentations and representations of indigenous bodies in historical and contemporary contexts. Recent decades have seen a wealth of scholarship on the body in a wide range of disciplines. Indigenous Bodies extends this scholarship in exciting new ways, bringing together the disciplinary expertise of Native studies scholars from around the world. The book is particularly concerned with the Native body as a site of persistent fascination, colonial oppression, and indigenous agency, along with the endurance of these legacies within Native communities. At the core of this collection lies a dual commitment to exposing numerous and diverse disempowerments of indigenous peoples, and to recognizing the many ways in which these same people retained and/or reclaimed agency. Issues of reviewing, relocating, and reclaiming bodies are examined in the chapters, which are paired to bring to light juxtapositions and connections and further the transnational development of indigenous studies.

Offering the first comparative study of 1920s’ US and Canadian print cultures, ‘Imagining Gender, Nation and Consumerism in Magazines of the 1920s’ comparatively examines the highly influential ‘Ladies’ Home Journal’ (1883–2014) and the often-overlooked ‘Canadian Home Journal’ (1905–1958). Firmly grounded in the latest advances in periodical studies, the book provides a timely contribution to the field in its presentation of a transferrable transnational approach to the study of magazines. While Canadian magazines have often been viewed, unflatteringly and inaccurately, as merely derivative of their American counterparts, Rachel Alexander asserts the value of an even-handed consideration of both. Such an approach acknowledges the complexity of these magazines as collaborative texts, cultural artefacts and commercial products, revealing that while these magazines shared certain commonalities, they functioned in differing – at times unexpected – ways. During the 1920s, both magazines were changing rapidly in response to technological modernity, altering gender economies and the burgeoning of consumer culture. ‘Imagining Gender, Nation, and Consumerism in Magazines of the 1920s’ explores the influences, tensions and interests that informed the magazines’ construction of their audience of middle-class women as readers, consumers and citizens.

A holistic and powerful framework for accepting and liberating our bodies, and ourselves. Have you ever felt uncomfortable or not “at home” in your body? In this book, the founders of Body Trust, licensed therapist Hilary Kinavey and registered dietician Dana Sturtevant, invite readers to break free from the status quo and reject a diet culture that has taken advantage and profited from trauma, stigma, and disembodiment, and fully reclaim and embrace their bodies. Informed by the personal body stories of the hundreds of people they have worked with, Reclaiming Body Trust delineates an intersectional, social justice−orientated path to healing in three phases: The Rupture, The Reckoning, and The Reclamation. Throughout, readers will be anchored by the authors’ innovative and revolutionary Body Trust framework to discover a pathway out of a rigid, mechanistic way of thinking about the body and into a more authentic, sustainable way to occupy and nurture our bodies.

Material Cultures in Canada presents the vibrant and diverse field of material culture studies in Canadian literary, artistic, and political contexts today. The first of its kind, this collection features sixteen essays by leading scholars in Canada, each of whom examines a different object of study, including the beaver, geraniums, comics, water, a musical playlist, and the human body. The book’s three sections focus, in turn, on objects that are persistently material, on things whose materiality blends into the immaterial, and on the materials of spaces. Contributors highlight some of the most exciting new developments in the field, such as the emergence of “new materialism,” affect theory, globalization studies, and environmental criticism. Although the book has a Canadian centre, the majority of its contributors consider objects that cross borders or otherwise resist national affiliation. This collection will be valuable to readers within and outside of Canada who are interested in material culture studies and, in addition, will appeal to anyone interested in the central debates taking place in Canadian political and cultural life today, such as climate change, citizenship, shifts in urban and small-town life, and the persistence of imperialism.

A philosophical history of the body and a work of recovery, bringing to light many aspects of this history that have been lost or forgotten in the West after the Scientific Revolution.

At a time when thousands of refugees risk their lives undertaking perilous journeys by boat across the Mediterranean, this multidisciplinary volume could not be more pertinent. It offers various contemporary case studies of boat migrations undertaken by asylum seekers and refugees around the globe and shows that boats not only move people and cultural capital between places, but also fuel cultural fantasies, dreams of adventure and hope, along with fears of invasion and terrorism. The ambiguous nature of memories, media representations and popular culture productions are highlighted throughout in order to address negative stereotypes and conversely, humanize the individuals involved.

Reclaiming Tom Longboat recounts the history of Indigenous sport in Canada through the lens of the prestigious Tom Longboat Awards, shedding light on a significant yet overlooked aspect of Canadian policy and Crown-Indigenous relations. Drawing on a rich and varied set of oral and textual sources, including interviews with award recipients and Jan Eisenhardt, the creator of the Awards himself, Janice Forsyth critically assesses the state's role in policing Indigenous bodies and identities through sport, from the assimilationist sporting regulations of residential schools to the present-day exclusion of Indigenous activities from mainstream sports. This work recognizes the role of sport as a tool for colonization in Canada, while also acknowledging its potential to become a tool for decolonization and self-determination. "Through considering the Awards in the broader context of ongoing colonial relations in Canada, and bringing to light the voices of the recipients, this study extends well beyond the Tom Longboat Awards history to encompass the complicated place of sport in the Indigenous experience." --Robert Kossuth, Associate Professor of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Lethbridge