The Leverhulme Trust-funded Culture and the Canada-US Border international research network is pleased to invite proposals for papers or panels addressing topics related to cultural production, consumption, and reception across the Canada-US border. The 49th parallel has been considered by many Canadian nationalists to symbolize Canada’s cultural independence from the United States, with attendant anxieties about how an “undefended” border might fail to safeguard Canadian culture adequately. This conference seeks to probe the implications for the production, consumption, and reception of literature, film, television, music, theatre, and visual art in relation to the Canada-US border. We encourage analysis of cultural texts, phenomena, and industries both in terms of how they might operate differently in Canada and the United States and the ways in which they might straddle, or ignore, the border altogether. We invite proposals on both contemporary and historical cultural texts and contexts.
Monthly Archives: July 2013
CFP: Cultural Crossings: Production, Consumption, and Reception across the Canada-U.S. Border
Call for Book Reviews
Howdy folks,
Tim Bowman here from West Texas A&M University. The following is a “call for book reviews” that I write in my capacity as Book Review Editor for the West Texas Historical Review. Our journal is published annually, so any completed reviews of the following titles will be published in next year’s edition of the journal. Scholars of the U.S. West, Texas, Native Americans and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands should find some of these appealing.
Thoughts on The Bridge and the Borderlands
On July 10, FX premiered its new crime drama, The Bridge, which takes place in the Juarez/El Paso region. Three of our bloggers offer their thoughts on the inaugural episode. What were your thoughts on the premier?
Tim Bowman
Juárez is a city that many Americans seem to have a real problem with. In some respects this problem is well earned. Some Americans are probably unaware that the drug cartels were already a major problem even before the uptick in violence that occurred after Felipe Calderón’s election in 2006. Others have undoubtedly missed the brutal rash of femicides committed against young factory workers since the 1990s. Finally, the Juárez with which many concerned American liberals are familiar is that of a big city and its maquiladoras, which at this point need no introduction. Continue reading
