Canadian Literature (journal)

Canadian Literature was established in the autumn of 1958 by Roy Daniells and George Woodcock at the University of British Columbia. The first issue appeared in summer 1959[9] to skeptical reception because of a general belief that Canada had no national literature; some critics predicted that the journal would run out of material after only a few issues.[7] Initially, editor George Woodcock intended that Canadian Literature would be fully bilingual in French and English, but due to the lack of French submissions, after ten years of publication French-language material never rose above 10% of an issue's content.[7] At the time of its foundation, Canadian Literature was the first and only quarterly entirely devoted to the discussion and criticism of Canadian writing and literature.[10]

Although the position of editor eventually went to George Woodcock, the university's first choice was a bibliographer, UBC's only specialist in Canadian literature, Reginald Watters; the position was offered to Woodcock after Watters decided to accept a fellowship in Australia.[11] As editor, Woodcock strove to keep the journal from being purely academic,[12] instead adopting a tone "serious but not academic, popular but not journalistic, contextual more than textual" (Fetherling).[13] As the first journal dedicated to the study of Canadian writers and writing, Canadian Literature supported the "newly institutionalized field of Canadian literature" during a period of increasing cultural nationalism in Canada.[14] Woodcock later attributed Canadian Literature's success to having arrived "at the right moment in the development of a Canadian literary tradition, and created its own ground swell of critical activity."[15]

Woodcock resigned from the editorship in 1977, having edited 73 issues of the journal.[16] After Woodcock's retirement, the University of British Columbia invited William H. New, who had been an assistant editor since 1965, to act as editor. Under New's editorship, the journal "often placed the Canadian within the broader Commonwealth field" of postcolonial criticism.[17] New chose to give priority to First Nations, Asian Canadian, Caribbean Canadian and other minority literatures, which previously had been under-represented in Canadian literary criticism. For example, in 1985 New had Joseph Pivato co-edit an issue devoted to Italian-Canadian writers (number 106), and in 1990 he edited the first special issue on Indigenous literatures in Canada, titled Native Writers & Canadian Writing (no. 124-125, published the same year as a book by University of British Columbia Press).[18] New's work as the journal's editor has been described as "pioneer[ing] in changing preconceptions about Canadian writing throughout the 1980s" and the Canadian literary canon.[19] New also set up a peer review process for the journal, with the goal of drawing readership from both general and scholarly audiences.[7] New retired as editor in 1995, having edited 72 issues.[7]

Between 1995 and 2003, Eva-Marie Kröller was the editor.[20] In addition to producing thirty-four issues, Kröller raised the journal's reputation worldwide by establishing an international editorial board made up of Canadian and international scholars. She refined the peer-review process for article submissions: currently, articles are assessed by two expert readers who are at arm's length from the author, whose name they do not know. In turn, their names are not revealed to the author (double-blind peer review). During Kröller's editorship, Canadian Literature fortified its commitment to Canadian francophone writers by appointing its first Associate Editor specifically for francophone writing, Michel Rocheleau. Under Associate Editor Réjean Beaudoin's guidance, Canadian Literature published several special issues featuring a majority of French content, such as "Littérature Francophone hors-Québec / Francophone Writing Outside Quebec."[7]

In 1995, the journal underwent major design changes: it moved from plain beige covers to coloured, changed to a narrower trim, and added more pages to each issue in order to accommodate an expanded focus on themes such as postcolonialism, poetics, cultural history, and multiculturalism.[20] The journal also continued publishing original poems by Canadian writers.[10]

In 2003, Laurie Ricou, an ecocritic and specialist in the literature of the Pacific Northwest who had been either an associate or acting editor of Canadian Literature since 1983, became the journal's editor. In addition to publishing a range of special issues, Ricou oversaw the relaunch of Canadian Literature's website and the creation of the CanLit Poets resource. Ricou's term ended in 2007.

In 2007, Margery Fee, a specialist in Indigenous literatures and Canadian literature and language, became the journal's fifth editor.[21] During Fee's editorship, Canadian Literature made its back catalogue of issues openly accessible through the journal's website, and in 2012 launched the CanLit Guides open-access online educational resource, which uses archival material from the journal to teach students of Canadian literature about academic writing and reading.

Laura Moss is the journal's sixth and most recent editor, having taken over from Fee in 2015. In recent years, Canadian Literature has published special issues on topics such as Indigenous literature, Asian Canadian critique, the literature of Vancouver, global perspectives on Canadian literature, as well as issues supporting the work of emerging scholarship and graduate students.[22] Moss's work as editor has sought "to ensure that the journal continues to be vital to a wide readership," keeping in Canadian Literature's tradition of critical eclecticism while emphasizing the "social utility" of Canadian literary criticism and the "journal as a space to speak freely, debate passionately, think safely, question vigorously, argue vehemently, and express contentious opinion."[23]

Canadian Literature celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2009 by holding a four-day gala from September 30 to October 3, 2009.[24] It included a two-day conference entitled "The Future of Canadian literature / Canadian Literature" featuring talks by Canadian writers and scholars Thomas King, Roch Carrier, Steven Galloway and Aritha Van Herk, along with presentations and short talks by Canadian and international academics and graduate students.

The conference was followed by the launches of Sherrill Grace's book On the Art of Being Canadian, published by UBC Press and From A Speaking Place: Writings from the First Fifty Years of Canadian Literature, edited by W. H. New, and published by Ronsdale Press.[24] A silent art auction to support undergraduate students interning at Canadian Literature included pieces donated by Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Dennis Lee, Thomas King, Patrick Lane, Joni Mitchell, and Fred Wah.

Canadian Literature's 60th anniversary was celebrated in 2019 with a reading emceed by the poetry editor, Phinder Dulai, featuring Jordan Abel, Sonnet L’Abbé, Daphne Marlatt, Cecily Nicholson, and Shazia Hafiz Ramji, followed by the awarding of the 60th Anniversary Graduate Student Essay Prize.[25]