[ACADEMIA] Honours Thesis Presentation

[rfmcdonald]

Earlier, I observed that my Honours presentation will have three components:

• An introduction explaining just how I came to the point of writing this particular essay; a sort of genealogy, if you would.


• A five minute long overview of my thesis, in broad detail only.


• A conclusion in which I suggest future directions I can take my thesis.

My presentation, incidentally, will be in Room 237 of Main Building this coming Tuesday at 10 am. If anyone wants to attend ...

Below is an outline of my presentation, full text to follow. And please please please comments, OK?

A. Introduction

• Thesis represents culmination of three years of research under the supervision of Dr. MacLaine.


• Thesis is to no small degree an effort at interdisciplinary synthesis.

B. Intellectual Origins of my Thesis

• Interest in geography: the way that the "lay of the land" determines the development of human history and culture (e.g. the St. Lawrence directed New France deep into the interior of North America and encouraged métissage, British Columbia's initially settlement from the sea not overland).


• Interest in general history: the way that events in the past have shaped the present, determining our reactions to current-day events (e.g. the War of 1812 inspiring Canadian nationalism and resistance to free trade with the US, the Maritimes' post-Confederation economic decline inspiring a belief that the Canadian government bears a special responsibility to the region).


• Interest in anthropology: the ways in which Canadians of the past lived very different lives from their descendants, as different as the lives of Third Worlders from the lives of First Worlders, with some ethnicities marginalized by the passage of time along with an agrarian mode of subsistence.


• Interest in mythology and folklore: the ways in which the stories passed down from one generation to another can reflect their collective experiences.


• Interest in world-systems theory: division of world into core, periphery, and amorphous semiperiphery, fluid and in constant motion, with numerous innovations coming from the fringes of modernity in the semiperiphery.


• Interest in Canadian history: Canada as a prosperous country on the fringes of successive empires (French, British, American).

The Inspiration: Treat selected works of Canadian literature as anthropological texts, as representative items of different periods and different cultures in Canadian history, to reveal how these people in these periods defined themselves and their regions in a broader North American hierarchy

Selection of Works: Thirty Acres was selected as a French-language novel written in a seminal period of French Canadian history (the transition to urban modernity); Barometer Rising was set in contemporaneous Nova Scotia; Surfacing, often identified as one of the most important Canadian novels in 1970s Canadian literature and a part of the modern Canadian English-language canon, to examine the relationship of Canadians with the north.

The Initial Thesis: That the protagonists and societies in these novels, acting from their semiperipheral locations within Canadian and North American contexts, try to challenge the dominant North American norms (repesented, alternatively, by Britain, the United States, or southern Canada).

The Initial Thesis' Undoing: In each of these novels, the protagonists and societies involved either get co-opted by the center or become marginalized.

C. Overview of Current Thesis

• Canadian literature and Canadian society is not a unity by any means; quite apart from the "French fact", there are numerous other particularisms (Nova Scotia, for instance) which did exist, marginalized by an oversimplistic image of Canada as an integrated whole. Canadian societies and Canadian literatures have long been separated by internal geographical divisions which persisted until the early 20th century, when the progress of modernity (economic, social, culture) assimilated the outlying regions of Canada.


• In Thirty Acres, Euchariste Moisan and French Canadian society put up a valiant fight to retain their distinctive agrarian lifestyle, organized around the principles of rural living, folk tradition, and the Catholic Church. This culture, and Euchariste Moisan himself, persisted as late as they did (to the end of the First World War) only because outside conditions (high farm prices, particularly) allowed them to persist; when things changed, it fell.


• In Barometer Rising, Neil Macrae, his peers and relatives, and Nova Scotia as a whole live in a disjointed environment. Nova Scotia is not a unitary entity by any means; the Halifax of the Wains (Macrae's maternal relatives) remains at least notionally attached to the idea of an integraqted British Empire, while the Gaelic Cape Breton of Macrae's friends and peers remains defiantly distinct. In the end, these different poles of Nova Scotia are assimilated in the framework of a new modernity forced by the First World War; the Halifax of the Wains is better positioned (by virtue of its earlier integration with the outside world, even on the basis of a mistaken understanding) to survive than Gaelic Cape Breton, which swiftly declines.


• In Surfacing, the unnamed protagonist--here referred to as the Surfacer--goes north into the Canadian Shield with her lover and their friends, visiting her family's childhood lake cottage as they wait for news about the protagonist's disappeared father. The Surfacer becomes progressively more alienated from human civilization; that which she sees on the Canadian Shield is not indigenous by any means but is only an outpost, an offshoot with limited potential for growth, while the Canada which she left (a southern entity concentrated in the cities) is just as detached and decadent as any imported American corruption. She renounces, in a religious-type epiphany, all civilization, only to decide to return to the city in the belief that it can be redeemed and in the knowledge that she will never be able to serve as a messiah without an audience.

D. Future Directions of Thesis and Related Research

• This approach can be applied to the study of other Canadian regionalisms (in the Prairies, in British Columbia, in the north), and--with suitable adaptation--to other submerged regionalisms elsewhere in the world.


• Questions are raised about the applicability of the whole concept of a unitary Canada (or even a unitary English Canada) as manifested in literature or other cultural forms. English Canada is, at least internally, no less of an empire than Britain or the United States; acting from a central Canadian core, outlying areas of Canada with their own distinct aspirations have been assimilated.

E. Conclusion

• This presentation represents the conclusion of my undergraduate career, this thesis represents the sum of my achievements in the course of my career.

Thoughts?