Trans/acting Culture, Writing, and Memory

Trans/acting Culture, Writing, and Memory is a collection of essays written in honour of Barbara Godard, one of the most original and wide-ranging literary critics, theorists, teachers, translators, and public intellectuals Canada has ever produced. The contributors, both established and emerging scholars, extend Godard’s work through engagements with her published texts in the spirit of creative interchange and intergenerational relay of ideas. Their essays resonate with Godard’s innovative scholarship, situated at the intersection of such fields as literary studies, cultural studies, translation studies, feminist theory, arts criticism, social activism, institutional analysis, and public memory. In pursuit of unexpected linkages and connections, the essays venture beyond generic and disciplinary borders, zeroing in on Godard’s transdisciplinary practice which has been extremely influential in the way it framed questions and modelled interventions for the study of Canadian, Québécois, and Acadian literatures and cultures. The authors work with the materials ranging from Canadian government policies and documents to publications concerning white-supremacist organizations in Southern Ontario, online materials from a Toronto-based transgender arts festival, a photographic mural installation commemorating the Montreal Massacre, and the works of such writers and artists as Marie Clements, Nicole Brossard, France Daigle, Nancy Huston, Yvette Nolan, Gail Scott, Denise Desautels, Louise Warren, Rebecca Belmore, Vera Frenkel, Robert Lepage, and Janet Cardiff.

Eva C. Karpinski teaches feminist theory and autobiography in the School of Women’s Studies at York University. She has published articles in Literature Compass, Men and Masculinities, Studies in Canadian Literature, Canadian Woman Studies, and Resources for Feminist Research, among others. She is the editor of Pens of Many Colours: A Canadian Reader, a popular college anthology of multicultural writing.

Jennifer Henderson is an associate professor in the Department of English at Carleton University.

Ian C. Sowton is a professor emeritus of English and senior scholar, York University.

Ray Ellenwood retired from York University in 2005 but is still actively researching and publishing.