ArtsI N S I G H T S

C H A L L E N G I N G I D E A S F O R T H E F U T U R E

S U M M E R 2 0 0 7

Summer 2007

FACULTY OF ARTS

McGill University

Dawson Hall 2nd Floor

853 Sherbrooke Street West

Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2T6

Tel: 514-398-6211

Fax: 514-398-4638

www.mcgill.ca/arts

E X E C U T I V E E D I T O R

Nathalie Cooke

Associate Dean, Research and

Graduate Studies

E D I T O R

Kathleen Holden, PhD

Communications Officer, Faculty of Arts

P H O T O G R A P H S

Owen Egan

Thanks to all volunteer photographers

D E S I G N A N D L AY O U T

Instructional Multimedia Services

Your comments and inquiries

are welcome. Please direct them to

kathleen.holden@mcgill.ca

CO N T E N T S

4 How do we learn to identify ourselves by nationality?

5 Where is the garden plot in the Canadian literary landscape?

6 Why do Québécois authors rewrite Shakespeare?

7 Can we listen to paintings?

8 Why might traditional farmers decide to become part of the market economy?

9 What is the impact of Mexican migration to the US on the development of children who remain behind in their native country?

10 L’anarchiste est-il un monstre?

11 Do traditional hunting taboos assist biological conservation efforts?

12 Why is the urban important for Indigenous studies?

13 Is the family romance still a relevant concept in the early XXIst century?

14 Projects and publications

ArtsC H A L L E N G I N G I D E A S F O R T H E F U T U R E

I N S I G H T S

Arts Insights. Insights into our past: the world that shaped us.

Insights into our present: our world today. Insights into our

future: the world tomorrow.

Ranked 21st in the world by the Times Higher Education

Supplement, McGill and the Faculty of Arts attract the

best and the brightest students and scholars at all stages of

their careers.

In this issue of Arts Insights, I invite you to meet some of the

Faculty’s postdoctoral fellows. These scholars typically are

at McGill for a relatively short period of time, but as integral

and integrated members of our community, they are an

important part in the continuum that characterizes research.

When our postdoctoral fellows leave here, they become

McGill’s ambassadors to the world; theirs is both the privilege

and the responsibility to expand and maintain McGill’s

network of research collaboration both at home and abroad.

Welcome to the second issue.

NATHAL IE COOKE

Associate Dean, Research and Graduate StudiesFaculty of Arts

WE L C O M E T O T H I S I S S U E

Ow

en E

gan

WWhen introducing a foreign friend in ourown country, or presenting ourselveswhen abroad, it seems as natural to men-tion nationality as it is to give a name.When filling out a form, most of us writeour nationality or citizenship automati-cally: the response is reflexive, as easyas entering date of birth.

Nationality did not always appearso ubiquitous and self-evident, how-ever. I study the emergence of identi-fication by nationality inturn-of-the-century Egypt. In1880, few Alexandriansknew what nationality theyheld. For all but a handful ofwealthy foreigners, the ques-tion of nationality was unim-portant, unasked, and indeedincomprehensible. A fewdecades later, on the eve of theFirst World War, this situationhad changed: almost everyonenow knew his or her nationality.What had happened?

European subjects in the easternMediterranean were exempt fromprosecution, taxation, and conscrip-tion by Muslim and Ottoman author-ities by virtue of centuries-oldagreements called the Capitulations.During the second half of the nine-teenth century, tens of thousands ofEuropeans flocked to Egypt for work andopportunity. Most of these migrants travelled without a passport and neverregistered with their national consulates.When arrested, sued, or taxed, however,the protection of a foreign consul offeredreal advantages. Legal threat encouragedforeigners to discover and define theirnationality.

The records of Alexandria’s consularcourts show that for many foreigners,

nationality was a legal strategy and not aclaim about social identity. The strategybecame increasingly important as gov-ernment administration spread into moreand more areas of public and private life.

As a regime of legal statusexpanded, not just foreigners but alsolocals found themselves in need ofnationality, and Egyptian nationality wasdefined as a counterpart to foreign status.Nationality became the key with whichindividuals won access to an increasinglyuniversal code of legal personality.

My research suggests that universalidentification by nationality is both new and ordinary. By new, I mean that itis not a tradition passed down from ourforefathers, but rather a response (oftenarbitrary) to relatively recent rules andadministrative questions. By ordinary, I mean that for many in Alexandria (andelsewhere) nationality originated as a

banal response to a bureaucraticdemand for classification, rather

than the call of the blood for membership in the patrieof ancestors.

Individuals learned toself-identify by national-ity when it won them benefits. In writing thesocial history of the turnof the century, then, itbecomes useful to disentangle legal nation-ality status from notionsof community belonging.Nationality was a

legal ploy and strategictechnique for most

Alexandrians. And it seemsto me that things are not so

different in present-day Canada:we love our country because weenjoy its benefits. For most of us, nationality is an

accident of birth, and our identification with Canadianness is as much selfish strategy as it is native impulse.

WILL HANLEY

Will Hanley is a Richard H. TomlinsonPostdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History.

4 A R T S I N S I G H T S

In the present day, nationality is among our most important signals of identity.

HO W D O W E L E A R N T OI D E N T I F Y O U R S E LV E S B Y N AT I O N A L I T Y?

A R T S I N S I G H T S 5

When we stumble upon a garden in a literary text, it is no accident, but rathera discovery created through a writer’s careful plotting. Unfortunately, scholars of Canadian literature have long bypassed this terrain, choosing

instead to turn their critical attention to the larger landscape. Northrop Frye suggestedin a Literary History of Canada that when it comes to Canadian identity, Canadiansshould not pose the question “Who am I?” but rather “Where is here?” According toFrye, the answer to this question resides in the vast wilderness, which looms in theCanadian literary imagination. If we pause to take a closer look at our own backyards,however, we soon realize that our gardens offer fertile space for the imagination.

Garden historians contend that real gardens are a complex art of milieu; just as plantsflourish in a garden, so do the often thorny issues of class, religion, and gender. Thissame premise holds true for gardens in literature. A literary garden is a space constitut-ed by the historical timeframe, socio-physical environment, and literary traditions inand of which an author writes. Consider, for example, nineteenth-century writerSusanna Moodie who immigrated to Upper Canada in 1832 and is famous for hercanonical collection of sketches Roughing It in the Bush or Life in Canada (1852). As apioneer, Moodie had to adapt to her new setting, which meant that the backwoodskitchen garden, rather than the picturesque English landscape, became the norm.

Moodie may have been the prime custodian of her family’s kitchen garden, yet shewas also a writer who tended a garden plot of a different kind – one that was entirelyliterary and figurative in nature. In nineteenth-century England, the language of the garden was a popular feature of discourse concerning the “cultivated” woman ofeducation, delicate beauty, and social refinement. As a writer, Moodie not onlyemploys this garden rhetoric, but also adapts it to reflect her experience as a “trans-planted” middle-class woman, whose cultivated nature is “hardened-off” in her exposure to the harsh circumstances and physical labour of pioneer life.

Because the figurative language of cultivation carries gendered and class-related con-notations, the setting of the garden becomes a significant spatial and ideological framewhen Moodie plots the events of her narratives and situates her characters. In Moodie’ssketches, the borders of her garden are breached on a number of occasions not only by the presence of less-cultured members of society, but also by the unseemly conduct ofMoodie’s own pioneer persona. These trespasses against the garden enable Moodie toexplore the permeability of proper and “propertied” feminine behaviour when situatedin an unfamiliar, socially mixed environment.

When an author, such as Moodie, is also a garden-er, the garden has the potential to operate on multi-ple levels simultaneously. If we take the time toexplore these terrains that compose part of our liter-ary landscape, other garden plots that have much tocommunicate in terms of the changing Canadianimagination will surely come to light and into view.

SHELLEY BOYD

Shelley Boyd is the Max Bell Postdoctoral Fellow at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.

Ow

en E

gan

WH E R E I S T H E G A R D E N P L O T I NT H E CA N A D I A N L I T E R A RY L A N D S C A P E?

W

6 A R T S I N S I G H T S

Why do contemporary Québécois playwrights appear so interested in rewriting Shakespeareinstead of Molière, what changes do they make to the original Shakespearean texts, andhow do the differences between Shakespeare’s plays and the adaptations reflect the con-cerns of contemporary Québec society? My research project includes a book that seeks toanswer these questions as well as an anthology of several of these plays, many of whichremain unpublished today.

Since the Quiet Revolution, more than thirty adaptations of Shakespeare havebeen written in Québec – not to mention an impressive number of translations andinnovative stage productions as well. All of these adaptations are written inFrench, except a few which are bilingual. The first such adaptation, Hamlet,prince du Québec, by Robert Gurik in 1968, mapped the characters fromShakespeare’s play onto the major political figures of the time (René Lévesque,Pierre Trudeau, Lester Pearson, Jean Lesage, and even Charles de Gaulle) andaccurately predicted the roles they would come to play in debates aboutQuébec nationalism. Many more adaptations have followed by such play-wrights as Normand Chaurette, Michel Garneau, and Jean-Pierre Ronfard,to name but a few. A significant percentage of these adaptations are char-acterized by a nationalist discourse in favour of Québec independence.

Why Shakespeare then? More so than Molière, Shakespeare may beappropriated by Québécois playwrights in support of the nationalist causefor three reasons. First, the indeterminacy of his texts makes them easilymalleable to their political purposes, just as his plays have often beenused in service of various political agendas across different time periodsand cultures. Second, Shakespeare has made what McGill English professor Michael Bristol calls “the big time”; that is, Shakespeare is acelebrity. Third, while in English-speaking nations Shakespearemight be more difficult to adapt without drawing the criticismof desecrating a classic, in Québec it’s Molière who is the moresacrosanct of the two and the more risky author for a playwright totackle. Since Shakespeare isn’t part of the French literary canon, he’sfair game for playwrights to adapt playfully. As McGill English profes-sor Leanore Lieblein has observed, the irreverent, and hence liberat-ing, attitude that Québécois playwrights have adopted towardsShakespeare can be summed up in their common nickname for him: “le grand Will”. In Québec, Shakespeare is grand, a big-time author torevere, yet Québécois playwrights are not afraid to bring him downto size, to make him their own, and to develop an affectionaterelationship with him on a first-name basis.

JENNIFER DROUIN

It is a common expression in Québec to speak of “la langue de Molière” and “la langue de Shakespeare”. Yet, in a Québec which prides itself on stillspeaking Molière’s tongue, it is especially puzzling to find a remarkablyrich history of adaptations of Shakespeare. ’

Jennifer Drouin is HumanitiesComputing Postdoctoral Fellowwith the Making Publics Project.

WH Y D O QU É B É C O I S A U T H O R S R E W R I T E SH A K E S P E A R E?

S

A R T S I N S I G H T S 7

Scenes that include the performance of music orthat show musical instruments exist throughoutthe history of art. As a performer of music, I amconstantly reminded of the presence of sound aswell as its ephemeral quality. It is the vanishingpresence of sound that concerns my investigationinto its representation in painting. By depictingmusical scenes, or events that are sound-oriented,artists demonstrate their ability to suggest thatsound can be made permanent, or at least stable,by visually providing cues that invite us to “hear”the scene before us as if we have become a character in the painting.

Over the past year, I have been studying theo-ries of the senses in early modern writing and ana-lyzing the representation of the senses in apainting by Titian, Venus with Organist and Dog(c. 1550) or, as the Prado Museum lists it, Venusrecreandose a la musica (Venus reclines while listening to music) (Prado n. 420). In this work,Titian invites us to identify with all of the senseswhile highlighting sight, touch, and hearing: for example, sight through the man’s gaze towardsthe woman, hearing through the sound of theorgan, and touch through the tactile qualities ofskin and luxurious fabrics and the idea that onecan be touched by both gaze and sound. So far itis a standard thematic interpretation.

What interested me, however, is why the maincharacters act, or react, in the way they do? Theman seated at the organ turns around in mid-performance to look at the woman. Why? Thewoman is looking at the dog. I was looking for thecause of these effects and Titian’s rationale forshowing us bodies in motion.

Upon a close examination of body language anddirection of gazes, I came to the conclusion thatinstead of capturing a moment where a man lookslustfully or longingly upon feminine beauty,Titian instead plays with the viewer’s ability toengage with sound, putting the catalyst for actionin the mouth of the dog. In other words, the dogbarks and, in response, the man turns to look athim; the woman reaches out to pet or restrain thedog, looking at him as well, and the music isinterrupted. Whatever additional interpretationscan be gleaned from the cultural, artistic, orphilosophical discourses of the sixteenth-century,Titian, in this work, teases his patrons by solicit-ing a lively sense of humor and their aural imagi-nation through a simple device of cause and effect– the sound of a dog’s bark.

MARLENE EBERHART

Marlene Eberhart isa Postdoctoral Fellow in

Early Modern Studies with the Making Publics

Project.

Right: Venus withOrganist and Dog,

Titian (c. 1550)

)))

I believe we can, and when we engage the full sensual array of our imagination, we might come to understand what appears on thecanvas in a very different way.

CA N W E L I S T E N T O PA I N T I N G S?

Elizabeth Finnis is aSocial Science and Humanities

Research CouncilPost-Doctoral Fellow in

the Department of Anthropology

Decisions to grow cash crops can reflect farmers’ experiences with changing environments

Popular discussions of traditional farmers in developing countries oftenfocus on the loss of agricultural biodiversity, and the various econo-mic problems associated with becoming embedded in the market economy.

Commodities such as coffee, chocolate, and sugar have been the focus of fair tradecampaigns that highlight how farmers can find themselves in cycles of debtbecause they cannot predict – or influence – the prices for their products on theopen market. Given these problems, why might traditional, marginal farmers start

growing commodity crops? What advantages can cash cropshave for farmer households?

In the south Indian district where I do research, farmers havestarted producing sweet cassava for the nearby sago-starch agro-industry. In the process, they have largely abandoned theirtraditional millet crops. The implications are worrying; therehas been a sharp drop in agricultural biodiversity, and unlike tra-ditional landraces, sweet cassava quickly depletes soil nutrientsand requires increasing inputs of expensive chemical fertilizers.Household dietary diversity has decreased, precisely becausefarmers are no longer growing their own foodstuffs.

Yet, despite these and other problems, farmers continue toassert that sweet cassava is the best crop to grow. It has some concrete benefits, including providing unprecedented

household income. This income allows farmers to access goods and services thatthey otherwise would not be able to afford. Villagers have been able to installhousehold electricity, put tiles (instead of grass thatch) on the roofs of theirhomes, buy commodity goods, and send their children to higher levels of educa-tion. As one 46-year-old farmer put it, “We got electricity. Life has changed.”

This economic argument is so compelling, and so pervasive, that it would beeasy to stop there. However, farmers also consider the environment and experi-ences of environmental change when making their agricultural decisions. In areaswhere there is limited access to irrigation, reliable rainfall is crucial to successfulfarming. Without this reliability, farmers can find themselves in high-risk situa-tions – they may lose their crops; they may not have a safety net to compensate.Changing rainfall patterns in this district mean that local millet landraces arefailing. While sweet cassava will produce some yield even if rainfall is poor, farm-ers state that this is not the case for traditional millet crops. Farmers point out that cassava therefore allows them to “have a job,” even during difficult times.

It may be tempting to simply highlight the problems that traditional farmersexperience when integrating with the agricultural market economy. However, myresearch in south India demonstrates that marginal farmers may make decisions to grow cash crops for varied reasons. Outcomes are mixed, combining decreasesin biodiversity and dietary diversity with the recognition of the needs of differentcrops and the benefits of income and access to electricity, education, and othercommodities. Recognising the complexity of decisions to adopt cash crops has practical implications for applied research on a range of issues from nutrition-al status to biodiversity and agricultural sustainability.

EL IZABETH F INNIS

8 A R T S I N S I G H T S

WH Y M I G H T T R A D I T I O N A L FA R M E R S D E C I D ET O B E C O M E PA RT O F T H E M A R K E T E C O N O M Y?

A R T S I N S I G H T S 9

The largest flow of immigrants inthe world today is from Mexico tothe US. There are 10.7 million

people born in Mexico who are residingin the US (United-Nations, 2006).However, children who remain behind in their native country constitute a popu-lation largely overlooked in research onthe impacts of immigration. How canMexican immigrant parents succeed tak-ing care of their children? How well are Mexican children from immigrantfamilies doing?

While we already know that in devel-oped countries poor working conditionscan lead to children being hungry,depressed and having poor health careamong other things (Heymann, 2003),we do not know the impact of workingconditions on Mexican immigrant fami-lies. The same case holds for caregiving.While we know that caregiving becom-ing a burden can lead to health and men-tal health problems (Haug et al. 1999),we do not know much about the impactof Mexican immigrant women’s timespent taking care of family members.

Using a Mexican survey: theTransnational Working Families Survey(Project for Global Working Families,Harvard University, 2004) gives anopportunity to explore the relationshipbetween demographic and family/household characteristics, work charac-teristics, caregiving responsibilities andimmigration characteristics on children’seducational and mental health out-comes. The three outcomes measuredare: behavioral and academic problems,drop-out rates and emotional problems.Results show that being formerly mar-ried, working many hours per day and/orhaving young children who are takingcare of themselves are negatively associ-ated with children having behavioral

and academic problems. In the case ofdropping out from school, interestingfindings are that a respondent’s spouse inthe US is associated with having children staying in school. In addition,the number of years of education, forboth respondent and spouse, is alsolinked to a decrease in drop outs. Finally,a respondent who finds it very hard totake time off from work and/or who hasone caregiver living in the US is nega-tively associated with having at least onechild having emotional problems.

Mexican migration to the US is animportant demographic movement thathas, however, had negative impacts onMexican children’s educational and emotional outcomes. Migration is also avery complex and multifaceted issue. We need to be able to develop policiesand interventions that will address thespecific needs of this growing population.To do so, we need to increase our understanding of what Mexican familiesneed the most:

l Help with caregiving responsibilities,when someone is migrating to the US?

l Better care arrangements so that chil-dren are cared for safely and develop well?

l Increase the educational attainment of parents?

l Improve working conditions related tocaregiving such as paid leaves or adecrease in the number of hours worked?

More research needs to be done on theimpact of migration to the US onMexican children’s outcomes. This isonly the beginning.

CLAUDIA LAHAIE

Claudia Lahaie is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy.

While we already know that in developed

countries poor working conditions can lead

to children being hungry,depressed and

having poor health care ...we do not know

the impact of workingconditions on Mexican

immigrant families.

WH AT I S T H E I M PA C T O F ME X I C A N M I G R AT I O NT O T H E US O N T H E D E V E L O P M E N T O F C H I L D R E N

W H O R E M A I N B E H I N D I N T H E I R N AT I V E C O U N T RY?

Comme Jack l’éventreur ouBuffalo Bill, le personnage del’anarchiste poseur de bombes

inspire la mythologie populaire de la«Belle Époque» en France, c’est-à-dirependant cette période (1890-1914) quia précédé la Première Guerre mondi-ale. Il faut dire qu’à ce moment laFrance est ébranlée par les attentatsanarchistes, ces «actions directes» –agressions, bombes et manifesta-tions violentes – qui ont con-tribué à associer l’anarchismeau terrorisme. Par esprit decontradiction, l’anarchismeinvestit cette figure péjora-tive jusqu’à faire de lamonstruosité une force,l’image de marque dumouvement.

Il faut savoir qu’éty-mologiquement, le mon-stre (monstrum) signifiemontrer, démontrer, attirerl’attention. Si l’anarchismeest monstrueux c’est donc aumême titre que l’est le théâtre,dans la mesure où il fait ensorte que son expressionrepose sur une exhibitionspectaculaire. Ainsi, onremarque que dans les textes anar-chistes – pamphlets, articles de jour-naux, affiches – l’écriture mise sur deseffets qui gonflent et grossissent le discours pour le rendre plus imposant.

Certains auteurs se mettent alors àécrire de façon populaire et argotique,d’autres se font carrément grossiers, selaissant emporter par des jurons,insultes et invectives, souvent cocassespar ailleurs. «Chameaucrates», « têtesde veau de la Triperie sénatoriale»,«bouffe-galette de l’Aquarium», «proprios», « rentiers», « ratichons»,

«plein de truffes» et «marlous de lahaute», les ennemis du peuple enprennent pour leur grade! Ces mouve-ments d’humeur sont cependantstratégiques car ils témoignent d’undésir d’incarnation. Eneffet, l’écritureanar-

chiste –spectaculaire,monstrueuse – cherche non pas àenlever les mots de la bouche du peu-ple, mais à lui mettre des mots dans labouche! L’anarchiste s’attend en effetà ce que son dire prenne vie et qu’ils’anime grâce à la voix des disciplesque la propagande a rassemblés.

L’ambition anarchiste est en effet desusciter des passions. Aussi l’écritureviolente doit-elle faire vibrer les fibresagressives du lecteur afin qu’il sesoulève pour renverser les hiérarchies

entretenues dans la société. C’est enbrisant tous les repères – ceux de lalangue comme ceux de la morale – quel’anarchisme entretient le germetératogène, la matrice marginale quimettra au monde une nouvelle lignéegénéalogique. En fait, la naissance dumonstre anarchiste coupe toutes lesracines de l’arbre généalogique pourqu’apparaisse un nouveau paysage

social. Cette métaphore de la renais-sance apparaît sous diverses formes

dans les écrits et on comprendainsi que l’anarchiste du XIXe

siècle veut faire exploser lecadre social et toutes lesinstitutions – étatiques,religieuses et militaires –qui le soutiennent. Ilentend recréer une nou-velle société sur leprincipe de la table rase.On comprend en défini-

tive que dans le discoursanarchiste le monstre est tour

à tour une forme prise parl’écriture, un ennemi ciblé et

un germe jugé prometteur.Selon les circonstances,pour marquer la rupture,l’anarchiste se montre ouau contraire montre l’en-

nemi en monstre pour que le divorcesoit toujours respecté. Pour respectercette articulation, se constitue une lit-térature qui popularise la violencecriminelle et entretient la convictionque le monstrueux est une virtualitéféconde, le creuset de tous les possibles.

MARIE -HÉLÈNE LAROCHELLE

Marie-Hélène Larochelle est chercheure post-doctorale (CRSH) dans la département delangue et littérature françaises.

10 A R T S I N S I G H T S

L’ A N A R C H I S T E E S T- I L U N M O N S T R E ?

Comme Jack l’éventreur ou Buffalo Bill ...

A R T S I N S I G H T S 11

At my study site in Ghana, two species of primates are tabooed (the ursinecolobus: Colobus vellerosus and the campbell’s monkey: Cercopithecus campbelli lowei) because community members consider the monkeys to be

‘children of the gods’. The taboo dates back to the founding of the villages in the mid19th century and carries with it a requirement of ‘caring for the monkeys’ which translates into a hunting ban. Villagers fear something bad will happen to them, or tothe village, if they hunt the monkeys. This situation is very different from other placesin West Africa, where monkeys are hunted for bushmeat. Researchers often cite thiscase as an example of a successful traditional conservation practice.

Since 2000, we have conducted primatological research at Boabeng-Fiema, a small,dry semi-deciduous forest in central Ghana that is approximately 5km2 in size. We have focussed principally on investigating the socio-ecology of the ursine colobusthat inhabits the forest. In our work, we collect data on the ecology of the forest (structure and composition of the forest), the monkeys’ use of their habitat (diet, rang-ing behaviour, etc.), demography, and their social behaviour.

Our census data does indeed show that the ursine colobus population is increasing.Between 1990 and 2000 the population has increased by 56% (from 128 to 220 monkeys). We found that the colobus rarely respond to nearby gunshots, with only twobrief glances toward close gunshots in 24 instances over a 3-month period. This lack of wariness suggests that people do not hunt the colobus.

The situation is quite different for the other animals living in the forest of Boabeng-Fiema. They do not receive the same level of protection, and the forest is empty ofother wildlife, particularly large mammals. Boabeng-Fiema also had the lowest numberof bird species per hectare in a recent avifaunal survey that compared 35 locally andgovernmentally protected forests in central Ghana.

Similarly, the forest does not receive the same level of protection as the monkeys. At the local level of government, only trees within a 1.92 km2 core area are protected.There is no protection from any level of government for trees outside the 1.92 km2

area. A comparison of satellite images between 1990 and 2000 of the 5km2 area delineating the limits of the sanctuary (according to the boundaries delineated by theForestry Commission) indicates the proportion of ‘good forest’ has declined 52% andfarmland has increased 118%. The 1.9 km2 core sanctuary does not appear to havechanged as dramatically. This decline in forest cover is problematic because we knowthe monkey population is increasing, and will need more forest to support their growing numbers.

To come back to our original question: is the situation at Boabeng-Fiema an exampleof biological conservation? The answer is obviously not a straight yes or no. Our findings show that Boabeng-Fiema combines a successfully protected and increasingcolobus population with a forest declining in size that harbours few other animals.Thus the characterization of Boabeng-Fiema as a successful example of local conserva-tion is more complex that it appears on the surface and our work continues in this area.

TANIA SAJ

Tania Saj is a Richard H. Tomlinson Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology.

A case study at Boabeng-Fiema, Ghana.

DO T R A D I T I O N A L H U N T I N G TA B O O SA S S I S T B I O L O G I C A L C O N S E R VAT I O N E F F O RT S?

From top: male ursine colobus,sign at Boabeng-Fiema, the

author, village girl with monkeysat Boabeng-Fiema

12 A R T S I N S I G H T S

Enter McGill at the Roddick Gates and to the left one sees theHochelaga Rock, a commemoration of the Iroquois settlement thatonce stood in the vicinity of where the university is today. As a memorial to pre-Montreal native history, the stone exemplifies the traditional idea ofIndigenous society as inherently parochial and pre-urban, an image that has come in the modernworld to constrain ‘authentic’ Indigenous societies to the world’s jungles, forests, mountains andtundra. Needless to say, this perceived dichotomy between urbanism and contemporaryIndigenous life is unfounded. My own long-term research with Indigenous Ainu living inTokyo, Japan and more recently with First Nations in Montreal has engaged with varyingurban experiences that now define reality for an increasing number of Indigenous peoplearound the world. Indeed, statistics indicate that today probably more Indigenous peoplein the world are living in (sub-)urban areas than on traditional lands. To interrogate thissituation further also begins to question the common representation of Indigenous peo-ples in other ways, the idea, for example, of mobility, migration or even urbanization assomething ‘new’ for Indigenous peoples. Oral history and archaeology have long point-ed to evidence that prior to colonial contact most Indigenous communities were inte-grated into, at times, extensive (trans)regional networks of trade as well as kinshipand political systems and, historically, underwent various periods of deurbanizationand reurbanization. In fact the Hochelaga Rock commemorates a settlement thatwas undoubtedly more connected with other peoples and places and, therefore,more socially urban and expansive than at first one is to likely assume.

These issues, and the multitudes they infer, continue to inform mywork in a number of ways. In setting up a new participatory healthproject with James Bay Cree students at a college on the WestIsland of Montreal, I am addressing the psychosocial adaptationof youth to life in the ‘south’ and the role that resilience playsin determining successful outcomes. I am also looking at thebroader idea of ‘urban Indigenous studies’ as a comparativefield of study in a book on the history and cultural politics ofIndigenous Ainu living outside of their ancestral northernhomeland of Hokkaido and in the capital region of Tokyo. Forover thirty years, the naturalization of Ainu identity in publicand academic discourse to the northern geography ofHokkaido has regionalized Ainu claims to Indigenous rightsand privileges that now exclude those living in urban cen-ters on the mainland.

While I present a focused case study, I also relate thematerial to the negotiation of Indigenous identitiesand communities in everyday urban life elsewhere inthe world and the shared struggle to obtain equalityin urban citizenship. After all, in a world of globalcities where issues of urban governance and socialjustice are coming to the fore, a better understand-ing of urban Indigenous life is greatly needed.

MARK WATSON

Mark Watson is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the

Comparative Studyof Indigenous Rights

and Identityin the Departmentof Anthropology.

WH Y I S T H E U R B A N I M P O RTA N TF O R IN D I G E N O U S S T U D I E S?

A R T S I N S I G H T S 13

Conceived by Freud at the beginning of the XXth century, the concept of «roman familial» (family romance) is experiencing, one century later, a new and increased fortune.

Maïté Snauwaert est chercheure postdoctorale,bourse Marie-Thérèse Reverchon

dans la département de langue et littérature françaises.

Borrowed at firstfrom the literarydomain, the concept

now seems to bereclaimed by what it

belongs to.Contemporary writers,indeed, are revisiting

what they present astheir own family story,but in a way that can’texactly be consideredas «autobiographi-

cal». Instead of con-sidering «life» as a pre-linguistic

reality, they show us how it is mediated by lan-guage, and, most of all, by the tales inheritedmostly from the parents but also from thebroader social environment. Family, then takenas a vast mythology, has to be told, or, moreprecisely, reimagined, since it has been trans-mitted as series of stories; the writer can onlypresent himself as a narrator. Therefore, thelatter’s own interpretation is singled out, hissubjectivity strongly involved, and life appearsas a romance. The novel becomes the place of are-configuration, a rearrangement. As a result,the narrator is not an individual seen in theprocess of retelling something he knows: he’s asubject, invented by his writing while he him-self invents how to compose the story of hislife. An untold identity emerges from this oper-ation, for its author is not only the creator him-self, but also the community of discourses –including literary lectures – that has con-tributed to his constitution, and often to his

constitution as a writer. From now on, the writ-ing – novels most of the time, but not always,as form is each time conceived as a problem –becomes critical of the naturalistic or vitalisticway of conceiving life. Thus the major part ofautobiographical studies, a very dominant fieldin literature, becomes the object of a rethink-ing. The alternative concept of «autofiction»,created in 1977 by Serge Doubrovsky, soonafter the first theoretical definition of «autobi-ography» had been given by French professorPhilippe Lejeune, even if it remains relevant,now seems too specific in the face of a problemreaching the anthropological dimension of lit-erature, instead of just its generic purpose.Oriented at the same time toward psychoanaly-sis and language theory, both already associatedby linguist Émile Benveniste in his conceptionof subjectivity, the family romance reveals itselfas a literary version of the «narrative identity»that philosopher Paul Ricoeur conceptualizedin the 1980’s. Beyond that proximity, though,the concept of «romance» reclaims its particu-lar efficiency: a capacity of inven-tion which is the distinction ofart, and which, offering notonly the portrait of a sin-gle man, but of what aman can be, not ofwhat one life is, but ofhow and how far lifecan be invented,becomes a model foreach and every reader.

MAÏTÉ SNAUWAERT

I S T H E FA M I LY R O M A N C E S T I L L A R E L E VA N TC O N C E P T I N T H E E A R LY X X I s t C E N T U RY?

Peter Sabor (Director, The Burney Centre)THE BURNEY CENTRE/RARE BOOKSAND SPECIAL COLLECT IONSRESEARCH GRANTArts Insights contributed matching fundsto support a research grant based jointly

in the BurneyCentre, the RareBooks and SpecialCollectionsDivision of theMcGill Library.This grant willenable VisitingFellows toundertakeresearch onmembers ofthe Burney

family or their circle.They will be able to draw on the richholdings of the Burney Centre and RareBooks, where they will have access toworking space and both print and elec-tronic resources.

Faith Wallis (Departments of History and Social Studies of Medicine)THE CALENDAR AND THECLOISTER: A D IGITAL FACSIMILE ,WITH COMMENTARY OF MSOXFORD ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE 17This project, jointly sponsored by Oxfordand McGill Universities, will create aweb-site for a digitalized facsimile of themedieval scientific manuscript, St. John’sCollege 17, and will equip the facsimilewith supporting scholarlymaterials. The web-site willbe publicly accessible andwill be mirrored at McGilland Oxford. The core andorganizing principle ofthis scientific miscellany,assembled at ThorneyAbbey, Cambridgeshire,circa AD 1100, is thescience of time-reckon-ing and the techniqueof calendar construc-

tion, known in the Middle Ages as comptus. The importance of St. John’s 17for the cultural and intellectual history ofAnglo-Saxon and Anglo-NormanEngland has been long recognized by historians, philologists, and scholarsworking in the fields of medieval science,monastic culture, and the history of thebook. The miscellany is frequently exhibited in museums and has attractedthe interest of the general public.

William Watson (Department of Economics)DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICSTUESDAY WORKSHOP SER IESThe support from Arts Insights hasenabled the Department of Economics to hold its Tuesday Workshop Seriesthroughout the year. Originally held during the summer only, this WorkshopSeries provides an invaluable forumwherein faculty members can presenttheir current research and receive com-ments and criticism from their colleagues.

CREOR: CENTRE FOR RESEARCHON REL IGIONThe mission of the inter-faculty Centrefor Research on Religion is to promoteand support inter-disciplinary researchprojects, from applications and researchassistants to colloquia and internationalconferences. CREOR’s membership con-sists of representatives from the Facultiesof Religious Studies, Arts, Medicine,Education, and Law, as well as membersfrom the Presbyterian College, MSU, and

the MUHC.

Tom Mole (Department ofEnglish) and Andrew Piper(Department of GermanStudies)CENTRE FOR THE STUDYOF PR INT CULTUREA rapidly expanding interna-tional field of interdisciplinaryresearch has emerged within thepast decade which studies the

role of print in shaping social communi-ties and individual identities from theinvention of moveable type to the digitalrevolution. The aim of the Centre is torethink the scholarly narrative of BookHistory in an effort to resituate it within abroader concept of print culture. TheCentre will develop an innovativeapproach to the study of print culture byinvestigating how people have interactedwith printed texts, how they have usedprinted texts to interact with each otherand how printed texts themselves haveinteracted with other non-print mediawithin complex media ecologies.

Axel Van den Berg (Department of Sociology)TRANSIT IONS IN WELFARE ANDEMPLOYMENT REGIMESThroughout the industrialized world,countries are experimenting with majorreform of their social and labour marketpolicies in an effort to adapt to major economic, social and demographic trends.This large multidisciplinary and multi-national research project will study theeffects of social protection and labourmarket policy on labour market flexi-bility, and the lessons to be drawn fromthem for the possibilities of combinationsof, and trade-offs between, social securityand economic efficiency.

Robert Lecker (Department of English)ANTHOLOGY OF CANADIANL ITERATUREThe support from Arts Insights is dedicat-ed to supporting Research Assistants who are assisting in the preparation of anew anthology of Canadian literature to be published by Thomson Nelson inlate 2007. The Research Assistants will assist in library verification and foot-note compilation, and will participate in editorial decisions regarding the selection and presentation of material collected in the anthology.

In 2006-2007, Arts Insights provided support for the following projects and publications

14 A R T S I N S I G H T S

P R O J E C T S S U P P O RT E D B Y ART S IN S I G H T S

A R T S I N S I G H T S 15

Grace Fong (Department of East Asian Studies)ENGENDERING DATABASES:INTEGRAT ING MING QINGWOMEN’S WRIT INGS, CHINAHISTORICAL GEOGRAPHICINFORMATION SYSTEM, ANDCHINA B IOGRAPHICAL DATABASEThis collaborative project will imple-ment the integration of the McGill-Harvard-Yenching Library Ming QingWomen’s Writing Database with theChina Biographical Database and the China Historical GeographicalInformation System. The project willaugment online textual resources andproduce web-based tools to advanceresearch on Chinese women’s culture in the premodern period, and to introduce a gendered component toexisting geographical and biographicaldata analysis.

Eugenio Bolongaro (Department of Italian Studies)CREAT ING A NEW PUBL IC:IDENT ITY, COMMUNITY ANDNATIONHOOD IN THE WORKS OF T IZ IANO SCARPA AND ALDO NOVEThis project is designed to lay the foundation for a new approach to thework of the young generation of Italian writers who came to prominencein the 1990s. The investigation will focus on Scarpa and Nove, two of themost talented members of this group.The project will investigate how, as a result of their diagnosis of contem-porary isolation, these authors seek to create a new public, to establish a new relationship with readers. It will also explore how their aspirations for a renewed sociality can be con-nected to the elaboration of a new sense of Italian national identity which resolutely abandons any nationalistresidues.

PROJECT ING CANADA: GOVERNMENT POL ICY AND DOCUMENTARY F I LM AT THE NAT IONAL F I LM BOARDZoë Druick

The National Film Board of Canada, now in its seventhdecade, is internationally acclaimed as a beacon of non-commercial filmmaking. In Projecting Canada ZoëDruick shows that the NFB, born out of a nation-building project, continues to be inextricably involvedin the crises of nation, technology, and social scientificknowledge that shape the Canadian cultural landscape.

Based on newly uncovered archival information and a close reading of numerous NFB films, Projecting Canada explores the NFB’s involvementwith British Empire communication theory and American social science.Using a critical cultural policy studies framework, Druick develops the concept of “government realism” to describe films featuring ordinary peopleas representative of segments of the population. She demonstrates the closeconnection between NFB production policies and shifting techniques devel-oped in relation to the evolution of social science from the 1940s to the pres-ent and argues that government policy has been the overriding factor indetermining the ideology of NFB films. Projecting Canada offers a compellingnew perspective on both the development of the documentary form and therole of cultural policy in creating essential spaces for aesthetic production.

THE ARCHEOLOGY OF BRUCE TR IGGER:THEORET ICAL EMPIR IC ISMEdited by Ronald F. Williamson and Michael S. Bisson

Bruce Trigger has merged the history of archaeologywith new perspectives on how to understand thepast. He is a critical analyst and architect of socialevolutionary theory, an Egyptologist, and anauthority on aboriginal cultures in north-easternNorth America. His contextualization of archae-ology within broader society has encouragedappreciation of the power of archaeologicalknowledge and he has been an effective voice

for non-oppositional forms of argument in archaeological theory. In The Archaeology of Bruce Trigger, leading scholars discuss their own

approaches to the interpretation of archaeological data in relation toTrigger’s fundamental intellectual contributions.

Ronald F. Williamson is the co-editor of Taming the Taxonomy: Towards a New Understanding of Great Lakes Archaeology and president and chiefarchaeologist, Archaeological Services Inc.

Michael S. Bisson is associate professor and chair, anthropology, McGill University.

M Q U P P U B L I C AT I O N S

www.mcgill.ca /arts

Arts Insights, a new series fromMcGill-Queens University Press,showcases current research in the social sciences, humanities, and social work.

Arts Insights, an initiative ofMcGill’s Faculty of Arts, bringstogether research in the SocialSciences, Humanities, and Social Work. Reflective of therange of expertise and interests represented by the Faculty of Arts at McGill, Arts Insightsseeks manuscripts that bring aninterdisciplinary perspective to the discussion of ideas, issues,and debates that deepen and expand our understanding of human interaction, such as works dealing with society and change, or languages, litera-tures, and cultures and the rela-tionships among them. Ofparticular interest are manuscriptsthat reflect the work of researchcollaborations involving McGill faculty and their col-leagues in universities that arepart of McGill’s internationalaffiliation network.

Arts Insights will publish two titles a year in English. The editors prefer original manuscripts but may consider the English language translationsof works that have alreadyappeared in another language.