Social Science Women's Studies
Unsettled Pasts
Reconceiving the West through Women's History
- Publisher
- University of Calgary Press
- Initial publish date
- Dec 2005
- Category
- Women's Studies
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781552381779
- Publish Date
- Dec 2005
- List Price
- $44.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781552384701
- Publish Date
- Dec 2005
- List Price
- $44.95
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
The traditional mythology of the West is dominated by male images: the fur trader, the Mountie, the missionary, the miner, the cowboy, the politician, the Chief. Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West claims to re-examine the West through women's eyes. It draws together contributions from researchers, scholars, and academic and community activists, and seeks to create dialogue across geographic, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries. Ranging from scholarly essays to poetry, these pieces offer the reader a sample of some of today's most innovative approaches to western Canadian women's history; several of the themes that run throughout the volume have only recently been critically addressed. By rewriting the West from the perspective of women, the contributors complicate traditional narratives of the region's past by contesting historical generalizations, thus transcending the myths and "frontier" legacies that emerged out of imperial and masculine priorities and perspectives.
With Contributions by:
Kristin Burnett Cristine Georgina Bye Sarah Carter Mary Leah De Zwart Lesley A. Erickson Cheryl Foggo Nadine I. Kozak Siri Louie Graham A. Macdonald Florence Melchior Patricia A. Roome Eliane Leslau Silverman Olive Stickney Aritha Van Herk Muriel Stanley Venne Cora J. Voyageur
About the authors
Sarah Carter, F.R.S.C., is H.M. Tory Chair and Professor in the Department of History and Classics, and Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. She is a specialist in the history of Western Canada and is the author of Aboriginal People and Colonizers of Western Canada to 1900, Capturing Women, and Lost Harvests. Sarah Carter was awarded the Jensen-Miller Prize by the Coalition for Women's History for the best article published in 2006 in the field of women and gender in the trans-Mississippi West.
Lesley Erickson holds a doctorate in history from the University of Calgary. Her research interests include women’s and gender history, western Canadian history, and the history of crime and punishment.
Lesley Erickson's profile page
Patricia Roome is a member of the Humanities Department at Mount Royal University, where she teaches history and women's studies.
Dr. Kristin Burnett is a professor in the Department of Indigenous Learning at Lakehead University. A settler scholar, Burnett has published broadly on topics related to Indigenous health and well-being, and much of her current research and policy work engages with systemic barriers to health care, social services and supports, and food.
Kristin Burnett's profile page
Christine Georgina Bye's profile page
Mary Leah De Zwart's profile page
Lesley A. Erickson's profile page
Cheryl Foggo is a multiple award-winning playwright, author and filmmaker, whose work over the last thirty years has focused on the lives of Western Canadians of African descent. Recent works include the release of her NFB feature documentary John Ware Reclaimed, available on nfb.ca, as well as the thirtieth anniversary edition of her book Pourin' Down Rain: A Black Woman Claims Her Place in the Canadian West. Her plays Heaven and John Ware Reclaimed have received multiple productions, including at The Citadel in Edmonton, Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary, at the Blyth Theatre Festival and in Ottawa at the National Arts Centre. Cheryl is the recipient of the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Outstanding Artist Award, the Doug and Lois Mitchell Outstanding Calgary Artist Award and the Arts, Media and Entertainment Award from the Calgary Black Chambers, all in 2021. She is a 2022 inductee into the Alberta Order of Excellence.
Nadine I. Kozak's profile page
Graham MacDonald has worked as a historian, teacher, librarian, and park planner. He is the author of A Good Solid Comfortable Establishment: An Illustrated History of Lower Fort Garry, and Where the Mountains Meet the Prairies: A History of Waterton Country (University of Calgary Press).
Graham A. MacDonald's profile page
Florence Melchior's profile page
Patricia A. Roome's profile page
Eliane Leslau Silverman's profile page
Aritha van Herk teaches Creative Writing, Canadian Literature and Contemporary Narrative. Her novels include Judith, The Tent Peg, No Fixed Address (nominated for the Governor General's Award for fiction), Places Far From Ellesmere (a geografictione) and Restlessness. Her critical works, A Frozen Tongue (ficto-criticism) and In Visible Ink (crypto-frictions) stretch the boundaries of the essay and interrogate questions of reading and writing as aspects of narrative subversion. With Mavericks: an Incorrigible History of Alberta (winner of the Grant MacEwan Author's Award) van Herk ventured into new territory, transforming history into a narratological spectacle. That book frames the new permanent exhibition that opened at the Glenbow Museum in 2007. van Herk is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and is active in Canada's literary and cultural life, writing articles and reviews as well as creative work. She has served on many juries, including the Governor General's Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. She is well known in the broader community of the city, the province, and the country as a writer and a public intellectual.
Aritha van Herk's profile page
Muriel Stanley Venne's profile page
Dr. Cora J. Voyageur is a full professor in the sociology department at the University of Calgary, where she has taught for more than 20 years. Her research interests explore the Indigenous experience in Canada, including leadership, community and economic development, women’s issues, and health. She is a Residential School Survivor and a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation from northern Alberta.
Editorial Reviews
With its postcolonial and intersectional feminist analyses of the past and its underlying commitment to social justice in the present, Unsettled Pasts is a meaningful contribution to the field of women's history in Canada.
?Patricia Barkaskas, BC Studies
The book, with its new research, makes a valuable contribution to the literature on women, their history, and their lived experiences in western Canada.
—Wendee Kubik, Great Plains Quarterly