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  • The West and Beyond: New Perspectives on an Imagined Region
  • Ted McCoy
Alvin Finkel, Sarah Carter, and Peter Fortna, eds. The West and Beyond: New Perspectives on an Imagined Region (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press 2009)

The West And Beyond: New Perspectives on an Imagined Region is drawn from a 2008 conference at the University of Alberta that was something of a rebirth for the Western Canadian Studies field. The original Western Canadian Studies Conference ran between the years 1967 and 1990; and in the Introduction, editors Alvin Finkel, Sarah Carter and Peter Fortna recall how these earlier conferences helped to define a generation of Western Canada history as it matured and found its voice. The early years were marked by responses to regionalist feelings of alienation and discontent. But the meetings grew in their scope. Over the years the conferences played host to an ever-expanding field that chronicled the history of western Canada, including histories of First Nations people, the working class, and women. Thus, the 2008 conference functioned as a way of taking stock of of the status of Western Canadian Studies, nearly twenty years on. The essays in this volume are a fascinating snapshot of current scholarship about western Canada [End Page 176] and reveal a crop of emerging historians who have expanded the reach of Western Canadian Studies beyond its earlier regional and analytical confines.

The first section of the collection addresses western Canadian historiography, featuring articles by Gerald Friesen, Lyle Dick, and Winona Wheeler. Friesen’s lead essay provides a historiographical overview of a century of western Canadian history. This brief piece will be invaluable to scholars attempting to understand how writing about the region has developed, focusing on five primary methods by which western Canadian history has challenged more national patterns of interpretation. Dick and Wheeler add to this overview by considering the contributions of non-academic voices, including those of oral historians, to the historiographical portrait of the west.

Part Two explores portrayals of Aboriginal history in the west. This includes a very creative study by Matt Dyce and Jampes Opp, who explore photography so as to address the European gaze and its contributions to colonial constructions of race. Their piece highlights the potential and pitfalls of using visual evidence, particularly in terms of the fluid meaning of the photographic image. A second standout is Kathryn McKay’s chapter on European perceptions of insanit y regarding British Columbia’s Aboriginal populations. McKay argues that there were multiple normalizing discourses that contributed to colonialism, including those of madness; and she finds a key example of such in records from psychiatric wards between 1872 and 1950. She also locates an invaluable source, namely the Department of Indian Affairs patient files, exploring them to discover how race, colonialism, and medicine contributed to differing colonial constructions of madness among First Nations people.

In Part Three, we see how the history of western Canada has expanded beyond its traditional borders. Jeffery Taylor takes a very long view by exploring different modes of production and how these modes have shaped class formation and social development from the mid-17th to the early 20th century. Taylor’s article links western Canada to the processes of global capital in ways that are vital to our understanding of this region. This broader view is well matched by Elizabeth Jameson’s piece about western labour developments from a cross-border perspective. Jameson reminds us that for workers the border has always been a porous entity, and she challenges historians to think beyond the confines of national or regional history. An outstanding piece by Esyllt Jones illustrates how the perspectives employed by Taylor and Jameson may combine to create a truly expansive definition of Western Canadian Studies. Jones explores disease and working class bodies in early 20th-century Winnipeg, examining public health crises to argue that epidemics are potential sites of resistance and social transformation.

Part Four deals with marginality in the west and includes topics that would not have appeared on the program of the first Western Canadian Studies Conference. Valerie J. Korinek writes on sexuality and the value of employing a queer-eye of the Prairies...

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