Oral History: An Interview with Bruce Daniels

Canadian Review of American Stud1es/Re11ue canad1em1e d'/¥ludesamt"l1c.mzes Volume 2S, Number 1, Winter 1995, pp. 1-13 Oral History: An Interview with Bruce Daniels Bruce Tucker Introduction As part of the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of the CamzdicmReuieu,,1 of American Studies, the editors are pleased to present the second in a series of interviews of former editors and presidents of the Canadian Association of American Studies (CAAS). In the following interview, past president of the Canadian Association For American Studies, Bruce Daniels, reflects on his experience as a Canadian professor teaching and writing American history. A former editor of the Cmadian Reuiew of Americ1m Studies, Professor Daniels has taught at the University of Winnipeg since 1970. He has published six books and dozens of articles, and he has received numerous awards for his work. The interview was conducted by Bruce Tucker at the annual CAAS meeting in Halifax on 16 October 1993. Bruce Tucker (BT): How did you first got involved in the Canadian Association for American Studies? Bruce Daniels (BD): I came to Canada in 1970 as an assistant professor who had never published anything. I had just finished my PhD the same year, and I became aware of a journal being published at York-the brand new Canadian Reuieu 1 o{Americtm Studies. Then, in 1977, ,,fter I had been here seven years, I was asked to be a commentator on a session of a conference 2 Canadian Review of American Studies/ Revue canadimne d'etudes americaines at Montreal. The association met at the Park Lane Hotel on Sherbrooke Street, a beautiful old hotel. I was fumbling with my keys to get in the room, when a guy said, "You're Bruce Daniels." And I said ''Yes."And he said, "I'm John Teunissen. 11 He was president of the association. Over the next two or three days I bumped into him three or four more times, and when I got back to Winnipeg he called me up and asked me if I wanted to be the co-editor of the journal. I was dumbfounded. I was very junior, seven or eight years past my PhD, and I had no experience editing a journal-editing anything really. But, untroubled by modesty, I said "Sure!" I was just thrilled. John was looking for a historian to join him. His sense was that the journal could best be edited by one person assuming the responsibilities for literature and another person for history. He wanted somebody near the University of Manitoba and asked me. In 1978 I signed on as co-editor and I've been active in the organization ever since. BT: What were some of the issues at that conference in Montreal in 1977? What were people talking about in the association? BD: Well, in informal discussions, anti-Americanism was the subject everywhere . It was at the end of five or six years of a cycle of anti-Americanism. Anti-Americanism may be the wrong word, but there was a cycle of suspicion about the United States. I remember a lot of discussions about how the organization was to survive and thrive in a society where we were suspect because we taught and did research about the United States. I also remember discussions on how to involve the association's other areas besides literature and history. I had a long discussion with a couple of people about film and whether or not film would be a productive thing for the association to be involved in, whether to invite people who wrote about or made films. And, at the time, there were always overtones of how this all fit in Canadian national life. At the time, most of us were experiencing these Canadian-American tensions in our teaching, and some of us were even leading the discussions in our home universities. Americanist scholarship took place in a milieu, that to some degree was perceived by many to be somewhat anti-American. I always found that strange because many of us at the Bruce Tucker 3 l\1ontreal meeting, from my experiences earlier and after that meeting, knew that we ourselves were perceived to be anti-American...