The Canadian Review of American Studies

© Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue canadienne d’études américaines 30, no. 3, 2000 The Canadian Review of American Studies Bruce Tucker The Canadian Review of American Studies (CRAS) began publication in typescript format in 1965 as the Bulletin of the newly formed Canadian Association for American Studies (CAAS). In 1970 it moved to York University, assumed its present name, and became the journal of record for Americanist scholarship in Canada . Since that time several universities, including Manitoba, Winnipeg, Western Ontario, Windsor, Guelph, Calgary, and Carleton, have provided a home and support for CRAS, and a number of dedicated editors have overseen its publication . The journal currently has a subscription list of about 121 individuals and 241 institutions. Thirty-five years of publication with a small subscription base and a limited range of contributors is a remarkable achievement. Like all but the largest Canadian scholarly journals, CRAS has always struggled with the problem of finding sufficient revenues to sustain regular publication. While American studies journals in the United States can rely on economies of scale from a larger base of subscribers, the economics of small journal production in Canada dictate the need for constant subsidy from universities, public funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and contributions from private donors and foundations . Small journals, moreover, are particularly vulnerable when university libraries prune their subscriptions to balance their budgets during funding cutbacks or during periods when the Canadian dollar is weak. Both the Association and the journal have survived, however, and, after thirty-five years, it seems appropriate to review what the intellectual project for American studies should be in Canada and the role of an American studies journal in Canadian intellectual life. For the founders of the Association, the project was clear. A preliminary planning meeting at McGill University and Loyola College in Montreal in October 1964 brought together a group of sixteen scholars from eleven institutions, representing altogether the disciplines of literature, political science, history, and economics . They aimed to “bring greater cohesion to the teaching of American Studies” in Revue canadienne d’études américaines 30 (2000) 391 Canada, to provide a forum for sharing research interests, to plan for the publication of a scholarly journal, and to assist Canadian students and scholars in securing research funding (Evans 4–5). Participants surveyed the state of American studies at Canadian universities, taking stock of the number of courses on American topics and the strength of library holdings . There was a general consensus among the participants that American studies in Canada had great potential, but that it was a largely neglected field. In part to remedy this situation, organizers held their first conference in Toronto in the fall of 1965, and, with that, the effort to create a more visible presence for Americanist scholarship in Canada began. As Peter Buitenhuis, a founding member of the Association puts it, so we felt we had to make our way, to break through that sort of paper curtain of traditional English studies in Canada. So this was a way of networking and establishing patterns of research interests … to increase the visibility of American literature. (117) The founding of CAAS and the establishment of CRAS took place within the larger context of attempts by younger faculty to decentre the privileged place of British literature in Canadian and American curricula. Buitenhuis recalls that traditional British authors dominated the Yale English Department’s program in the 1950s and that he encountered the serious study of American authors only in the American Studies program . There were very few courses in American literature, moreover, in Canadian universities when he began teaching at the University of Toronto in 1958. In the curricula of most Canadian universities, there was very little American literature. In the undergraduate curriculum at Toronto, there was, I think, one introductory course which went for the whole year and provided for two weeks or three weeks of Canadian literature at the end of the year. There was … one other optional course at the fourth-year in American literature. (Buitenhuis 117) As an undergraduate at University of Western Ontario and graduate student at McGill University in the 1960s, former CAAS president Sherrill Grace...