American Studies Dissertations in Canada: In Progress and Completed since 1990

American StudiesDissertationsRegistryI 149 American Studies Dissertations in Canada: In Progress and Completed since 1990 For all the scholarly activity, professional initiatives, associations, centres, and newsletters, the American Studies community in Canada still does not know its full dimensions. The work of junior scholars who are just entering the field, and will shape its future, is particularly difficult to track. As part of our mandate to promote Americanist work in this country, the Canadian Review of American Studies is instituting a registry of PhD dissertations in American Studies, completed and in progress at Canadian universities since 1990; the published list will be updated annually. With this initiative, we hope to increase the visibility of the upcoming generation of Americanists, as well as to recognize the volume and diversity of American Studies activity in the Canadian academy. Becaused published sources are partial, dated, and do not recognize the category "American Studies," this list has been compiled directly from graduate programmes across Canada. Defining American Studies very broadly,we contacted 200 university departments, requesting information on "Ph.D. dissertations, completed or in progress since 1990, which involve substantial attention to U.S. material, as an exclusiveor comparative focus." The theses listed here represent the responses of approximately 100 departments , which selected titles according to their own judgements about the U.S. or U.S.-related content of the work. Like all taxonomies, this list masks almost as much as it reveals. In line with the current enthusiasm for broadening intellectual horizons, we contacted every department with a conceivably relevant focus: hence, the very suggestive range of work in this list, from art history to geology. What we could not do was broach disciplinary boundaries; until institutional classifications change, our record will be restricted by traditional disciplinary categories. It is left to individual titles in this list to suggest the innovations 150 Canadian Review of American Studies disciplinary and interdisciplinary ventures currently enlivening the field. We hope, too, that simply juxtaposing studies based in such distant disciplines will contribute to the reconceptualization of academic analysis. Distinctly Canadian characteristics can be recognized in the frequency of Canada-U.S. comparative studies; and we might also ponder the meaning of the overwhelming preponderance of titles submitted by literature programmes. We are indebted to those graduate chairs and secretaries who responded to our requests for information. We apologize for any gaps or errors in the data and would be very grateful to receive corrections or addenda, which we will include in the 1995 update. Please send information to: Christine Bold, Department of English, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario NlG 2Wl; FAX: (519) 766-0844. Finally, it must be noted that filling in the record is a hugely labourintensive task, particularly thankless when prising information out of overworked and underresourced departments is involved. The legwork, in this case, was done by Valerie Wheeler, a graduate student in English at the University of Guelph. To her, all due thanks for her enthusiasm, perseverance , and conscientiousness. Much appreciation, too, to both the University of Guelph and the Canada-U.S. Fulbright Program, without whose generous financial support this project would have been impossible. ChristineBold American StudiesDissertationsRegistryI 151 American Studies Dissertation Registry Entries read as follows: student's name, dissertation title, department and university,date of completion, supervisor. Arts Creighton, Steven. "Tonality in the Music of Aaron Copland." School of Music, University of British Columbia, in progress. (John Roeder) Howard, David B. "Bordering on the New Frontier: Modernism and the Military Industrial Complex in the United States and Canada, 1957-1965." Department of Fine Art, University of British Columbia, 1993. (John O'Brian) Powell, Lucy. "Vernacular Music Brokers and Mediators in the Southeastern United States 1900-1942." Department of Folklore, Memorial University, in progress. (Neil Rosenberg) Wark, Jayne. "The Assimilation of Marcel Duchamp's Notion of the Readymade into Body Art of the 1950s to the 1970s." Department of Fine Art, University of Toronto, in progress. (R. P. Welsh) Drama and Mass Media Baefsky, Jeffrey. "Ibsen and American Theatre, 1882-1937." Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, University of Toronto, in progress. (L.-L. Marker) Barton, Bruce. "Approaching the Text: American Writers in Film and Theatre." Graduate Centre for Study of...