Canadian Literature at the Crossroads of Language and Culture is the first book to gather together essays by Barbara Godard, one of the leading and most prolific figures in the field of Canadian studies. Godard has long been one of the most influential readers of Canadian literature. Much of the force of her work comes from her meticulous and relentless attention to the networks that produce both the texts and events we study and the methods through which we read them. Whether she writes about feminist theory, orality and Native women writers, or the exigencies of the cultural field, she has been instrumental in interrogating, time and time again, the normative ways in which we think about Canadian culture. From the function of literature to the materiality of institutions and periodicals, from the theory and practice of translation to the interrelations between English and French Canadian literatures, her critical interventions have drastically reconceptualised our inherited understandings of Canadian culture
Barbara Godard is a Professor of English and the Historica Chair in Canadian Literature at York University. The editor of many books, she has lectured widely in Canada and abroad, and is the recipient of teaching awards from York University's Faculty of Graduate Studies and the North-eastern Association of Graduate Schools.