Literature and Social Studies: Reading the Hyphenated Spaces of Canadian Identity

Abstract

In this article, I consider the ideological and imaginative potential of literature for questioning notions of Canadian identity in the Social Studies classroom. I compare various literary texts published in the early part of the twentieth century, considering how writers differ in their attempts to create a unified metanarrative of nation or to offer a more fluid discourse of inclusion and exclusion. These early texts are contrasted with more contemporary Canadian literature in which previously marginalized writers speak from the in-between spaces of culture, emphasizing the hybrid and fluid nature of Canadian identity as it redefines itself in an increasingly global and globalized environment.