| Since Confederation, American writers have used Canada as an imaginative space and alternative landscape from which to probe the concepts of identity, citizenship, and community. While Americans historically envisaged assimilating Canada, Canadians have wrestled with living in the shadow of a global super-power with whom they continue to be intricately linked, economically, politically, and culturally. This course examines fiction from 1900 to the present, written by Americans about Canada in an attempt to understand why Canada is seen as such a fertile ground for American self-examination; we will examine the changing literary representations of Canada and its relationship to America, using our physical proximity to the forty-ninth parallel to consider the impact of these depictions on populations in both countries. |
